Firefox is not visible in sound applet

When I play video on youtube Firefox is not visible in sound applet → applications. But I can hear sound.

When I play Spotify and start playing in Firefox, I have no sound in Firefox.

When I play from youtube on Firefox I have no sound in other applications like for example Anki that uses mpv, or SMplayer.

When I play on mpv or other I have no sound in Firefox.
The same with Chromium.

I used to was able to play sound from multiple applications at once, simultaneously and Firefox was visible in applet when it played sound.

Unfortunately installing ‘manjaro-pipewire’ didn’t help.

I uninstalled manjaro-pulse but I can’t install it again because it can’t satisfy dependencies with i ‘pulseaudio-bluetooth’ .

Firefox is not even visible in sound applet when playing audio from youtube

Edition:
It seems to be a problem with pulseaudio. I removed pulseaudio, deleted .config/pulse, restarted system and alsa plays all streams simultaneously. I installed pulseaudio again and it still doesn’t see Firefox, as on screenshot.

@philm
pulseaudio is a dependency for Firefox and some other programs. Maybe that is why Firefox is not visible in system tray audio applet in Plasma.

I reported about it earlier

It would be nice if Manjaro team could make pulseaudio work again, if possible, regardless of other solutions. There is a lot of problems reported about audio recently.

FF = not listet in pamac → dependencys…

Are you sure about that? :wink:

pacman -Qi firefox | less -p pulseaudio
1 Like

If you installed the pipewire packages suggested, they should have deleted all pulseaudio packages, so there should have been no pulseaudio packages for you to delete
pulseeffects

I do not see how you can allege PulseAudio needs fixing when your problem appears to be with Pipewire

I don’t know what is the source of the problem, I only report what happens in my system. Firefox is no longer visible in Plasma sound applet and I can’t play sounds from two sources.

I tested all proposed configurations and packages.

O.K. sorry - It’s time to clean my glasses:

So it is an optional dependency: you can - but you don’t have to

You might have had pipewire-pulse replace pulseaudio

$ pamac info pipewire-pulse | grep Provides
Provides              : pulseaudio pulseaudio-bluetooth

I suggest you check the actual packages you have installed

pamac search -i 'pipewire|pulseaudio'

and the systemd services

systemctl --user list-unit-files | grep -E 'pulseaudio|pipewire'

@nikgnomic

pamac search -i 'pipewire|pulseaudio'

pulseaudio-zeroconf  14.2-2
pulseaudio-rtp  14.2-2
pulseaudio-lirc 14.2-2
pulseaudio-jack 14.2-2
pulseaudio-equalizer
pulseaudio-ctl  1.67-1
pulseaudio-bluetooth 14.2-2
pulseaudio-alsa 1:1.2.2-2
pulseaudio 14.2-2
pipewire  1:0.3.22-2
lib32-libpulse 14.2-2
gst-plugin-pipewire 1:0.3.22-2


systemctl --user list-unit-files | grep -E 'pulseaudio|pipewire'

pipewire-pulse.service                                             disabled  enabled      
pipewire.service                                                   disabled  enabled      
pulseaudio.service                                                 disabled  enabled      
pipewire-pulse.socket                                              disabled  enabled      
pipewire.socket                                                    enabled   enabled      
pulseaudio.socket                                                  enabled   enabled

When I did:
systemctl --user enable pulseaudio.service --now
it doesn’t change anything.

When I did:
systemctl --user enable pulseaudio.service --now
it doesn’t change anything.

I would not expect anything to change considering the pulseaudio.service was already active
A systemd service does not need to be enabled if it is started by a corresponding socket

I suspect that Pipewire is taking control of audio devices instead of PulseAudio, but may not be working without some optional dependency packages, but installing these will probably require removal of PulseAudio packages

Or you can disable the Pipewire services and use PulseAudio

systemctl --user disable pipewire.socket --now
systemctl --user disable pipewire.service --now 
systemctl --user mask pipewire.socket
systemctl --user disable pipewire-pulse.socket --now
systemctl --user disable pipewire-pulse.service --now 
systemctl --user mask pipewire-pulse.socket

I did it but with no success. When I play youtube I don’t even have sound in these system options: front left, front right

Is there any log I that can be analyzed?

I don’t know what is the source of the problem. pulseaudio, Firefox itself, some configuration. I recently had a video conversation through Firefox and I attached microphone and I did:

pactl load-module module-loopback

But I don’t think it is important.
pactl unload-module module-loopback
shows it is not loaded now.

did you succeed at disabling the pipewire services and masking the sockets?

