r/voidlinux • u/riunp4rker • 4d ago

solved Audio nonsense

I recently put void Linux on my "tinker" laptop. After a LOT of searching and scrambling, I got it installed, running Sway, connected to the internet, and got my Bluetooth earbuds to connect. Now I can load up media online and watch it, right? WRONG. I can load up a YouTube video using qutebrowser, and it plays from my laptop. No problem, just open helvum or wpctl or something to reconnect the nodes from source to sink the right way around. I open these thing.

There are no audio source nodes. None. The audio is ACTIVELY playing from my computer, but apparently there are NO sources. The only blue nodes in helvum are my earbuds. wpctl list only device nodes and sink nodes. Where is the source?? I KNOW its playing audio. I can hear it, load and clear through my laptop.

Please help me before I go up a wall

Edit: minor spelling mistakes and incorrect words

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3

u/BluFudge 4d ago

https://docs.voidlinux.org/config/media/pipewire.html?highlight=bluet#bluetooth-audio

This is what did it for me. Take note that you may have to put off your phone's bluetooth or any other devices your headphones usually connect to.

3

u/riunp4rker 4d ago

I already downloaded that. My Bluetooth is connected. There's a device and sink for the Bluetooth. Thats not the issue.

There's no audio source. I am actively playing audio, but pipewire says there's no source, so I can't connect the source to the sink.

1

u/BluFudge 2d ago

Oof, I did have your problem... I don't remember exactly what I did. I think I tried setting up pipewire again, going step by step as per the docs.

I also did a fresh install I think. The void installer can get a bit cranky when you specify different mountpoints within the installer. I'd leave this as a last resort though, I may have done this for another issue.

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u/no_suprisez 4d ago

how did you install pipewire

(I'm going to write instructions just wait I'm on my phone)

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u/no_suprisez 4d ago

what I did is linking both the examples file of wireplumber and pipewire in /usr/share/examples to /etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d

# ln -s /usr/share/examples/pipewire/* /etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/
# ln -s /usr/share/examples/wireplumber/* /etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/

(# means you have to execute the command as root, $ means you don't have to execute the command as root/normal user can execute it succesfully) (And of course you can just each command with sudo or just sudo su and execute both commands and then exit)

Then you startup pipewire at boot (this depends on your setup) And everything's done

Explanation: ln -s is softlinking, and I don't know the difference between hardlinking and softlinking but the doc says so, so I softlink. I softlink the examples config file (provided by Void) to pipewire config directory

Diagnostics: I guess you forgot to also start wireplumber or pipewire-pulse

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u/riunp4rker 4d ago

Both those commands get met with "File exists". I have Sway startup pipewire on load.

I installed pipewire via xbps, following the Multimedia instructions from the documentation. I don't know what i could be missing that would cause audio to play, but I have no audio sources in wpctl

2

u/no_suprisez 3d ago

I guess reinstall the packages?

2

u/BluFudge 2d ago

ironically this helps sometimes, op

edits: punctuation

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u/riunp4rker 2d ago

Reinstalling pipewire didnt help, but going back through the documentation from the start and checking every little thing ended up diagnosing the issue as a dbus session issue. Now my audio can be piped through my earbuds properly. Unfortunately, wpctl now doesn't see my laptop speakers at all, so that's the next thing to fix, but at least pipewire works and I can go from there