Pipewire without systemd

[Member olsztyn]

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olsztyn wrote:

Thank you @stevesr0 for your contribution, particularly in the area of Pipewire accomplishment.

olsztyn wrote:

A person that I dearly miss is Xecure, who provided a wealth of knowledge in this area and developed many pieces of modern antiX infrastructure, such as Runit init system. I am still searching old posts by Xecure to refresh understanding of various mechanisms in antiX architecture. Unfortunately he decided to leave antiX forum, being too gentle to endure certain polemics. If he ever reads this I want him to know that he and his contribution will never be forgotten…

To follow up:
At this point (as summarized in antiX 23 thread), quite a few of us are able to run Pipewire sound (along with Bluetooth support) completely *elogind*-free. This is thanks to all necessary pipewire related components modified to be *elogind*-free by anticapitalista.

What is the next challenge for me is to streamline the sequence of starting the components of pipewire infrastructure. So far I have been following the @Caprea’s tip to use session startup for this.
I have been experimenting with setting up Runit user services for individual pipewire components, setting up ./runit/sv and runsvdir, following some info found in Artix and Devuan related to pipewire. However not quite successful yet in antiX.
As we know, @Xecure, the ultimate expert in Runit who left this forum, successfully created Runit user services for pipewire, however I have not been able to find details on how to define start files in ./runit/sv as prerequisite to ./runit/runsvdir.
If anyone has details of pipewire runit user services for antiX, such info would be greatly appreciated…
Thanks and Regards…

• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by olsztyn.
• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week 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,

I saw there is information about setting up Pipewire runit services in a GitHub site, (https://github.com/madand/runit-services/blob/master/README.md).

I haven’t tried it, as I haven’t used Pipewire on a system running runit.

stevesr0

P.S. I agree completely with your thoughts about Xecure.

• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by stevesr0.

[Member olsztyn]

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stevesr0 wrote:

I saw there is information about setting up Pipewire runit services in a GitHub site

Thanks. Yes. I have seen this and some of my initial attempt was based on this info. However this site does not provide critical info on how to define start files for pipewire, just tells to clone from somewhere. Basically it provides general info only, not details of start files. This is what I am missing at this point. Have tried to adapt similar files from existing runit services but none of my modificaations of them seems to work. I was hoping someone would have those…
Thanks and Regards…

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

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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Running pipewire doesn’t need any service files for runit, sysvinit or even the dreaded systemd as far as I am aware.
Why do you want it? Seems to me to be a solution looking for a problem.

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

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member olsztyn]

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anticapitalista wrote:

Running pipewire doesn’t need any service files for runit, sysvinit or even the dreaded systemd as far as I am aware.
Why do you want it?

Yes. Indeed. You are right, of course. They are not required, in principle…
However the reason for runit user services to start pipewire components (pipewire, wireplumber, pipewire-pulse) is that starting them from desktop session startup or individual WMs startup causes running into issue of sequencing them correctly.
So e.g. wireplumber must start after pipewire has fully initialized and similarly pipewire-pulse after both preceding ones are fully up. Injecting some ‘sleep 5’ wait between each one is only a workaround expecting when they will be able to initialize and not a reliable or clean solution.
On the other hand, defining them as runit user services will allow to define their dependencies and sequence their startup.
If there is a way other than structuring them as runit user services I will appreciate such info…

• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by olsztyn.
• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by olsztyn.

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

[Member olsztyn]

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anticapitalista wrote:

Seems to me to be a solution looking for a problem.

This is a great statement in itself, just attracted my attention. I like it a lot…

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,

Have you looked at this page: https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,4202.0.html ?

Reply #7 suggests a way to configure that might be what you want (or not)?

stevesr0

[Member olsztyn]

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stevesr0 wrote:

Have you looked at this page: https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,4202.0.html ?
Reply #7 suggests a way to configure that might be what you want (or not)?