If so, please post response to

LANG=C pacmd dump

Yes.

systemctl --user list-unit-files | grep -E 'pulseaudio|pipewire'
pipewire-pulse.service                                       disabled  enabled      
pipewire.service                                             disabled  enabled      
pulseaudio.service                                           enabled   enabled      
pipewire-pulse.socket                                        masked    enabled      
pipewire.socket                                              masked    enabled      
pulseaudio.socket                                            enabled   enabled     

LANG=C pacmd dump
### Configuration dump generated at Sat Mar 13 09:33:45 2021

load-module module-device-restore
load-module module-stream-restore
load-module module-card-restore
load-module module-augment-properties
load-module module-switch-on-port-available
load-module module-udev-detect
load-module module-alsa-card device_id="1" name="pci-0000_01_00.1" card_name="alsa_card.pci-0000_01_00.1" namereg_
fail=false tsched=yes fixed_latency_range=no ignore_dB=no deferred_volume=yes use_ucm=yes avoid_resampling=no card
_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1"
load-module module-alsa-card device_id="0" name="pci-0000_00_1b.0" card_name="alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1b.0" namereg_
fail=false tsched=yes fixed_latency_range=no ignore_dB=no deferred_volume=yes use_ucm=yes avoid_resampling=no card
_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1"
load-module module-jackdbus-detect channels=2
load-module module-bluetooth-policy
load-module module-bluetooth-discover
load-module module-bluez5-discover
load-module module-dbus-protocol
load-module module-native-protocol-unix
load-module module-gsettings
load-module module-default-device-restore
load-module module-always-sink
load-module module-intended-roles
load-module module-suspend-on-idle
load-module module-console-kit
load-module module-systemd-login
load-module module-position-event-sounds
load-module module-role-cork
load-module module-filter-heuristics
load-module module-filter-apply
load-module module-cli-protocol-unix

set-sink-volume alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo 0xa58e
set-sink-mute alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo no
suspend-sink alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo yes

set-source-volume alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor 0x10000
set-source-mute alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor no
suspend-source alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor yes
set-source-volume alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.iec958-stereo 0x10000
set-source-mute alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.iec958-stereo no
suspend-source alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.iec958-stereo yes

set-card-profile alsa_card.pci-0000_01_00.1 off
set-card-profile alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1b.0 output:analog-stereo+input:iec958-stereo

set-default-sink alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo
set-default-source alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.iec958-stereo

### EOF

As you can see on screenshot Audacious behaves very strange. When youtube is playing and I press play in Audacious it looks as if it was blocked. I mean play button is active (so stop displays) but there is no sound and this blue dot stays on the same position.

I also ran alsamixer to check if some sinks are nor muted but nothing relevant was muted.

journalctl --user -u pulseaudio

A lot of:

mar 12 18:50:34  pulseaudio[819]: Error opening PCM device front:0: Device or resources busy
mar 12 18:50:34  pulseaudio[819]: Failed to create sink input: sink is suspended.

the rest pastebin link

pulseaudio -vvvv
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operacja niedozwolona
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_RTPRIO, (9, 9)) failed: Operacja niedozwolona
D: [pulseaudio] core-rtclock.c: Timer slack is set to 50 us.
I: [pulseaudio] core-util.c: Failed to acquire high-priority scheduling: Błąd wejścia/wyjścia
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: This is PulseAudio 14.2
D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Compilation CFLAGS: Not yet supported on meson
D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running on host: Linux x86_64 5.11.2-1-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Feb 26 12:17:53 UTC 2021
D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Found 2 CPUs.
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Page size is 4096 bytes
D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Compiled with Valgrind support: no
D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in valgrind mode: no
D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in VM: no
D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running from build tree: no
D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Optimized build: yes
D: [pulseaudio] main.c: All asserts enabled.
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Machine ID is 44df6c1d58a049cda85bcaf8b0fe6daf.
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Session ID is 1.
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Using runtime directory /run/user/1000/pulse.
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Using state directory /home/kompik/.config/pulse.
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Using modules directory /usr/lib/pulse-14.2/modules.
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode: no
E: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: pa_pid_file_create() failed.

Pipewire services are not showing as fully disabled
and PulseAudio is missing 2 modules - module-x11-publish and module-x11-xsmp
Rebooting system should resolve both of those issues

The missing x11 modules suggest you have used a command like pulseaudio -k to restart PulseAudio, which can cause problems.
Some Linux distributions still need use of direct commands to pulseaudio, but Manjaro has a systemd service and direct pulseaudio commands should be avoided (except for some options for getting information)

