PipeWire: Difference between revisions

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{{Draft|The instructions below have not been thoroughly tested and may break things.}}
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[https://pipewire.org/ PipeWire] is a multimedia processing engine that aims to improve audio and video handling on Linux.
[https://pipewire.org/ PipeWire] is a multimedia processing engine that aims to improve audio and video handling on Linux. Pipewire can act as a replacement for both [[PulseAudio]] and [[ALSA]] servers.


== Prerequisites ==
== Prerequisites ==


=== Audio Group ===
=== Device access ===


When elogind is not available, the user has to be added to the <code>audio</code> group. The user must log in for this to take effect.
PipeWire needs proper permissions to access devices. If you do not use [[Elogind|elogind]], your user should be in <code>audio</code> (to access audio devices) and <code>video</code> (to access webcam devices) groups:


<pre>
{{Cmd|<nowiki># addgroup <user> audio
# addgroup audio <user>
# addgroup <user> video</nowiki>}}
</pre>


=== D-Bus ===
{{Warning|Membership of the <code>video</code> group will also grant unrestricted access to video devices, which is often a security issue. See issue {{issue|15409}} for further details.
}}


PipeWire requires a running [https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus/ D-Bus] session. If you use a full desktop environment this will probably be started automatically, but with minimal window managers it must be done manually.
See [https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Users_and_groups#Pre-systemd_groups pre-systemd groups] for more info.
Make sure to re-login for these changes to take effect.


<pre>
=== D-Bus ===
# apk add dbus dbus-openrc dbus-x11
# rc-service dbus start
# rc-update add dbus default
</pre>


Then use <code>dbus-launch</code> whenever you start an X or Wayland session. For example:
PipeWire requires a running [[D-Bus]] system and/or session bus for most of its functionality. If you start session-wide dbus instance, make sure to start PipeWire in that same session.
<pre>
$ dbus-launch --exit-with-session sway
</pre>


=== XDG_RUNTIME_DIR ===
=== Environment ===


If you are not using a Desktop Manager, ensure that your <code>XDG_RUNTIME_DIR</code> is set to a user-writable location. By default for pulseaudio this is {{Path|/run/user/1000/}} or {{Path|/tmp}}. If this is not set, pipewire will create a directory in your home folder instead, called <code>~/pulse</code>, and on attempting to run Pavucontrol or pactl, you will get the following error:
Ensure that [[XDG_RUNTIME_DIR]] is configured correctly. If this is not set, pipewire will create a directory in your home folder instead, called {{Path|~/pulse}}, and on attempting to run Pavucontrol or pactl, you will get the following error:


<pre>
<pre>
Line 38: Line 32:
</pre>
</pre>


== Installation and configuration ==
Under [[Sway]], in order for <code>xdg-desktop-portal-wlr</code> to work it may also be necessary to set <code>XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP</code> and <code>XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP</code> to <code>sway</code>
 
== Installation ==
 
Install the following {{Pkg|pipewire}}, {{Pkg|wireplumber}} a session manager and {{Pkg|pipewire-pulse}}, so Pulseaudio applications could use PipeWire as backend. By doing this, PipeWire acts as an audio server, similar to PulseAudio server.
 
{{Cmd|# apk add pipewire}}
{{Cmd|# apk add wireplumber}}
{{Cmd|# apk add pipewire-pulse}}
 
{{Pkg|pipewire-pulse}} package by itself will install the above {{Pkg|pipewire}} package and {{Pkg|wireplumber}} automatically.


<pre>
=== JACK compatibility ===
# apk add pipewire
Since Pipewire aims to replace JACK Install {{Pkg|pipewire-jack}} package, so it provides ABI-compatible libraries for JACK applications.
</pre>
 
{{Cmd|# apk add pipewire-jack}}


Create custom configuration file in {{Path|/etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf}}:
=== ALSA support ===


<pre>
Install {{Pkg|pipewire-alsa}} package.
# mkdir /etc/pipewire
# cp /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf /etc/pipewire/
</pre>


Uncomment the following line in {{Path|/etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf}}:
{{Cmd|# apk add pipewire-alsa}}


<pre>
=== GUI Tools ===
{ path = "/usr/bin/pipewire-media-session"  args = "" }
</pre>


Enable the <code>snd_seq</code> kernel module for ALSA support.
You might want to use {{Pkg|pavucontrol}} or {{Pkg|pavucontrol-qt}} to have a simple GUI app for controlling sound, outputs, etc.


