4.2-RC3 - No sound for USB devices by default anymore

[rapenne-s]

How to file a helpful issue

Qubes OS release

4.2-RC2 and 4.2-RC3 (not tested RC1)

Brief summary

When I attach an USB headset / headphones, I don't have any sound, this used to work out of the box on 4.1.

If I run pavucontrol in the qube in which I attached the USB device, in the output devices there is only a qube virtual device. By fiddling with the last tab "Configuration" and switching the device to "pro audio" profile make it appear in the output devices and I can have sound.

In the case of a Jabra Evolve 2 headset which has two modes:

• using the usb dongle handling the bluetooth, and which appears as a sound card to the system, I can't have the microphone working anymore, even by trying other profiles
• using an usb cable directly on the headset (so it's not wireless in that case), I can switch to pro audio or audio + mono microphone mode and I can get the mic working

Steps to reproduce

• Plug in an USB headset (tested with a Dragonfly Black DAC and a Jabra Evolve 2), attach it to a qube
• there is no sound
• go in pavucontrol last tab and try to switch profile
• you may have sound, but maybe not microphone

Expected behavior

it works as it used to work on 4.1

Actual behavior

no sound

[DemiMarie]

@rapenne-s Can you try the “Audio VM” feature: qvm-prefs SOMEVM audiovm sys-usb? That should be both more reliable and more secure than USB passthrough. To be clear, this is still a bug!

[rapenne-s]

I did the following to be sure it's applied correctly:

• in dom0 : qvm-prefs SOMEVM audiovm sys-usb
• reboot (it didn't work after restarting the qube SOMEVM and I wondered if sys-usb had to be rebooted)

After a reboot, the prefs persisted, but I have no sound coming to any output of sys-usb, I monitored that using pavucontrol.

Extra note, in sys-usb pavucontrol, everything looked fine in input/output devices (in contrary to qubes receiving a device using usb passthrough)

[DemiMarie]

In SOMEVM, do you have PulseAudio or PipeWire running? You can check with systemctl --user status pipewire.service and systemctl --user status pulseaudio.service.

[rapenne-s]

user@Hangar ~> systemctl --user status pipewire.service
● pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; enabled; preset: e>
    Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/user/service.d
             └─10-timeout-abort.conf
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2023-09-08 07:02:57 CEST; 1h 30min ago
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
   Main PID: 600 (pipewire)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 4617)
     Memory: 8.2M
        CPU: 23ms
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/[email protected]/session.slice/pipewi>
             └─600 /usr/bin/pipewire

sept. 08 07:02:57 Hangar systemd[591]: Started pipewire.service - PipeWire Mult>
user@Hangar ~> systemctl --user status pulseaudio.service
Unit pulseaudio.service could not be found.

[DemiMarie]

Can you make sure pacat-simple-vchan is installed in the AudioVM? If it is not present, audio won’t work in VMs that have that VM as AudioVM.

[rapenne-s]

Can you make sure pacat-simple-vchan is installed in the AudioVM? If it is not present, audio won’t work in VMs that have that VM as AudioVM.

I don't have a command in $PATH with that name, neither an available package in fedora-38 when using dnf search pacat-simple-vchan 🤔

qubes-libvchan-xen.x86_64 is installed though, if this means something to you ^^'

[DemiMarie]

@rapenne-s You’ll need qubes-core-admin-client and qubes-audio-daemon installed.

