Pipewire intermittently doesn't show any sound device

Ask Fedora
1

Hi,

since yesterday, I have the issue that all my audio devices (input and output) have disappeared in the sound settings of Cinnamon. I assume that the issue though is at lower level and the sound settings are a consequence (see below). Rebooting solves or not the issue, or make it appear again. I had one case where the issue disappeared during a working session (for no apparent reason). As I write those lines, the problem is gone, but it was also gone yesterday, but it appeared again on first boot this morning.

The problem wasn’t there 2 days ago, and I can’t remember having done any change between the two days (dnf history shows that no update was done in-between).

While I have the issue:

  • pw-dump hangs forever
  • pw-cli ls hangs forever, interrupted it shows sometimes some devices, but only virtual ones.
  • aplay -L hangs sometimes forever, but sometimes it also shows the devices.
  • and so does alsa-info.sh (on cat /proc/asound/card1/codec#0 /proc/asound/card1/codec#2 )
  • lspci, lsusb and lsmod all seem to show the right thing
  • systemctl --user status pipe* wire*shows both pipewire and pipewire-pulse green (service and socket), as well as wireplumber, also green.
  • dmesg and journalctl don’t show anything suspicious
  • login and rebooting hang here and there, but I guess that it’s a follow-up appearance

Pipewire doesn't actually recognize any Sound outputs (devices) looks like my issue but it’s old, and wireplumber has replaced pipewire-media-session, so I do not think it’s really related.

Audio part of inxi -Fzxx

Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Tiger Lake-H HD Audio vendor: Lenovo
    driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:43c8
  Device-2: Plantronics Plantronics C720
    driver: plantronics,snd-usb-audio,usbhid type: USB rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s
    lanes: 1 bus-ID: 3-4.1.2.2:12 chip-ID: 047f:0129
  API: ALSA v: k6.12.8-200.fc41.x86_64 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.2.7 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
    status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
    4: pw-jack type: plugin

As I have PCI and USB devices, I’m tending to think that it can’t be a hardware issue, but what do I know?

Any idea how to debug further is welcome, this is hanging over my head as it can reappear after every reboot.

Thanks, Eric

2

BTW, last kernel update was 5 (working) days before the issue appeared, and there was no pipewire/wireplumber upgrade since I moved to F41 (end of November).

$ rpm -qa | grep -e pipewire -e wireplumber
pipewire-plugin-libcamera-1.2.7-1.fc41.x86_64
pipewire-libs-1.2.7-1.fc41.x86_64
vlc-plugin-pipewire-3-4.fc41.x86_64
pipewire-1.2.7-1.fc41.x86_64
pipewire-jack-audio-connection-kit-libs-1.2.7-1.fc41.x86_64
pipewire-pulseaudio-1.2.7-1.fc41.x86_64
pipewire-gstreamer-1.2.7-1.fc41.x86_64
pipewire-jack-audio-connection-kit-1.2.7-1.fc41.x86_64
pipewire-alsa-1.2.7-1.fc41.x86_64
pipewire-utils-1.2.7-1.fc41.x86_64
qemu-audio-pipewire-9.1.2-2.fc41.x86_64
wireplumber-libs-0.5.7-1.fc41.x86_64
wireplumber-0.5.7-1.fc41.x86_64

$ uname -rvm
6.12.8-200.fc41.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Jan  2 19:26:03 UTC 2025 x86_64

But I have upgraded since the probleme appeared (8th of January, at 9:00), without noticeable effect:

830 2025-01-08 09:20:46 41 Upgrade wireplumber-0:0.5.7-1.fc41.x86_64
830 2025-01-08 09:20:46 41 Upgrade wireplumber-libs-0:0.5.7-1.fc41.x86_64
830 2025-01-08 09:20:46 41 Replaced wireplumber-0:0.5.5-2.fc41.x86_64
830 2025-01-08 09:20:46 41 Replaced wireplumber-libs-0:0.5.5-2.fc41.x86_64
472 2024-12-15 07:31:51 41 Upgrade nxpwireless-firmware-0:20241210-1.fc41.noarch
472 2024-12-15 07:31:51 41 Replaced nxpwireless-firmware-0:20241110-1.fc41.noarch
167 2024-12-05 07:40:04 41 Upgrade qemu-audio-pipewire-2:9.1.2-2.fc41.x86_64
167 2024-12-05 07:40:04 41 Replaced qemu-audio-pipewire-2:9.1.2-1.fc41.x86_64

904 2025-01-09 09:22:08 41 Install kernel-0:6.12.8-200.fc41.x86_64
904 2025-01-09 09:22:08 41 Remove kernel-0:6.11.11-300.fc41.x86_64
830 2025-01-08 09:20:46 41 Install kernel-0:6.12.7-200.fc41.x86_64
830 2025-01-08 09:20:46 41 Remove kernel-0:6.11.10-300.fc41.x86_64
533 2024-12-16 17:35:44 41 Install kernel-0:6.12.4-200.fc41.x86_64
533 2024-12-16 17:35:44 41 Remove kernel-0:6.11.8-200.fc40.x86_64
472 2024-12-15 07:31:51 41 Install kernel-0:6.11.11-300.fc41.x86_64
472 2024-12-15 07:31:51 41 Remove kernel-0:6.11.7-200.fc40.x86_64

The problem hasn’t appeared today but is still looming…