<pre>
'''{{Pkg|qpwgraph}}''' is a graph manager dedicated to PipeWire with Qt GUI Interface.
# modprobe snd_seq
# echo snd_seq >> /etc/modules
</pre>


=== ALSA ===
Install XFCE Audio Mixer Plugin to help control volume:


If you use neither Jack nor PulseAudio and you don't intend to.
{{Cmd|doas apk add {{pkg|gst-plugin-pipewire|arch=}}}}


<pre>
== Configuration ==
# touch /etc/pipewire/media-session.d/with-alsa
</pre>


=== PulseAudio ===
PipeWire and WirePlumber store their default configuration in {{Path|/usr/share/pipewire}} and {{Path|/usr/share/wireplumber}} respectively. If you want to edit the configuration, you need to move it to {{Path|/etc}}:


PipeWire can run a [https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/ PulseAudio] daemon which should allow all existing PulseAudio applications to be used with the PipeWire backend.
{{Cmd|<nowiki># cp -a /usr/share/pipewire /etc
# cp -a /usr/share/wireplumber /etc</nowiki>}}


<pre>
=== pipewire-launcher ===
# apk add pipewire-pulse
</pre>


It should be automatically enabled.
{{Tip|You can also use <code>superd</code> to manage <code>pipewire</code> and its related services.}}


=== JACK ===
{{Note|<code>pipewire-launcher</code> script is provided by Alpine Linux, not by upstream. Please report issues to Alpine Linux maintainers first.}}


If you will be using PipeWire for [https://jackaudio.org/ JACK] applications install the required package and make system wide links to the PipeWire replacement JACK libraries (I have not had success using <code>pw-jack</code>). You will not need to start a JACK server.
Start the PipeWire media server. You'll probably get quite a few errors but just ignore them for now.


<pre>
{{Cmd|$ /usr/libexec/pipewire-launcher}}
# apk add pipewire-jack
# ln -sf /usr/lib/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjackserver.so.0 /usr/lib/libjackserver.so.0
# ln -sf /usr/lib/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjacknet.so.0 /usr/lib/libjacknet.so.0
# ln -sf /usr/lib/pipewire-0.3/jack/libjack.so.0 /usr/lib/libjack.so.0
</pre>


{{Note|These symlinks might be overwritten during updates.}}
A D-Bus session service must be running unless dbus support is disabled.


=== Video ===
If .xinitrc is used, add {{Path|/usr/libexec/pipewire-launcher}} to your {{Path|~/.xinitrc}}.


Video should work out-of-the-box with v4l2 devices (e.g. a lot of webcams) and [https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/ GStreamer] applications.
If you do not use GUI by default and have D-Bus enabled in configuration, add the following stanza to your shell configuration file:
{{Cmd|export $(dbus-launch)
/usr/libexec/pipewire-launcher
}}


=== Screen sharing on Wayland ===
=== Screen sharing on Wayland ===
Line 104: Line 96:
* GNOME with <code>xdg-desktop-portal-gtk</code>
* GNOME with <code>xdg-desktop-portal-gtk</code>
* KDE Plasma with <code>xdg-desktop-portal-kde</code> and Firefox
* KDE Plasma with <code>xdg-desktop-portal-kde</code> and Firefox
* Sway with <code>xdg-desktop-portal-wlr</code> and Firefox
* Sway with <code>xdg-desktop-portal-wlr</code> and Firefox, see [[Sway]] for details


== Usage ==
=== Bluetooth audio ===
{{Main|Bluetooth}}
* Enable PulseAudio support as described above
* Install bluetooth service packages: <code>bluez bluez-openrc pipewire-spa-bluez</code>
* Optional: install GUI manager for bluetooth <code>blueman</code>
* Enable and start bluetooth service: <code>rc-update add bluetooth; rc-service bluetooth start</code>
* Restart PipeWire
* Use commandline program  <code>bluetoothctl</code> or GUI program <code>blueman-manager</code> to scan and pair bluetooth audio devices.
* Use pavucontrol to adjust volume and manually select high definition bluetooth codecs.


Start the PipeWire media server. You'll probably get quite a few errors but just ignore them for now.
=== Video ===
 
Video should work out-of-the-box with v4l2 devices (e.g. a lot of webcams) and [https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/ GStreamer] applications.
 
=== Realtime scheduling ===
 
For realtime scheduling, it is recommended to use {{Pkg|rtkit}}. Add your user to the <code>rtkit</code> group.
 
