[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#1029763: pipewire: does not seem to work unless xdg-desktop-portal is running

[Dylan Aïssi]

Hello Wouter,

Le ven. 27 janv. 2023 à 11:00, Wouter Verhelst <wouter at debian.org> a écrit :
>
> The pipewire upstream troubleshooting guide suggests I look at
> journalctl output as a first step in troubleshooting things. That
> reveals:
>
> wouter at pc220518:~$ journalctl -xe | grep pipewire
> jan 27 11:04:01 pc220518 pipewire[2111]: mod.rt: Can't find org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop. Is xdg-desktop-portal running?
> jan 27 11:04:01 pc220518 pipewire[2111]: mod.rt: found session bus but no portal
> jan 27 11:04:01 pc220518 pipewire-media-session[2113]: mod.rt: Can't find org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop. Is xdg-desktop-portal running?
> jan 27 11:04:01 pc220518 pipewire-media-session[2113]: mod.rt: found session bus but no portal
> jan 27 11:04:01 pc220518 dbus-daemon[1042]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.RealtimeKit1' unit='rtkit-daemon.service' requested by ':1.33' (uid=127 pid=2113 comm="/usr/bin/pipewire-media-session")
> jan 27 11:04:01 pc220518 pipewire-pulse[2114]: mod.rt: Can't find org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop. Is xdg-desktop-portal running?
> jan 27 11:04:01 pc220518 pipewire-pulse[2114]: mod.rt: found session bus but no portal
> jan 27 11:04:53 pc220518 pipewire[2729]: mod.rt: Can't find org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop. Is xdg-desktop-portal running?
> jan 27 11:04:53 pc220518 pipewire[2729]: mod.rt: found session bus but no portal
> jan 27 11:04:53 pc220518 pipewire-media-session[2730]: mod.rt: Can't find org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop. Is xdg-desktop-portal running?
> jan 27 11:04:53 pc220518 pipewire-media-session[2730]: mod.rt: found session bus but no portal
> jan 27 11:04:53 pc220518 pipewire-pulse[2731]: mod.rt: Can't find org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop. Is xdg-desktop-portal running?
> jan 27 11:04:53 pc220518 pipewire-pulse[2731]: mod.rt: found session bus but no portal
> wouter at pc220518:~$ journalctl -xe | grep wireplumber
> wouter at pc220518:~$ journalctl --user-unit=pipewire --user-unit=wireplumber --user-unit=pipewire-pulse -f
> jan 27 11:04:52 pc220518 systemd[2708]: Started PipeWire Multimedia Service.
> jan 27 11:04:53 pc220518 systemd[2708]: Started PipeWire PulseAudio.
> jan 27 11:04:53 pc220518 pipewire[2729]: mod.rt: Can't find org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop. Is xdg-desktop-portal running?
> jan 27 11:04:53 pc220518 pipewire[2729]: mod.rt: found session bus but no portal
> jan 27 11:04:53 pc220518 pipewire-pulse[2731]: mod.rt: Can't find org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop. Is xdg-desktop-portal running?
> jan 27 11:04:53 pc220518 pipewire-pulse[2731]: mod.rt: found session bus but no portal
>
> I use awesomewm, which probably doesn't require xdg-desktop-portal and
> therefore doesn't start it.

xdg-desktop-portal is only used by pipewire for screen-sharing. If you don't
have it, then pipewire will just not be able to do screen-sharing, but will work
correctly for the audio part. What do you mean by it doesn't start it? Do you
mean you don't have sound at all?

I don't see real issues in this log, or maybe yes you are using
pipewire-media-session instead of wireplumber. pipewire-media-session is dead
upstream see [1]. We keep it in Debian (for now) only for those who want to use
pipewire for screen-sharing only and not for the audio part because it is easier
to configure pms than wireplumber for this use. If you want to use pipewire for
sound you should use wireplumber instead. I recently added a metapackage
pipewire-audio to help users selecting pipewire packages. Please note this
package is in conflict with pulseaudio to avoid potential conflicts, but you can
take inspiration from dependencies of pipewire-audio if you want to keep
pulseaudio installed.

[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/media-session/-/commit/80dae7e24bec02b2befe09a72fbac6e2b38ccb5c

Best regards,
Dylan