Thanks @stevesr0 for pointing this out…
I have looked at this page before and I think you are right that this might be the way to deal with pipewire. I have not got to the details yet but it looks promising at first glance.
My general concern, whichever way to ensure sequence of starting pipewire components:
– Why is this needs to be so complicated?
Anticapitalista is right in principle. It should be the ressponsibility of pipewire design to ensure these components start seamlessly and reliably, even if they are just listed in desktop session startup. It appears to me this is not the case though and I believe some reports of pipewire sometimes working and sometimes no sound coming out after reboot might be related to timing of these components startup.
Before I find a reliable way I am following @Caprea advice to inject ‘sleep 4 or 5’ between each pipewire component in desktop session startup. And it works fine, including volume icon popping up after sleep 5 delay.
However this seems a workaround about this issue and it seems to me that on fast computers it usually works even without ‘sleep 5’ delays, but on slower computers this seems not the case and sometimes with less time delay such as ‘sleep 3’ I may not even see volume icon pop up in tray as the preceding pipewire components may have not enough time to initialize correctly.
My conjecture is that the reason @Xecure was using Runit user services for pipewire components is to implement a reliable startup sequence with no artificial timing delays but I have not seen details of this.
In any case I will be further looking into the post # 7 in the link you provided above.
Thanks and Regards…

• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by olsztyn.

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

[Forum Admin dolphin_oracle]

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I put this script (pipewire-start) called from an autostart entry

MX will be using this.

#/bin/bash

INITCHECK=$(/usr/bin/ps -p 1 -o cmd -h)
echo $INITCHECK
if [ "$INITCHECK" = "/lib/systemd/systemd" ]; then 
	exit 0
fi
#else start them up
echo "start pipewire"
/usr/bin/pipewire &
/usr/bin/pipewire-pulse & 
/usr/bin/wireplumber &

exit 0

[Member olsztyn]

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dolphin_oracle wrote:

MX will be using this.

Thanks D/O…
Please let me know if I am understanding correctly, if you do not mind:
– Check for ‘systemd’ – If it is on Systemd MX then script just ends with return code 0 without initializing pipewire components?
– If the check for ‘systemd’ is negative then it executes the pipewire initialization?

If my understanding is correct:
– You do not expect timing issues with initializing these three components of pipewire.
– Pipewire-pulse is started here before wireplumber, not the other way round?

Then this seems no different than running the same in desktop session startup and with no ‘sleep’ timing delays at all.
Now I am confused… Perhaps I have been looking for complicated solutions, not having a problem in the first place as anticapitalista pointed out, after all…
Thanks and Regards.

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

[Member PPC]

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From what I read from DO’s post- it seems that the answer to all your questions is “yes”.
On antiX that doesn’t use systemd as init system, the script can be shortened to:

#/bin/bash
echo "start pipewire"
/usr/bin/pipewire &
/usr/bin/pipewire-pulse & 
/usr/bin/wireplumber &
exit 0

You can try it out and let us know how it works…

P.

[Member olsztyn]

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Thank you PPC… I will at the earliest convenience…

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

[Forum Admin dolphin_oracle]

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PPC is on the money.

sysVinit doesn’t have the concept of user services, so autostart is the easiest way to go. I’ve been running this for a long time without issue.

and yes, I’ve had the best success with running wireplumber last

[Member olsztyn]

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dolphin_oracle wrote:

sysVinit doesn’t have the concept of user services, so autostart is the easiest way to go. I’ve been running this for a long time without issue.
and yes, I’ve had the best success with running wireplumber last

Thank you D/O…
This looks like the best and simplest way… Perhaps my thinking that pipewire-pulse must be started after wireplumber confused me and my results…
Greatly appreciate this advice.

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

[Member olsztyn]

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Just want to report my initial testing of this setup:
Machine – Thinkpad X220, i5, 4Gb.

– At first all worked great. Pipewire, pipewire-pulse and wireplumber initialized fine. Volumeicon showed up quickly (not like with all those sleep delays, which caused volumeicon show after quite some time). Sound worked both on internal speakers and Bluetooth speaker just fine.
By the way, I am testing all on Grup Yorum music run from SMTube, routing to MPV…
– Rebooted several times and still all pipewire processes started and all worked as expected…
– Another reboot and suddenly a negative result – wireplumber process did not start. Subsequently no sound. Pipewire and pipewire-pulse processes were started. This was reminiscent of some reports I read that sometimes pipewire did not work sometimes after reboot.

This issue of wireplumber failing to start occasionally:
I will be testing further how often this happens after reboot. This might be related to the timing of startup sequence I was ranting about but also may not. I do not have sufficient understanding of pipewire infrastructure to tell for sure.
For me it is more important if I can make it work reliably.

The important for me is the Dolphin_Oracle tells me this simple sequence does work so it must be my machine, insufficient power of this machine or something else that caused this failure. I will test on other machines, both more powerful and less powerful to nail this issue down…
Thanks and Regards…

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

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