Alternatively, ensure your user has the right ulimit permissions. Since pipewire 0.3.66, you can add yourself to the <code>pipewire</code> group. You generally need (e.g. in {{Path|/etc/security/limits.conf}}):


<pre>
<pre>
$ pipewire
@pipewire - memlock 4194304
@pipewire - nice -19
@pipewire - rtprio 95
</pre>
</pre>
This allows a member of the pipewire group to have the right permissions for PipeWire to use realtime scheduling without rtkit. This same snippet comes with pipewire since 0.3.66, so if you have a [[PAM]] login session and add yourself to the pipewire group, you don't have to do anything else.
Note that the above limits.conf will only work if your session is using [[PAM]].
=== Disable D-Bus support ===
{{Warning|This section is no longer supported since Alpine 3.19 as Using lua for configuration files is no longer supported in version 0.5.}}
For certain configurations (e.g. only audio playback and recording) D-Bus setup is not necessary and it can be disabled as follows.
Edit the following configuration parameters:
{{Cat|/etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf|<nowiki>context.properties = {
    ...
    support.dbus = false
}</nowiki>}}
{{Cat|/etc/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf|<nowiki>context.properties = {
    ...
    support.dbus = false
}</nowiki>}}
{{Cat|/etc/wireplumber/bluetooth.lua.d/50-bluez-config.lua|<nowiki>bluez_monitor.properties = {
  ...
  ["with-logind"] = false,
}</nowiki>}}
{{Cat|/etc/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-alsa-config.lua|<nowiki>alsa_monitor.properties = {
  ...
  ["alsa.reserve"] = false,
}</nowiki>}}
{{Cat|/etc/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-default-access-config.lua|<nowiki>default_access.properties = {
  ...
  ["enable-flatpak-portal"] = false,
}</nowiki>}}
== Testing ==


In a different terminal window check the default output device. I don't yet know how this default can be changed for all applications, so you'd better hope it's right!
In a different terminal window check the default output device. I don't yet know how this default can be changed for all applications, so you'd better hope it's right!


<pre>
=== WirePlumber ===
# apk add pipewire-tools
{{Cmd|$ wpctl status}}
$ pw-cat -p --list-targets
 
</pre>
=== pw-cat playback ===
 
Test sound is working using an audio file in a format supported by [http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile/ libsndfile]{{insecure url|Server refuses HTTPS connections}} (e.g. flac, opus, ogg, wav). Use <code>pw-cat</code> utility from {{Pkg|pipewire-tools}}:


Test sound is working using an audio file in a format supported by [http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile/ libsndfile] (e.g. flac, opus, ogg, wav).
{{Cmd|$ pw-cat -p test.flac
$ pw-play /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
}}


<pre>
=== pw-cat recording ===
$ pw-cat -p test.flac
</pre>


If you have a microphone test audio recording is working.
If you have a microphone test audio recording is working.


<pre>
{{Cmd|$ pw-cat -r --list-targets
$ pw-cat -r --list-targets
$ pw-cat -r recording.flac
$ pw-cat -r recording.flac
(Speak for a while then stop it with Ctrl+c)
(Speak for a while then stop it with Ctrl+c)
$ pw-cat -p recording.flac
$ pw-cat -p recording.flac
</pre>
}}
 
=== PulseAudio ===
 
Test PulseAudio clients using a media player, as most use PulseAudio.
 
=== JACK ===
 
Use <code>jack_simple_client</code> from {{Pkg|jack-simple-clients}}:
 
{{Cmd|$ jack_simple_client}}
 
You should hear a sustained beep.
 
== Troubleshooting ==
 
=== `wpctl status` shows no targets ===
 
First, check whether ALSA knows about your sound card:
 
{{Cmd|aplay -l}}
 
If sound devices are found, the issue is with your pipewire configuration.  Consider double-checking the instructions above.
 
Otherwise, your sound card may not be supported in the version of the Linux Kernel you're running.  You should search online for fixes relating to your current kernel version and the codec of your sound card.  You can find each of these with:
 
{{Cmd|uname -r
cat /proc/asound/card0/codec* | grep Codec}}
 
Modern devices might require {{Pkg|sof-firmware}}, which is the case if you get <code>sof firmware file is missing</code> errors in dmesg.
 
=== Error acquiring bus address: Cannot autolaunch D-Bus without X11 $DISPLAY ===
This means D-Bus session bus is not started and GUI is not active (i.e. you are in a tty). Use <code>dbus-run-session</code> as outlined [[#Running|above]]. Alternatively, [[#D-Bus|disable D-Bus support]].
 
=== Bluetooth connect failed: br-connection-profile-unavailable ===
 
Ensure that [[#WirePlumber|Session Manager]] is running.
 
