[23:16] <teledyn[m]> Help! I have fallen from the grace of pipewire-pulse and I can't get back up! A month ago I posted to https://askubuntu.com/questions/1437981/upgrade-to-22-10-pipewire-killed-bluetooth-audio-org-bluez-error-failed-br-conn with no answer although the problem was not BT not accepting the Anker as a speaker, but that in the process of trying to fix that, I killed pipewire-pulse completely, even on a new acct, after login there are no
[23:16] <teledyn[m]> audio devices according to Plasma, but every alsa and hardware check shows I have perfectly good audio hardware, and comparing to another laptop that I didn't break after the upgrade, both have pipewire-pulse running, but the broken machine keeps spitting out plasmashell "audio` kaput" messages. The Ubuntu sound debug pages haven't been updated in years and any guidance I've found on stackexchange, askubuntu etc only cover pulseaudio
[23:16] <teledyn[m]> issues.  On the broken machine, if I run "pulseaudio -D" I suddenly have devices and can work with Audacity (haven't attempted jackd yet) but this isn't running on the good machine and it should run automatically!  So I'm stuck, I don't know where else to ask -- if this isn't the place, feel free to send me elsewhere; after a month of headbanging, another stop along the road won't matter.
[23:34] <OvenWerks> teledyn[m]: I am not totally sure what the problem is or perhaps what the starting point is.
[23:35] <OvenWerks> pipewire is a new thing ot all of us and at least in ubuntustudio, is not used by default.
[23:35] <teledyn[m]> Neither am I.  I have audio devices from alsamixer etc, but the Plasma desktop says I have none unless I run "pulseaudio -D" from the command line. My understanding, and my other machine confirms, pulseaudio should NOT be running at all!
[23:36] <OvenWerks> I have been playing with pipewire and may be able to help.
[23:36] <teledyn[m]> I thought the 22.10 upgrade enabled pipewire instead, at least, pulseaudio is not running on the other laptop I upgraded at the same time.
[23:36] <OvenWerks> yes but you started it manually. Pipewire should be able to take pulseaudios place
[23:37] <OvenWerks> if you run pactl info
[23:37] <teledyn[m]> not on the working machine, on that machine, pipewire-pulse is the only process running, and it is running on the broken machine too.  pactl does nothing, it hangs
[23:37] <teledyn[m]> unless I manually start pulseaudio
[23:37] <OvenWerks>  you should see if it is pulse you are seeing or pipewire pretending to be pulse.
[23:38] <teledyn[m]> if it was pipewire, why does not fail unless I also run pulseaudio?
[23:38] <teledyn[m]> also  fuser -v /dev/snd/* shows nothing
[23:39] <OvenWerks> on this machine, pactl info shows: Server Name: pulseaudio
[23:39] <teledyn[m]> but alsainfo shows everything
[23:39] <teledyn[m]> that should read "why does fail unless I also run pulseaudio"
[23:40] <OvenWerks> but on my other machine it shows: Server Name: pulseaudio (pipewire)
[23:41] <teledyn[m]> let me check the working machine ...
[23:41] <OvenWerks> perhaps try ps x |grep pipewire
[23:42] <teledyn[m]> pactl info shows Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.58) on the working machine, but Connection Refused on the broken machine
[23:42] <OvenWerks> Is see three lines of pipewire but the one you want is 5867 ?        SLsl   3:46 /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse
[23:42] <teledyn[m]> $ ps x |grep pipewire
[23:42] <teledyn[m]>    2148 ?        S<sl   0:00 /usr/bin/pipewire
[23:42] <teledyn[m]>   15678 ?        S<sl   0:00 /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse
[23:42] <OvenWerks> (different pid of course
[23:43] <teledyn[m]> the working machine shows the same
[23:44] <OvenWerks> once you have started pulseaudio manually, it may have blocked pw.
