Pipewire without systemd

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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You’ll get this yet @stevesr0: – I have confidence in your persistence, willingness to take chances and learn; once you figure this out, you’ll be our EXPERT in this particular area; won’t that feel nice? Best wishes, I know you’ll get it; just be methodical, take notes on what works, what doesn’t, and build up your knowledge base. I guarantee it’s a good feeling when you conquer it; I can still remember my early days with systems; it’s the reason I chose software as a career (now retired and not “up to date” on the latest and greatest capabilities), but it’s nice to see people like you eager to get into the cool stuff!

--
Brian Masinick

[Member olsztyn]

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stevesr0 wrote:

I just realized that I had still elogind and libelogind0 installed. Tried to uninstall and fournd out that the system STRONGLY objects to uninstalling such packages.

Just remember you have seatd and libseat1 installed before you uninstall *elogind*. In system services section (Control Center) turn off elogind service and start seatd service so it starts automatically on boot. I do not remember any system complaint when I converted antiX 21 runit to *elogind*-free full system this way.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member olsztyn]

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stevesr0 wrote:

My challenge is to make this work without a reboot, unless I can add persistence or logout and log back in without changing the system. I haven’t seen this listed as an option. If someone knows the answer, please advise.

I suggest that after you put complete all pieced of pipewire and wireplumber installation you just remaster your Live antiX and reboot instead of logging off and on. The pipewire sound infrastructure should be starting on boot going forward if I am not mistaken. Please correct me if I am wrong on this as I am new to pipewire.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by olsztyn.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member stevesr0]

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Hi olsztyn,

Thanks for responding.

You are probably correct about remastering being easier.

However, I am unfamiliar with remastering – and even the varied persistence options.

So, as a first step, I am trying to see if I can get a systemd, elogind,libelogind0 and dbus free environment that I can install the set of Pipewire packages that anticapitalista created and posted (see his post on the What types of dependencies? thread).

I believe I am very close to achieving the install (ta-da). Then, I will see if it doesn’t works and gives clues as to what it needs.

I am currently stuck trying to launch an X session using Openbox as a window manager. This is the same as my installed Sid, which I use as a comparator.

Where I am stuck is when I issue a startx command (as root), I get an error message “permission denied”.
I have edited the Xwrapper.config to allow all users (the default was anyone on the console).

So, I am not sure if (a) a reboot would solve things (if I had persistence <g>), (b) a logout and relogin will work (without losing the current nonpersistent setup) or (c) there is something wrong with my setup.

I (and my live antiX) will sleep on it tonight.

Any thoughts welcomed to start X, or to run pipewire without launching a GUI (X or Wayland).

stevesr0

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi steves, you write using Openbox as a window manager. Used by you and how many others on antiX.
Unsupported.

Then you want to test new packages. May I politely suggest you start running live with a supported
window manager, that way what you are doing can be followed by others who may wish to experiment and
assist. You may well run in to problems which do not exist in users installations or even create
problems for those with the popular supported desktops.

For example I like to run latest software and experiment but no way I will leave ICEWM which I know
well and works without issues.
Any instability means I have introduced it by my changes, not that I may have combined desktop and
software issues and made fault finding way more difficult.

[Member stevesr0]

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Hi Moddit,

Thanks for response.

I agree that the easiest (and smartest?) way to get a working desktop would be to start with something not minimal.

However, my situation is (a) I have a working minimalist Sid install running Pipewire (with elogind), that I wish to use as a reference comparator for a version of Pipewire (without elogind).

I am walking back and forth between the two to check the differences on the working and nonworking (so far) install.

General update:

I have found a number of additional pieces that are needed for X to work. At this point, I think I may have all the necessary packages and I am trying to figure out a fatal error that causes the Xserver not to connect.

In the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file, I am getting an error “unw_get_proc_info failed: no unwind info found [-10].
Unfortunately, this is not a specific pointer to a unique problem apparently.

It is associated ultimately with a “signal 6 Server aborting” message in my case and some other reports. Other reports associate it with a segmentation fault.

Finished for today.

I may read up on persistence before doing a reboot.

I deliberately did NOT do a “full-upgrade” when I launched the live usb, in order to avoid accidental loading of elogind (although I don’t think that was supposed to happen with the “bare” netinstall provided). So I still have about 140 upgradable packages that come in the netinstall that I haven’t upgraded.
So, I will look thru that list (before rebooting) to see if any of those might be obviously needed to get X going.

It is an interesting (re)educational experience for me.

stevesr0

[Anonymous]

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Hello steve,

if you want to start your installations with startx, then I assume that your USER also has a .xinitrc in his /home, which has this entry among others:
exec openbox-session

Others are mandatory commented out?

