Pipewire without systemd

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi all, I am systemd free but after a spate of updates no longer elogind free
on my sid install. Due Nvidia Tesla 470 Driver known issues with 6 series kernels still using
debian 5.18.0-4-amd64.

With so much rapid change and other important commitments I decided to stop fighting windmills,
at least until a new stable release of Debian and antiX is available and setup to my liking.

Lat time I checked debian Bookworm planning dates were

12.01.2023: Milestone 1 – Transition and toolchain freeze
12.02.2023: Milestone 2 – Soft Freeze
12.03.2023: Milestone 3 – Hard Freeze for key packages and packages without autopkgtests
bisher ohne Termin: Milestone 4 – Full Freeze

So until 12.03.2023 we really cannot be reasonably sure about which changes make it in to
the next release.

I fully understand anticapitalista, no good anyone, devs or helpers risking burnout.

• This reply was modified 5 months ago by ModdIt.

[Member stevesr0]

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Hi Brian M. and BobC.,

I am happy to share a copy of my system. I am not very adroit at generating these, so it may be a while. How do I get this do you folks?

I currently am running without libelogind0 which remains necessary for Pipewire to work on my system. (Periodically, I reinstall libelogind0 (by itself [without elogind]) to confirm that Pipewire still works. I plan to send a “workingy h” copy with libelogind0 (unless I make a “breakthrough”), so you and Bob C. can see if it does work with libelogind0 and then stops working without it on your hardware.

I also plan to try the “clone” on my other two computers to see if it works on other machines.

Parenthetically, I agree that it is hard to try to maintain a nosystemd install at the cutting edge and I believe even at the stable stage (thanks much anticapitalista and other developers and contributors).

The developer of seatd told me that xorg doesn’t have support for libseat1, so I am unclear how people have made use of it – as they have posted on the forum.

I am looking into consolekit (actually consolekit2 now) documentation to see if I can understand how that might be usable instead.

stevesr0

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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@steversr0:

The tool called ISO Snapshot (Applications –> antiX –> ISO Snapshot) is capable of generating an ISO snapshot.

The greatest issue is storing it to post it.

I don’t know if the attachment tool will allow you to attach a large ISO image. I doubt it.

Things like Google Drive, git and other cloud storage services can provide free storage and a URL link to reference content.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=free+cloud+based+storage&t=newext&atb=v355-2&ia=web
https://www.dropbox.com
https://www.lifewire.com/free-cloud-storage-1356638

• This reply was modified 5 months ago by Brian Masinick.

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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RE Pipewire, their site https://pipewire.org/ offers a few pieces of information.
Those interested can actually build Pipeware from the information provided.

More information here too: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/blob/master/README.md

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Brian Masinick

[Member olsztyn]

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Brian Masinick wrote:

Things like Google Drive, git and other cloud storage services can provide free storage and a URL link to reference content.

In the third link posted by Brian you will see Mega, which has strongest privacy of all them. They give 20GB free. Used to give 50GB.

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

[Member olsztyn]

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Brian Masinick wrote:

Those interested can actually build Pipeware from the information provided.

I am definitely interested in Pipewire and I have just built a SID system for that. However it will be a steep learning curve for me. @Stevesr0 is way ahead of me..

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 Brian M.,

On my minimalistic system running Openbox, I have iso-snapshot-cli-antix installed and finally found how to launch it (/usr/bin/iso-snapshot-cli). It has completed and deposited an iso in my /home/snapshot directory.

I see it says now run live-usb-maker in order to generate a bootable live usb. I will do that to test the transferability of this iso to my other machines and to enable me to generate a version without any personal data <g>, which I will seek to post somewhere people can download it to try on their machines.

(But not tonight…)

Note Bene:

Sometime ago, anticapitalista posted a nice guide to building a simple system on the forum.

stevesr0

P.S. to olsztyn – I don’t believe I am ahead of you in anything computer related <g>.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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stevesr0 wrote:

Hi Brian M.,

On my minimalistic system running Openbox, I have iso-snapshot-cli-antix installed and finally found how to launch it (/usr/bin/iso-snapshot-cli). It has completed and deposited an iso in my /home/snapshot directory.

I see it says now run live-usb-maker in order to generate a bootable live usb. I will do that to test the transferability of this iso to my other machines and to enable me to generate a version without any personal data <g>, which I will seek to post somewhere people can download it to try on their machines.

(But not tonight…)

Note Bene:

Sometime ago, anticapitalista posted a nice guide to building a simple system on the forum.

stevesr0

P.S. to olsztyn – I don’t believe I am ahead of you in anything computer related <g>.

I say to both of you that you know enough to do some interesting things, and the more you experiment with the “interesting things”, the more you learn.
Keep at it; I am favorably impressed with everything each of you do!

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Brian Masinick

[Member stevesr0]

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Thank you Brian M. (I don’t know your preference in the use of your name – as there might be other “Brian” members, I figured that your last initial might be more specific; happy to change to what you like.)

I have produced a live usb that is an apparent clone of my Fujitsu antiX Sid install. I have tried running it on all three of my computers. It booted immediately to a terminal login (as it is supposed to) on all three computers. On the Fujitsu and Lenovo Yoga, I had no trouble starting Xorg using startx. The first time I tried launching on my newest computer, which has both an integrated intel GPU and an Nvidia GPU, it ended with a connection refused error.

On my second boot, it went as smoothly as with the other two computers.

So superficially, this might work on a variety of computers!