To restart PulseAudio use this command

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

and use this command to check PulseAudio after rebooting

systemctl --user -l --no-pager status pulseaudio

That should include any journal error messages. It may still include message sink is suspended but rebooting system may have cleared that

systemctl --user -l --no-pager status pulseaudio
● pulseaudio.service - Sound Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sun 2021-03-14 09:11:24 CET; 13s ago
TriggeredBy: ● pulseaudio.socket
   Main PID: 548 (pulseaudio)
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/app.slice/pulseaudio.service
             ├─548 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no --log-target=journal
             └─609 /usr/lib/pulse/gsettings-helper

mar 14 09:11:23 pixel systemd[405]: Starting Sound Service...
mar 14 09:11:24 pixel pulseaudio[548]: module-combine is deprecated: Please use module-combine-sink instead of module-combine!
mar 14 09:11:24 pixel pulseaudio[548]: We will now load module-combine-sink. Please make sure to remove module-combine from your configuration.
mar 14 09:11:24 pixel systemd[405]: Started Sound Service.
mar 14 09:11:24 pixel pulseaudio[548]: GetManagedObjects() failed: org.freedesktop.systemd1.NoSuchUnit: Unit dbus-org.bluez.service not found.

I don’t have module-combine in /etc/pulse/default.pa
And dbus-org.bluez.service is for bluetooth and I don’t have bluetooth on my PC.

When I unmasked pipewire.socket and pipewire-pulse.socket and started services (out of curiosity) I get from SMplayer:

ALSA lib pcm_pulse.c:752:(pulse_prepare) PulseAudio: Unable to create stream: Input/Output error
[ao/alsa] Unable to set hw-parameters: Input/output error
[ao/alsa] Attempting to work around even more ALSA bugs...
ALSA lib pcm_pulse.c:752:(pulse_prepare) PulseAudio: Unable to create stream: Input/Output error
[ao/alsa] Unable to set hw-parameters: Input/output error
connect(2) call to /dev/shm/jack-1000/default/jack_0 failed (err=No such file or directory)
attempt to connect to server failed
[ao/jack] cannot open server
[ao] Failed to initialize audio driver 'jack'
Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.
Audio: no audio

But with these I can’t here sound at all from smplayer so I need to mask them again.

pipewire is a dependency for kwin.

In which case you keep running in circles.

From your comment in the other thread - kwin depends on pipewire - to disabling/masking pipewire services will effectively block sound on your system.

What you need to do is to accept pipewire and adjust your configuration accordingly. Have you tried with pavucontrol-qt or the gtk version pavucontrol?

While pavucontrol seems to reference pulseaudio it does a pretty decent job of mapping pipewire too.

Also the pamixer lists outputs

➜  ~ pamixer --list-sinks
Sinks:
45 "alsa_output.pci-0000_01_00.1.hdmi-stereo" "GP106 High Definition Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI)"
47 "alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo" "Built-in Audio Analog Stereo"
➜  ~ pamixer --list-sources
Sources:
65581 "alsa_output.pci-0000_01_00.1.hdmi-stereo.monitor" "Monitor of GP106 High Definition Audio Controller Digital S"
46 "alsa_input.usb-046d_HD_Webcam_C525_56B848E0-00.mono-fallback" "HD Webcam C525 Mono"
65583 "alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo.monitor" "Monitor of Built-in Audio Analog Stereo"

I think it is just a matter of reworking your configuration - you have some incompatible configs somewhere - just find them.

As mentioned in the other thread - I have now done an install of KDE and synced the install - and there is no issues with KDE using pipewire.

I can play sound in KDE but only from Firefox (not being visible in sound applet) or only from mpv. Not both at the same time.

Can you play sound from Firefox or Chromium and at the same time play sound from mpv, mplayer?
Can you see Firefox in Plasma sound applet (plasma-pa)?

module-combine for simultaneous output to all audio device could have been loaded by turning on the option in KDE settings

KDEbonehead

But module-combine or module-combine-sink are not shown in the list of modules

see this for dealing with the 2 default bluetooth modules

Journalctl pulseaudio error after latest update - #6 by nikgnomic
PulseAudio usually has 2 modules loaded by default
module-bluetooth-policy and module-bluetooth-discover

to disable the modules, use this command to add comment tags to the configuration file

sudo sed -Ei '/load-module module-bluetooth*/s/^/#/' /etc/pulse/default.pa

I installed pipewire and removed pulse audio. So the situation is as on screenshot.

systemctl --user list-unit-files | grep -E 'pulseaudio|pipewire'
pipewire-media-session.service                                          enabled   enabled       
pipewire-pulse.service                                                  enabled   enabled       
pipewire.service                                                        enabled   enabled       
pipewire-pulse.socket                                                   enabled   enabled       
pipewire.socket                                                         enabled   enabled

But I have no sound in Firefox nor Chromium at all. How can I remove all audio and soundcard configuration files without removing Plasma?

Advanced options in plasma-pa are unavailable. They require Pulseaudio module-gsettings

Strange thing is that on other disk (the same machine, but fresh Manjaro install) I have the same files installed and everything works. So I conclude there are some configuration files involved here.