[rapenne-s]

here is what I did:

• install the two packages in my template
• qvm-prefs $qube audiovm sys-usb ($qube being the qube where i have my music files)
• reboot the system
• open an audio file with audacious, it complained about the output stream not being available when configured by default to use pipewire. if I set audacious audio output to be pulseaudio, it starts playing but I don't have any sound. pavucontrol in sys-usb doesn't show any activity
• i tried to open a file with VLC, it played fine directly, but same, no sound in sys-usb on any device

is the test protocol ok?

why aren't these packages installed by default if they are used for the audiovm feature? 🤔

[DemiMarie]

@rapenne-s You will also need to enable the audiovm service in sys-usb and add a whole bunch of qrexec policies:

admin.Events          *   sys-usb     sys-usb             allow   target=dom0
admin.Events          *   sys-usb     @adminvm            allow   target=dom0
admin.Events          *   sys-usb     @tag:usbvm-sys-usb  allow   target=dom0
admin.vm.CurrentState *   sys-usb     sys-usb             allow   target=dom0
admin.vm.CurrentState *   sys-usb     @adminvm            allow   target=dom0
admin.vm.CurrentState *   sys-usb     @tag:usbvm-sys-usb  allow   target=dom0
admin.vm.List         *   sys-usb     sys-usb             allow   target=dom0
admin.vm.List         *   sys-usb     @adminvm            allow   target=dom0
admin.vm.List         *   sys-usb     @tag:usbvm-sys-usb  allow   target=dom0
admin.vm.property.Get               +audiovm sys-usb     @tag:usbvm-sys-usb  allow   target=dom0
admin.vm.property.Get               +xid     sys-usb     @tag:usbvm-sys-usb  allow   target=dom0
admin.vm.feature.CheckWithTemplate  +audio   sys-usb     @tag:usbvm-sys-usb  allow   target=dom0

Those come from /srv/formulas/base/virtual-machines-formula/qvm/sys-audio.sls with sys-audio replaced by sys-usb, and you can (and should) regenerate them yourself rather than pasting from a GitHub comment (which you should not trust with complete control of your system). I think this also allows sys-usb the ability to list all VMs on the system, which should be fixed at some point.

You might also need to change the PipeWire config in sys-usb’s template so that the Qubes PipeWire module failing to load doesn’t cause PipeWire to quit.

Obviously, this is terrible, would make @marmarta (our UX person) cry, and really needs to be fixed.

[marmarek]

I think this also allows sys-usb the ability to list all VMs on the system, which should be fixed at some point.

It allows only listing those with sys-usb as audiovm (which is necessary for it to function).

[rapenne-s]

while a working audio-vm would be cool, I think we have a misunderstanding about the issue itself 😅

I reported a regression in 4.2 compared to 4.1, now, passing an USB audio device to a qube doesn't work for all the three devices I tested, while it worked before 👍

[DemiMarie]

while a working audio-vm would be cool, I think we have a misunderstanding about the issue itself 😅

I reported a regression in 4.2 compared to 4.1, now, passing an USB audio device to a qube doesn't work for all the three devices I tested, while it worked before 👍

Yup, good point (which is why I filed #8504 for the other problems).

[Nurmagoz]

Plug in an USB headset (tested with a Dragonfly Black DAC and a Jabra Evolve 2), attach it to a qube
there is no sound
go in pavucontrol last tab and try to switch profile
you may have sound, but maybe not microphone

I'm using a USB headset with a microphone, and both are working!

Here's what you need to do:

Check my reply to the ticket: #8193 (comment)

So, just install pulseaudio-pipewire in the Fedora and Debian templates for now. And don't forget to attach the headset from the sys-usb icon in the taskbar to the intended VM, and then yoooppeeee, everything is working!

[rapenne-s]

This is a temporary fix though, but thanks for sharing :)

[Nurmagoz]

#8896 (comment)

Dropping this here hoping to help solve the issue. (how to make pipewire work in debian/fedora (minimal) templates)

[juju4]

Also have this problem on a recently installed R4.2
dom0 qvm-prefs SOMEVM audiovm sys-usb and disconnecting/reconnecting audio usb device, sometimes multiple times or after delay is a valid workaround but not working directly as expected or it was in previous R4.1 setup.

few notes, both fedora-40 and debian-12 templates have pipewire and pipewire-qubes packages
dom0 has pipewire-pulseaudio package and the dom0 speaker icon is cross-marked with only audio mixer and failing to connect to pulseaudio when opening. No view of all VMs.