Parenthetically, since this liveusb DOES have libelogind0 installed, Pipewire works. This was the first time I looked at the “new” computer’s audio settings in Pipewire and they DID reflect the hardware on that machine, which is different from the Fujitsu. A little wow moment. (I will include libelogind0 so people can see if Pipewire works with this iso, assuming the iso boots ok to X for them. They can then try removing libelogind0 and see if they can find a way to run Pipewire without it.)

My plan (pending comments from y’alls) is to strip off the files from my home directory and other personal stuff and generate a snapshot from THAT running system and use live-usb-maker to produce an iso I can post somewhere. A family member is being discharged from the hospital soon and I will be visiting and trying to help out, so there may be a delay.

stevesr0
————————————————————————————-
**As an aside, I have noticed a number of posts by folks seeking to use Pipewire. I think it would be neat to “build” a team to (as Brian suggested) look at the Pipewire source code in order to understand where the various problems might be in trying to use it in antiX. Some issues I have heard of include setting a runtime directory as an environment variable (in the absence of systemd), dependencies declared in the source code that require systemd, and issues with the programs used for seat management when running Xorg (including lack of support for Wireplumber?). If several people were interested in looking into these and educating each other, a successful general approach to Pipewire without systemd on antiX might be developed for the benefit of all who might want to try Pipewire. Especially if a newer version could be backported to stable. And of course, the directions would have to include how not to update to incompatible versions <g>.

stevesr0

[Member stevesr0]

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Small problem.

I deleted the documents in the Documents folder in my home directory, but when I reboot,they are back again. I need to figure out how to make deletions persist across a reboot.

<Sigh> Instructions welcomed (I am tired at the moment…)

stevesr0

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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I don’t know exactly how you built the original image but it seems that the image contained the documents.

If that’s indeed the case, remove the documents and then remaster to save exactly what remains.

Does that make sense?

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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I answer to my name, first, last and I used to have a workstation named themas, which meant “The Mas”. That’s not necessary but if you want something decidedly different that would certainly do it!

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Brian Masinick

[Member stevesr0]

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Hi Brian (The Mas),

I will definitely switch to using “The Mas” <g>.

Looked up remastering. It is only available when running a live system, not one installed to the hard drive. On my live USB, I don’t remember setting up persistence of any sort. I think that means that nothing changes between boots.

But even within a booted session, it didn’t look as if my deletions were sticking.

I saw that a general remastering doesn’t include stuff in the home directory. Not sure if all the login and other application related personal stuff NOT accessed thru the browser is all there (grub, other sites…)

I will play with this and figure out how to obtain an “iso” without personal files (an empty /home/stevesr0) and how to get rid of the personal stuff in my browser and other application profiles.

Any (helpful <g>) advice welcomed.

stevesr0

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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@stevesr0: This is something that you will probably remember that some of our participants from other countries may not be familiar with:
Many decades ago, there was a TV show called Happy Days, where there was a guy named Fonzarelli who was “cool” and known simply as “The Fonz”.

In the 1990s when I worked at Digital Equipment Corporation, and shortly thereafter at Fidelity Investments, a friend of mine, Robert Fontaine, also used the nickname “Fonz”; in the UNIX Engineering Group where Fonz and I worked, THAT is where I made my nickname “The Mas” and named my workstation themas@zk3.dec.com or themas to the local network.

So that’s the background. Fonz and I also put together a couple of desktop computers; we’d select the parts, look for a good price, and when we found our price point, we’d order them. Once we had all of the parts, we made 2-3 computers; he did most of the hardware construction but we’d both do the “systems engineering” to figure out the optimal configuration for decent performance at a reasonable price; that’s kinda when we had this Fonz and Mas thing going back and forth…

Needless to say, I’m pretty sure we’re BOTH retired these days; I certainly am!

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Brian Masinick

[Member stevesr0]

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(Modified Sunday AM)

SUCCESS (apparently).

Kenny Levinsen (seatd/libseat developer) helped me set up an XDG_RUNTIME_DIR environmental variable after which I was able to run Pipewire even after removing libelogind0 and rebooting. (Link: https://man.sr.ht/~kennylevinsen/seatd/#xdg_runtime_dir-not-set. Be aware there are backticks not apostrophes and until Kenny saw my mistake, the script didn’t work.

**UNFORTUNATELY, the backticks show up as the word code when I use the “code tags”. So, I have replaced them with the word backtick,to show where a backtick is needed. There should be NO spaces between the backtick and the adjacent character.

Run the following as root on system startup:

#!/bin/sh -eu

# Configuration
YOUR_USER="your username here"
YOUR_GROUP="your group here"

XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/ backtick id -u $YOUR_USER backtick
if [ $? -ne 0 ]
then
        echo "No such user $YOUR_USER"
        exit 1
fi

# Delete existing directory, create a new one and set permissions
rm -rf $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
mkdir -p $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
chown $YOUR_USER:$YOUR_GROUP $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
chmod 700 $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR

Then add the following to your .profile or similar script that wraps or is sourced before you need XDG_RUNTIME_DIR set:

export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/ backtick id -u backtick

N.B. the group for seatd varies by distro. Mine (and possibly yours is the video group. Check the service file for seatd.)

Interestingly, when I run htop after setting this up, the three principle packages pipewire, wireplumber and pipewire-pulse are linked together. I don’t think they were before.

I still have to automate this (and see that it is durable and not a fluke of this one boot).

If it is durable, I will try to share the basics of my setup so others running Sid can see if they can replicate on their setups. This would be desirable since mine is rather idiosyncratic.

Goodnight for now.

stevesr0.

• This reply was modified 5 months ago by stevesr0.
• This reply was modified 5 months ago by stevesr0.
• This reply was modified 5 months ago by stevesr0.

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