Subject: Pipewire user service after upgrade to 3.23

From: Ian Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2025 14:03:14 +0000

I will start by saying that as far as I can tell everything is
_working_, but I can no longer administer the service.  I am using
X11.  Unfortunately I did not try any of this immediately before the
upgrade.

Here are some commands that I tried:

-------------

$ openrc -U 

$ rc-status -U
Runlevel: sysinit
Dynamic Runlevel: hotplugged
Dynamic Runlevel: needed/wanted
Dynamic Runlevel: manual

$ openrc -U default
 * default: not a valid runlevel

$ openrc -U gui
 * Use 'notify=fd:3' instead of 'ready=fd:3'
 * Starting pipewire ...
 * supervise-daemon: /usr/bin/pipewire is already running
 * failed to start pipewire
                                                      [ !! ]
 * ERROR: pipewire failed to start

$ rc-service -U pipewire start
 * Use 'notify=fd:3' instead of 'ready=fd:3'
 * Starting pipewire ...
 * failed to start pipewire
                                                      [ !! ]
 * ERROR: pipewire failed to start

$ rc-service -U pipewire restart
 * Use 'notify=fd:3' instead of 'ready=fd:3'
 * Starting pipewire ...
 * failed to start pipewire
                                                      [ !! ]
 * ERROR: pipewire failed to start

--------

Excerpt from /var/log/messages

Dec 11 13:48:20 orion daemon.warn supervise-daemon[5476]:
/usr/bin/pipewire, pid 5491, exited with return code 1 Dec 11 13:48:20
orion daemon.err pipewire:  * supervise-daemon: failed to dup ready fd:
Bad file descriptor Dec 11 13:48:23 orion daemon.warn
supervise-daemon[5476]: /usr/bin/pipewire, pid 5493, exited with return
code 1 Dec 11 13:48:23 orion daemon.warn supervise-daemon[5476]:
respawned "/usr/bin/pipewire" too many times, exiting Dec 11 13:48:23
orion daemon.err pipewire:  * supervise-daemon: failed to dup ready fd:
Bad file descriptor

---------

Really no idea where to go from here - has anyone else seen this?

Ian.

---

From: Ian Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2025 10:15:16 +0000

More information:

$ rc-status -Ua
Runlevel: gui
 pipewire                                                          [
stopped  ] Dynamic Runlevel: hotplugged
Dynamic Runlevel: needed/wanted
Dynamic Runlevel: manual

$ ls -lAh /etc/xdg/autostart
total 60K
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  209 Nov 28 19:52 .pipewire.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  296 Nov 23 10:44 at-spi-dbus-bus.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8.7K Nov 30 16:23 gnome-keyring-pkcs11.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8.2K Nov 30 16:23 gnome-keyring-secrets.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5.9K Jan  3  2025 xfce4-power-manager.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6.3K Dec 21  2024 xfce4-screensaver.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8.1K May 30  2025 xfsettingsd.desktop

$ rc-service -U pipewire restart
 * You are attempting to run an openrc service on a
 * system which openrc did not boot.
 * You may be inside a chroot or you may have used
 * another initialization system to boot this system.
 * In this situation, you will get unpredictable results!
 * If you really want to do this, issue the following command:
 * touch /run/user/1000/openrc/softlevel
 * ERROR: dbus failed to start
 * You are attempting to run an openrc service on a
 * system which openrc did not boot.
 * You may be inside a chroot or you may have used
 * another initialization system to boot this system.
 * In this situation, you will get unpredictable results!
 * If you really want to do this, issue the following command:
 * touch /run/user/1000/openrc/softlevel
 * ERROR: wireplumber failed to start
 * ERROR: cannot start pipewire as dbus would not start

To reiterate, pipewire IS running and I CAN use more than one audio
input at a time, so what is happening here?

Ian.

---

From: Prabu Anand Kalivaradhan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2025 19:45:32 +0530

from the  /etc/xdg/autostart i assume you're running Xfce and
*xfce4-session,*the Xfce session manager will start the
services/applications listed there. Since pipewire-launcher is listed
there, it starts the pipewire and results in conflict with user service.
As mentioned in https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/PipeWire#Launch_PipeWire,
running both will result in conflicts. Please remove the pipewire.desktop
from the autostart folder, to manage pipewire using user service.

$ apk info /etc/xdg/autostart/pipewire.desktop  --who-owns
/etc/xdg/autostart/pipewire.desktop is owned by pipewire-1.4.9-r2
$ cat /etc/xdg/autostart/pipewire.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Pipewire
Comment=Start Pipewire
Exec=/usr/libexec/pipewire-launcher
Terminal=false
Type=Application
X-KDE-autostart-phase=1
X-GNOME-HiddenUnderSystemd=true
X-systemd-skip=true

---

From: Ian Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2025 14:26:23 +0000

I don't know if you noticed, but it is "dotted out".  Even so, I will
try that anyway, next time I reboot.

Ian.

---

From: Ian Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2025 08:37:15 +0000

I tried deleting the autostart file rather than dotting it out, but got
a message about XDG_RUNTIME_DIR being unset.  AFAIK that is a Wayland
thing, whereas I am using X.

$ rc-status -Ua
 * Caching service dependencies ...
  [ ok ] Runlevel: gui
 pipewire                                                          [
stopped  ] Dynamic Runlevel: hotplugged
Dynamic Runlevel: needed/wanted
Dynamic Runlevel: manual

$ doas rc-service -U pipewire restart
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR unset.

Incidentally, I tried this on an image backup of v3.22, so whatever has
happened has been "backported".

To reiterate, all this worked _perfectly_ back in the summer when I set
it up, so it is a regression.

I should also add this is on a Raspberry Pi 500 (aarch64).

Ian.

---

From: Ian Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2025 09:34:50 +0000

I revisited the Wiki pages, and user services seem to be no longer a
pre-requisite for pipewire (they certainly were when I first set it up).

It occurs to me that a decision might have been made to use an autostart
file _instead_ of a user service.  Is this correct?  I will gladly drop
the user service is that is the case!

Ian.

---

From: Ian Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2025 10:59:13 +0000

I suppose I should wrap this up . . .

I have decided to go with the desktop file, and abandon the user
service, for now at least, and woudl like to point out once more that at
_no_ point was I left with broken audio.

I would be interested to know if the user service stuff is still
considered the way forward; certainly when I first set this up I had to
jump through a few hoops to skip the Wayland stuff that I didn't need.
I would hope that X will be supported fully, but in any case the desktop
file will see me through ;)