Pulseaudio cannot start

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1

EDIT: For those having this problem, Don’t use pulseaudio.

If your sound is still broken, follow the instructions in this document: How to troubleshoot sound problems :: Fedora Docs

Specifically, the “Resolving Audio Input Issues” section.

Environment:

  • OS: Fedora Linux 42 (Workstation Edition)
  • Kernel version:
    • 6.16.7-200.fc42
  • Hardware: 20 × 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-12700K, 32 GiB of RAM (31.1 GiB usable), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070

Problem description:
When trying to start Pulseadio, the application generates an error and then quits, after which I have no audio.

Error logs:
From trying to launch Pulseaudio through the console:

W: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Stale PID file, overwriting.
E: [pulseaudio] alsa-ucm.c: Assertion 'dev == data->device' failed at ../src/modules/alsa/alsa-ucm.c:1562, function pa_alsa_ucm_set_port(). Aborting.
Aborted (core dumped)

Steps tried:

Uninstalled and reinstalled Pulseaudio, and then ran systemctl --user status pulseaudio: which gave this:

× pulseaudio.service - Sound Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service; disabled; preset: disabled)
    Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service.d
             └─00-uresourced.conf
             /usr/lib/systemd/user/service.d
             └─10-timeout-abort.conf
     Active: failed (Result: core-dump) since Sun 2025-09-14 12:34:50 EDT; 15min ago
 Invocation: 4bf39377e8ba4f2696205cc74fcda46b
TriggeredBy: × pulseaudio.socket
   Main PID: 3997 (code=dumped, signal=ABRT)

Sep 14 12:34:49 fedora systemd[2213]: pulseaudio.service: Failed with result 'core-dump'.
Sep 14 12:34:49 fedora systemd[2213]: Failed to start pulseaudio.service - Sound Service.
Sep 14 12:34:49 fedora systemd[2213]: pulseaudio.service: Consumed 88ms CPU time, 69.9M memory peak.
Sep 14 12:34:50 fedora systemd[2213]: pulseaudio.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 5.
Sep 14 12:34:50 fedora systemd[2213]: pulseaudio.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Sep 14 12:34:50 fedora systemd[2213]: pulseaudio.service: Failed with result 'core-dump'.
Sep 14 12:34:50 fedora systemd[2213]: Failed to start pulseaudio.service - Sound Service.

Recent changes:
I used sudo dnf update, but other then that I didn’t mess with Pulseaudio.

Expected behavior:
System should output audio using Pulseaudio.

Actual behavior:
System does not play audio, and Pulseadio does not start.

1 Like
2

Fedora has switched to pipewire! Pulseaudio is handled by pipewire.
sudo dnf install pipewire-pulseaudio --allowerasing

3

This doesn’t seem to work either, as trying to run pipewire-pulseaudio through the terminal just returns a generic “command not found” message. Additionally, installing pipewire and running it displays this error message:

Assertion 'dev == data->device' failed at ../src/modules/alsa/alsa-ucm.c:1562, function pa_alsa_ucm_set_port(). Aborting.

I honestly don’t know how I messed this up this badly.

Also, I do have the ALSA firmware and have the updated kernel drivers.

4

it’s not a command to run. RTFM the link above, Check Audio Service Status.

does this command produce audio?
paplay -v /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

probably by trying to run command pulseaudio in terminal and naively agreeing to install puiseaudio server?

5 
$ systemctl --user enable --now pipewire.socket
$ systemctl --user enable --now pipewire-pulse.socket
$ systemctl --user start  pipewire
$ systemctl --user start  pipewire-pulse
$ systemctl --user enable --now wireplumber

Running this fixed the problem. For some reason, pipewire and some other programs weren’t launching on startup.

I guess this is a lesson to read documents properly instead of immediately going to the forum.

Thank you for the help!

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