=== Play/Pause buttons not working on bluetooth headphones ===


Test PulseAudio clients using a media player (most use PulseAudio) and if you use JACK test that too:
Check {{Path|/var/log/messages}}. If you see something like this:


<pre>
<pre>
# apk add jack-example-clients
bluetoothd[3463]: profiles/audio/avctp.c:uinput_create() Can't open input device: No such file or directory (2)
$ jack_simple_client
bluetoothd[3463]: profiles/audio/avctp.c:init_uinput() AVRCP: failed to init uinput for WH-1000XM5
</pre>
</pre>


You should hear a sustained beep.
Then bluez is trying to register the headphones buttons as an input devices, but <code>uinput</code> is not loaded. Try <code>modprobe uinput</code>. If this works, see [[Architecture#Module_Loading]] for instructions on how to make sure this module is loaded automatically on each startup.


If you are happy everything is working, make PipeWire start automatically when your X or Wayland session starts. For example, you could add the <code>pipewire</code> command to <code>~/.xinitrc</code> or your window manager's config file.


== See Also ==
== See Also ==
Line 154: Line 245:
* [https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Pipewire PipeWire on the Gentoo Wiki]
* [https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Pipewire PipeWire on the Gentoo Wiki]


[[Category:Desktop]]
[[Category:Multimedia]]
[[Category:Multimedia]]
[[Category:Sound]]

Latest revision as of 05:26, 29 September 2024

PipeWire is a multimedia processing engine that aims to improve audio and video handling on Linux. Pipewire can act as a replacement for both PulseAudio and ALSA servers.

Prerequisites

Device access

PipeWire needs proper permissions to access devices. If you do not use elogind, your user should be in audio (to access audio devices) and video (to access webcam devices) groups:

# addgroup <user> audio # addgroup <user> video

Warning: Membership of the video group will also grant unrestricted access to video devices, which is often a security issue. See issue #15409 for further details.


See pre-systemd groups for more info. Make sure to re-login for these changes to take effect.

D-Bus

PipeWire requires a running D-Bus system and/or session bus for most of its functionality. If you start session-wide dbus instance, make sure to start PipeWire in that same session.

Environment

Ensure that XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is configured correctly. If this is not set, pipewire will create a directory in your home folder instead, called ~/pulse, and on attempting to run Pavucontrol or pactl, you will get the following error: 

$ pactl list
Connection failure: Connection refused
pa_context_connect() failed: Connection refused

Under Sway, in order for xdg-desktop-portal-wlr to work it may also be necessary to set XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP and XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP to sway

Installation

Install the following pipewire, wireplumber a session manager and pipewire-pulse, so Pulseaudio applications could use PipeWire as backend. By doing this, PipeWire acts as an audio server, similar to PulseAudio server.

# apk add pipewire

# apk add wireplumber

# apk add pipewire-pulse

pipewire-pulse package by itself will install the above pipewire package and wireplumber automatically.

JACK compatibility

Since Pipewire aims to replace JACK Install pipewire-jack package, so it provides ABI-compatible libraries for JACK applications.

# apk add pipewire-jack

ALSA support

Install pipewire-alsa package.

# apk add pipewire-alsa

GUI Tools

You might want to use pavucontrol or pavucontrol-qt to have a simple GUI app for controlling sound, outputs, etc.

qpwgraph is a graph manager dedicated to PipeWire with Qt GUI Interface.

Install XFCE Audio Mixer Plugin to help control volume:

doas apk add gst-plugin-pipewire

Configuration

PipeWire and WirePlumber store their default configuration in /usr/share/pipewire and /usr/share/wireplumber respectively. If you want to edit the configuration, you need to move it to /etc:

# cp -a /usr/share/pipewire /etc # cp -a /usr/share/wireplumber /etc

pipewire-launcher

Tip: You can also use superd to manage pipewire and its related services.
Note: pipewire-launcher script is provided by Alpine Linux, not by upstream. Please report issues to Alpine Linux maintainers first.

Start the PipeWire media server. You'll probably get quite a few errors but just ignore them for now.

$ /usr/libexec/pipewire-launcher

A D-Bus session service must be running unless dbus support is disabled.

If .xinitrc is used, add /usr/libexec/pipewire-launcher to your ~/.xinitrc.