Reinstalling all these files doesn’t help.

Are there any differences between user session and system session? How to check it?

Edition:
With only these installed I have sound both in Firefox and Audacious simultaneously but I can’t install plasma-pa because it has as a dependency pulseaudio.

Edition2
I installed pipewire-media-session and after that I was able to install plasma-pa.

but I get errors

systemctl --user status pipewire*

● pipewire.service - Multimedia Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2021-03-20 19:52:59 CET; 9min ago
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
Main PID: 1189 (pipewire)
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire.service
└─1189 /usr/bin/pipewire

mar 20 20:00:30 pixel-pc pipewire[1189]: params Spa:Enum:ParamId:EnumFormat: 0:0 (follower format) Device or resource busy
mar 20 20:00:30 pixel-pc pipewire[1189]: (alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo-38) start node error -16: Device or resource busy
mar 20 20:00:30 pixel-pc pipewire[1189]: ‘front:0’: playback open failed: Device or resource busy
mar 20 20:00:30 pixel-pc pipewire[1189]: ‘front:0’: playback open failed: Device or resource busy
mar 20 20:00:30 pixel-pc pipewire[1189]: params Spa:Enum:ParamId:EnumFormat: 0:0 (follower format) Device or resource busy
mar 20 20:00:30 pixel-pc pipewire[1189]: (alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo-38) start node error -16: Device or resource busy
mar 20 20:00:30 pixel-pc pipewire[1189]: ‘front:0’: playback open failed: Device or resource busy
mar 20 20:00:30 pixel-pc pipewire[1189]: ‘front:0’: playback open failed: Device or resource busy
mar 20 20:00:30 pixel-pc pipewire[1189]: params Spa:Enum:ParamId:EnumFormat: 0:0 (follower format) Device or resource busy
mar 20 20:00:30 pixel-pc pipewire[1189]: (alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo-38) start node error -16: Device or resource busy

● pipewire-pulse.service - PipeWire PulseAudio
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire-pulse.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2021-03-20 19:54:38 CET; 8min ago
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire-pulse.socket
Main PID: 1324 (pipewire-pulse)
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire-pulse.service
└─1324 /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse

mar 20 19:54:38 pixel-pc systemd[416]: Started PipeWire PulseAudio.

● pipewire-media-session.service - Multimedia Service Session Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire-media-session.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2021-03-20 19:52:59 CET; 9min ago
Main PID: 1190 (pipewire-media-)
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire-media-session.service
└─1190 /usr/bin/pipewire-media-session

mar 20 19:52:59 pixel-pc systemd[416]: Started Multimedia Service Session Manager.
mar 20 19:52:59 pixel-pc pipewire-media-session[1190]: oFono: Registering Profile /Profile/ofono failed
mar 20 19:52:59 pixel-pc pipewire-media-session[1190]: GetManagedObjects() failed: org.freedesktop.systemd1.NoSuchUnit

● pipewire.socket - Multimedia System
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.socket; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2021-03-20 19:46:44 CET; 15min ago
Triggers: ● pipewire.service
Listen: /run/user/1000/pipewire-0 (Stream)
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/app.slice/pipewire.socket

mar 20 19:46:44 pixel-pc systemd[416]: Listening on Multimedia System.

● pipewire-pulse.socket - PipeWire PulseAudio
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire-pulse.socket; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2021-03-20 19:46:44 CET; 15min ago
Triggers: ● pipewire-pulse.service
Listen: /run/user/1000/pulse/native (Stream)
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/app.slice/pipewire-pulse.socket

mar 20 19:46:44 pixel-pc systemd[416]: Listening on PipeWire PulseAudio.

Looks like the problem is related to some bad configurations or bugs in pipewire-media-session because I found this:
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/69228
but workaround doesn’t fix my problem.

There are some files in
/home/user/.config/pipewire/media-session.d/
with default profiles but I don’t know what to do about it.

When I install pipewire-alsa or manjaro-pipewire I loose sound in Firefox.

Edition:
I discovered the source of the problem. I checked another Manjaro Plasma installation and it appeared that I have different Firefox media backend pulse-rust. https://i.imgur.com/CN61s2b.png

So I got back to my system where problem occurred and started Firefox from terminal and everything was fine, also pulse-rust. So the real problem was that normally I start Firefox in Firejail with custom /home directory and it has different profile. So far I didn’t have problem with sound. Only after recent Manjaro switch from pulseaudio to pipewire problem occurred and that is why I forgot about Firejail and didn’t expect that Firefox in Firejail may have diffrent audio backend from default.

I also installed pipewire-alsa and everything is fine now with default Firefox profile.