pipewire pactl no such file or directory

[Dimitri John Ledkov]

fresh kinetic install

pw.conf execvp error pactl no such file or directory

is it supposed to be there? error from pipewire

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Sounds like it should be optional and can be ignored. Pipewire now replaces PulseAudio and pactl comes from pulseaudio-utils.

[Dylan Aïssi (daissi)]

pipewire-pulse uses pactl to load modules. See https://salsa.debian.org/utopia-team/pipewire/-/blob/debian/master/src/daemon/pipewire-pulse.conf.in#L51

Since pulseaudio is not installed by default, pipewire-pulse should recommend pulseaudio-utils instead of only suggesting it.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

@Dylan, but it doesn't make much sense for pipewire to have a depends on a pulseaudio utility, is that a distro issue or an upstream one?

[Dylan Aïssi (daissi)]

Upstream issue, they are aware and they will switch to something else at some point. I remember an upstream discussion about that, will try to find the ref.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

In case it's not already obvious: Some apps will rely on pipewire-pulse for a while yet.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank Dylan!

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

@Dylan, do you know what is the user impact exactly? in which case would it try to load modules and for what purpose?

[Dylan Aïssi (daissi)]

By default only the module always-sink is loaded. This module always keeps at least one sink loaded. It is only useful for pulseaudio compatibility [1]. As said [2] by its dev: "This requires pactl installed, but that's probably fine. In the worst-case scenario, the module just won't be loaded on startup." So, this should not impact standard users excepted by having this error message.

But, if users override the default config file of pipewire-pulse, for example to load other modules (I suspect some users may want to use module-switch-on-connect), then they could complain that it doesn't work and modules are not loaded.

[1] https://docs.pipewire.org/page_module_fallback_sink.html
[2] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/merge_requests/1161

[Dylan Aïssi (daissi)]

fwiw I just moved pulseaudio-utils in the Recommends field of pipewire-pulse:
https://salsa.debian.org/utopia-team/pipewire/-/commit/3052d52f862d546ef405b8778eec31df7f98ceb7

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for the details Dylan. We are frozen for kinetic now and it doesn't seem worth asking for an exception but we will get the change when next cycle starts and might SRU it

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package pipewire - 0.3.60-3ubuntu1

---------------
pipewire (0.3.60-3ubuntu1) lunar; urgency=medium

  * debian/rules:
    - build without liblc3 for now since that library is in universe

pipewire (0.3.60-3) unstable; urgency=medium

  * pipewire-libcamera: New package for libcamera plugin (Closes: #1024591)

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Wed, 23 Nov 2022 13:07:08 +0100