My pulseaudio stopped working

I thought I had hackers (I wasn’t wrong), and I saw that one of them was using pipewire, including piewire pulseaudio, andI surmised that pipwire is used for spying on other people (am I wrong?). So I removed pipwire from my system and installed all pulseaudio programs that dnf could find.

That’s when my real problem started. I am just flinging away at ghosts without any real knowledge of what is being done.

What I wonder is, to get my audio (pulseaudio) working, what would be the necessary programs to get via dnf, and what programs could be blocking my pulseaudio sound now? I may not be the brightest bulb on the block, but I am very determined. The hackers, which are undeniably real, seem to let me do my own thing sometimes, not others. I think I brought this audio problem on myself, but I still would like to know how to get it started again.

Any advice? I don’t need remonstrances, I know I may have done the wrong things. But is there any recourse other than installing Fedora 35 all over again, from scratch?

Bryan Zimmer

Pipewire replaced pulseaudio since Fedora 34 and you would need to reinstall it. You could try installing it again by typing in dnf install pipewire pipewire-pulseaudio as a start and see if that fixes your issues. I don’t think hackers are trying to get you because pipewire is part of the Fedora installation.

I doubt you are right about software that can be misused by hackers just because it is in a Fedora installation. I’ve seen numerous pieces of software (including "xen, Krdc, libvirt and numerous other misused and therefore able to be used as spyware.They do their evil deeds using MY username/password because early on they installed a program they reads the keypresses and transmits them to themselves. So, my passwords, gpg keys, etc. are not sacred. They just destroy whatever they don’t like, including my “safe” gpg keys; that was the real killer - there is no way to keep ANYTHING private.

I followed your qadvice because it sounded like a way to get my sound back. It didn’t work, but, if I may say so, people who haven’t been hacked by intelligent, talented hackers are out to lunch. They think the victim of hacking must be paranoid. That isn’t true. I have plenty of evidence right here on this machine; but they don’t stop there, my cell phone is also subject to hacking, and nothing,not Norton, not Malware Bytes, not McAfee, can stop such dedicated malfeasant good-for-nothings.

Sorry to rant at you but when important files from about 20 years get destroyed for no apparent reason except “they could”, it tends to make one angry/. I don’t knowwhat it’s about, but it has done enough damage that I guess I will have to call the police, in case they give a f—.

When you want go back to pulsaudio from pipewire, there are detailed instructions on the wiki:

Releases/34/ChangeSet - Fedora Project Wiki
Releases/35/ChangeSet - Fedora Project Wiki

You just have to follow the pipewire, wireplumber related links.

Check also the https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/c/common-issues/141/all?solved=all section for audio related issues.

About hackers and Security, you might have to start by your router first. Does he have a up to date firmware? Do you have a firewall on the router where you can block traffic from the outside? Are sensitive services as ssh, telnet etc. deactivated from the outside of your network ?

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If your system was hacked, you have to consider it compromised in general as you don’t know how many entry vectors to your system they established. Reinstall of the os is the sole secure solution to this. If someone has gathered access to your system (especially if he escalated to root access), he can use any software you have installed against you (or even install more that is maybe not listed in the rpm database). This is not a question of pipewire.

The major question is not what is currently be used against you (you cannot know for sure if you were hacked) or what could be used against you (simple: everything). It is: how could someone get on your system? This links to the comments of ilikelinux, which you should ask about the router but also about your Fedora, including the question what you potentially did that enabled them to get in?

My suggestion is to reinstall os, keep it updated (including your router and everything that can act in your network), and consider all keys and passwords broken. Ignore pipewire as dedicated issue. The update thing also applies to, especially proprietary, drivers that are not included in the auto-updates of dnf, and to network-attached devices like printers.

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Hello @bryguy ,
Just wondering how you came to that conclusion. As noted by others, pipewire and wireplumber are the tools for sound on Fedora Linux now. Maybe trying to figure out that part first would help with getting to the solution for you. I’d be really surprised of pipewire had compromised your system.

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