Finally, I don’t think it’s a good idea to run startx as root!

[Member stevesr0]

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Hi male,

Thanks for comment.

my .xinitrc is:

#!/bin/sh
exec openbox-session

I believe that I need to do a fresh live install and since being root wasn’t helpful (and not advisable), I will go back to plain old demo. Need to review persistence before reinstalling.

stevesr0

[Member stevesr0]

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Update: Progress of a sort.

I tried a “regular” sysvinit antix-21 net iso from the mxrepo; with this, I have managed to install the necessary packages and get into X with openbox. This demonstrated that that machine and that flash drive can do it.

Next I will attempt to repeat this with the sysvinit sid elogind and dbus free version that anticapitalista posted in January of this year on SourceForge.

Will report back after I play with that…

stevesr0

[Member stevesr0]

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Update: I converted the antiX-21 sysvinit net install that WAS launching X with openbox from the stable repos to the Sid/unstable repos. After this, I cannot launch X. Don’t know why. So far, I am failing to launch X from a two different “types” of live usbs of antiX-21 Sid net install (neither with elogind or libelogind0) – one from the lamxrepo (Nov 2021) and the other from the sourceforge page that anticapitalista setup in January.

I do note an error that was also present in the previous failed attempt:
unw_get_proc_name failed: no unwind info found [-10]

I do have libunwind8 installed on both my old Sid system (with elogind and X working) and the live USB (without elogind or libelogind0).

While I understand others have used antiX-21 without elogind and gotten X working, I am not sure if anyone has done this with Sid – running as a live USB. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has.

Thanks in advance.

stevesr0

(P.S. I guess I will try to replicate my previous success using the lamxrepo sysvinit net install. If it works in the same way, I will document the “working” /var/log/Xorg0.log file and look it over for clues. Then, I will again try updating to Sid and see if it again fails. I will report back after that.)

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by stevesr0.

[Member stevesr0]

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Update:

Again, I was able to use the live usb of sysvinit antiX-21 netinstall to launch X windows using stable repositories via startx with openbox. However, again after switching to the Sid repositories, X fails to launch.

I suspect that during the full-upgrade to Sid, the modules.builtin.modinfo are removed, because I think they were present when running the stable repositories.

So, I will repeat a fresh boot and see if I can confirm this.

If this is the case, I am suspicious that it is somehow due to the version of kmod, because similar bugs have been reported recently.

Any wise words of advice always appreciated.

stevesr0

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi steves,
did you try with latest debian kernel, rebuilt initramfs and updated grub.
Should there be a problem with missing modules that may fix the issue.

Note: on the machine I use daily moving to sid did not pull in a newer kernel.
I did that manualy while fighting graphics issues.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by ModdIt.

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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There have been and still are a lot of changes in sid right now and antiX replacements waiting to be added to the repos to keep it free from systemd/elogind. There are new pipewire and wireplumber debs too.

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member stevesr0]

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Hi Moddit and anticapitalista,

Thanks for each of your responses.

To Moddit,

re: updating initramfs. I will try that. One of the issues reported with recent version of kmod is that updating initramfs doesn’t work. (But it is the same version of kmod that is installed on my working Sid install.) So we will see..

re: Different kernel. I have been using the default kernel (4.9). Since X was achieved with that, I hadn’t planned to try changing before trying to add elogind free Pipewire. But, if updating the initramfs doesn’t work and if I can’t think of anything else to try, I will give that a shot.

To anticapitalista,

re: new packages. Yes, I have noted that there were a bunch of new Pipewire packages yesterday on my working Sid install. Generally I check every day after full-upgrading that audio still works <g>. I realize that each full-upgrade provides a chance for some systemd dependency to creep in. Not sure that these are temporarily causing the problem getting X launched when I switch repos. However, if that is the case, then hopefully sometime in the future, I will end up doing a full-upgrade and end up with a Sid setup that (magically) does launch X without a problem. It is noteworthy that I haven’t lost X access on my working Sid install (yet).

It is an interesting slog…

stevesr0

[Member stevesr0]

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Update:

(Second attempt at posting – last one disappeared?!)

I think the problem is the disappearance of modules.builtin.modinfo with the switch and full-upgrade to Sid repos.

I saw a similar issue which was solved by editing a config setting for mkinitrams (adding CONFIG_RD_COMPRESS_NONE=y), but I am not sure which file to edit (/usr/sbin/mkinitramfs, /usr/bin/unmkinitramfs, other initramfs file).

So, if anyone is familiar with editing these files and regenerating “fixed” initramfs and mkinitramfs files, please post. Otherwise, I will plod along.

stevesr0

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