If you do not use GUI by default and have D-Bus enabled in configuration, add the following stanza to your shell configuration file:

export $(dbus-launch) /usr/libexec/pipewire-launcher

Screen sharing on Wayland

You will need the right xdg-desktop-portal backend for your desktop environment. Screen sharing is known to work on:

  • GNOME with xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
  • KDE Plasma with xdg-desktop-portal-kde and Firefox
  • Sway with xdg-desktop-portal-wlr and Firefox, see Sway for details

Bluetooth audio

Main article: Bluetooth
  • Enable PulseAudio support as described above
  • Install bluetooth service packages: bluez bluez-openrc pipewire-spa-bluez
  • Optional: install GUI manager for bluetooth blueman
  • Enable and start bluetooth service: rc-update add bluetooth; rc-service bluetooth start
  • Restart PipeWire
  • Use commandline program bluetoothctl or GUI program blueman-manager to scan and pair bluetooth audio devices.
  • Use pavucontrol to adjust volume and manually select high definition bluetooth codecs.

Video

Video should work out-of-the-box with v4l2 devices (e.g. a lot of webcams) and GStreamer applications.

Realtime scheduling

For realtime scheduling, it is recommended to use rtkit. Add your user to the rtkit group.

Alternatively, ensure your user has the right ulimit permissions. Since pipewire 0.3.66, you can add yourself to the pipewire group. You generally need (e.g. in /etc/security/limits.conf): 

@pipewire - memlock 4194304
@pipewire - nice -19
@pipewire - rtprio 95

This allows a member of the pipewire group to have the right permissions for PipeWire to use realtime scheduling without rtkit. This same snippet comes with pipewire since 0.3.66, so if you have a PAM login session and add yourself to the pipewire group, you don't have to do anything else.

Note that the above limits.conf will only work if your session is using PAM.

Disable D-Bus support

Warning: This section is no longer supported since Alpine 3.19 as Using lua for configuration files is no longer supported in version 0.5.


For certain configurations (e.g. only audio playback and recording) D-Bus setup is not necessary and it can be disabled as follows.

Edit the following configuration parameters:

Contents of /etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf

context.properties = { ... support.dbus = false }


Contents of /etc/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf

context.properties = { ... support.dbus = false }


Contents of /etc/wireplumber/bluetooth.lua.d/50-bluez-config.lua

bluez_monitor.properties = { ... ["with-logind"] = false, }


Contents of /etc/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-alsa-config.lua

alsa_monitor.properties = { ... ["alsa.reserve"] = false, }


Contents of /etc/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-default-access-config.lua

default_access.properties = { ... ["enable-flatpak-portal"] = false, }

Testing

In a different terminal window check the default output device. I don't yet know how this default can be changed for all applications, so you'd better hope it's right!

WirePlumber

$ wpctl status

pw-cat playback

Test sound is working using an audio file in a format supported by libsndfile 🔓 (e.g. flac, opus, ogg, wav). Use pw-cat utility from pipewire-tools:

$ pw-cat -p test.flac $ pw-play /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

pw-cat recording

If you have a microphone test audio recording is working.

$ pw-cat -r --list-targets $ pw-cat -r recording.flac (Speak for a while then stop it with Ctrl+c) $ pw-cat -p recording.flac

PulseAudio

Test PulseAudio clients using a media player, as most use PulseAudio.

JACK

Use jack_simple_client from jack-simple-clients:

$ jack_simple_client

You should hear a sustained beep.

Troubleshooting

`wpctl status` shows no targets

First, check whether ALSA knows about your sound card:

aplay -l

If sound devices are found, the issue is with your pipewire configuration. Consider double-checking the instructions above.

Otherwise, your sound card may not be supported in the version of the Linux Kernel you're running. You should search online for fixes relating to your current kernel version and the codec of your sound card. You can find each of these with:

uname -r cat /proc/asound/card0/codec*

Modern devices might require sof-firmware, which is the case if you get sof firmware file is missing errors in dmesg.

Error acquiring bus address: Cannot autolaunch D-Bus without X11 $DISPLAY

This means D-Bus session bus is not started and GUI is not active (i.e. you are in a tty). Use dbus-run-session as outlined above. Alternatively, disable D-Bus support.

Bluetooth connect failed: br-connection-profile-unavailable

Ensure that Session Manager is running.

Play/Pause buttons not working on bluetooth headphones

Check /var/log/messages. If you see something like this: 

bluetoothd[3463]: profiles/audio/avctp.c:uinput_create() Can't open input device: No such file or directory (2)
bluetoothd[3463]: profiles/audio/avctp.c:init_uinput() AVRCP: failed to init uinput for WH-1000XM5

Then bluez is trying to register the headphones buttons as an input devices, but uinput is not loaded. Try modprobe uinput. If this works, see Architecture#Module_Loading for instructions on how to make sure this module is loaded automatically on each startup.


See Also

Retrieved from "https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/w/index.php?title=PipeWire&oldid=27426"