Arch Linux

Rejast

Member

Registered: 2014-01-11

Posts: 2

Unable to start pipewire-pulse

Whenever I try and start pipewire-pulse, I get the following in my journal

systemd[2048]: Listening on PipeWire PulseAudio.
systemd[2048]: Started PipeWire PulseAudio.
pipewire-pulse[14782]: mod.protocol-pulse: server 0x556bbeac8670: socket '/run/user/1000//pulse/native' is in use
pipewire-pulse[14782]: mod.protocol-pulse: pulse-server 0x556bbeac7ec0: failed to start server on 'unix:/run/user/1000//pulse/native': Address already in use
pipewire-pulse[14782]: mod.protocol-pulse: 0x556bbeac7ec0: no servers could be started: Address already in use
pipewire-pulse[14782]: pw.conf: 0x556bbea73970: could not load mandatory module "libpipewire-module-protocol-pulse": Address already in use
pipewire-pulse[14782]: default: failed to create context: Address already in use
systemd[2048]: pipewire-pulse.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=158/n/a
systemd[2048]: pipewire-pulse.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
systemd[2048]: pipewire-pulse.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 1.

It seems to me like systemd is creating the

/run/user/1000//pulse/native

socket, and then when pipewire-pulse gets launched, it doesn't know how to take over.

This is odd, because the code does correctly handle this: https://github.com/PipeWire/pipewire/bl … ver.c#L526

But at the same time, when I remove references to the systemd socket and just start the service:

$ cp /usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire-pulse.service ~/.config/systemd/user/pipewire-pulse2.service
$ systemctl --user disable --now pipewire-pulse.socket pipewire-pulse.service
$ vim ~/.config/systemd/user/pipewire-pulse2.service # delete all lines referencing pipewire-pulse.socket
$ systemctl --user daemon-reload
$ systemctl --user restart pipewire-pulse2

Everything works fine:

$ systemctl --user status pipewire-pulse2
● pipewire-pulse2.service - PipeWire PulseAudio
     Loaded: loaded (/home/user/etc/.config/systemd/user/pipewire-pulse2.service; disabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sun 2023-11-12 20:04:39 EST; 20min ago
   Main PID: 15549 (pipewire-pulse)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 38360)
     Memory: 2.6M
        CPU: 20ms
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire-pulse2.service
             └─15549 /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse

Nov 12 20:04:39 tight-seat systemd[2048]: Started PipeWire PulseAudio.
Nov 12 20:04:39 tight-seat pipewire-pulse[15549]: mod.protocol-pulse: server 0x55fd736cd650: unlinking stale socket '/run/user/1000//pulse/native'

Any ideas about what's going on here? If this is a bug, I'd expect the impact to be much more widespread.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,559

Re: Unable to start pipewire-pulse

You are starting pipewire pulse or do some pulseaudio client call before the service runs somewhere, potentially before logging in properly.

Full

sudo journalctl -b

remember any autostart services that might have a hand here, e.g. kodi/mpd or so?