[23:44] <teledyn[m]> I don't know why folks spend money on suduku or complicated games, they should just run Linux recklessly like I do, endless puzzles
[23:44] <OvenWerks> suduko is free on linux too :P
[23:45] <teledyn[m]> but if I don't run it, I get no devices, that's the puzzle, there should be devices just running pw
[23:45] <teledyn[m]> heh
[23:45] <teledyn[m]> so is the psychotherapist if you run emacs
[23:45] <teledyn[m]> I might need that later
[23:45] <OvenWerks> yes, I don't know how to get systemd to tell you the status of what it has run.
[23:46] <teledyn[m]> another part of the puzzle, I thought it might be my home config, so I created a new acct and it has the same issue, that suggests I broke something in /etc/
[23:46] <teledyn[m]> maybe
[23:46]  * arraybolt3 suspects something needs `systemctl enable`d
[23:47] <OvenWerks> ls /etc/systemd/user/ 
[23:47] <teledyn[m]> systemd might have said something in syslog, but mostly syslog is being bombed by those audio kaput messages
[23:47] <OvenWerks> does it have any pulseaudio in there
[23:48] <teledyn[m]> pipewire-media-session.service
[23:48] <teledyn[m]> pipewire.service.wants
[23:48] <teledyn[m]> pipewire-session-manager.service
[23:48] <teledyn[m]> on the broken machine.
[23:48] <teledyn[m]> same on the working one.  At the moment I am not running that manual pulseaudio demon
[23:49] <teledyn[m]> so no pulseaudio in either.
[23:49] <teledyn[m]> I get this, once a second: Nov 28 18:49:23 strata plasmashell[2485]: org.kde.plasma.pulseaudio: context kaput
[23:50] <teledyn[m]> I'm sure that must be a clue, but Google has never heard of context kaput
[23:50] <arraybolt3[m]> I used to remember how to switch between Pulse and Pipewire, lemme see if I can find it...
[23:51] <teledyn[m]> that is from plasmashell, another partner of it is kdeconnectd[2571]: org.kde.pulseaudio: context kaput
[23:52] <teledyn[m]> I had started on this by following a guide on switching pulse to pipewire that was meant for 21.04 folks. The upgrade worked when I moved to 22.10, it was later when I broke it following the guide, I got to the part where it said to use pactl and my output was null.
[23:53] <OvenWerks> just to make sure, you have not run any of these commands using sudo or logged in as root?
[23:53] <OvenWerks> running any of this as root does bad things
[23:54] <teledyn[m]> not the demons or pa stuff, only some systemctl restarts etc
[23:54] <arraybolt3[m]> teledyn:... (full message at <https://libera.ems.host/_matrix/media/v3/download/libera.chat/73fc725fd409c6db19de51be7c792f8adbc59af7>)
[23:54] <OvenWerks> systemctl --user --now disable pulseaudio.service pulseaudio.socket
[23:54] <teledyn[m]> I think I did, but let's do it again:
[23:54] <OvenWerks> then systemctl --user mask pulseaudio
[23:55] <arraybolt3[m]> Do OvenWerks thing first.
[23:56] <OvenWerks> then systemctl --user restart pipewire.socket wireplumber.service pipewire-pulse.service pipewire.service
[23:56] <teledyn[m]> seems to me, I did the mask before, replaces the symlink with null, and sadly I didn't get your do this first until I hadn't but it shouldn't matter since pipewire was already running and pulse was not present.
[23:57] <teledyn[m]> oh we might have a clue here: Failed to restart wireplumber.service: Unit wireplumber.service is masked
[23:57] <teledyn[m]> user unmask that?
[23:57] <arraybolt3[m]> Well that would do it.
[23:57] <arraybolt3[m]> That definitely should not be masked.
[23:58] <arraybolt3[m]> So I'd user unmask it, yes.
[23:58] <OvenWerks> yeah, well you have pipewire-media-session.service  I think it is either or. but wireplumber is recomended.
[23:59] <OvenWerks> I have not tried medi-session
[23:59] <teledyn[m]> what is the unmask command?  I tried --user unmask wireplumbler.service and it accepted that, but running the first command says it is still masked
[23:59] <arraybolt3[m]> I never could get audio at all with media-session.
[23:59] <arraybolt3[m]> Then omit the --user and put sudo in front.
[23:59] <OvenWerks> no