No Volume icon on antix 23.1 full install

[zeitbremseMember]

hello,
i had the icon in the beginning as far as i remember, now i don’t have it anymore.

the system is:
Kernel: 6.1.60-antix.1-amd64-smp
Distro: antiX-23.1_x64-full

sound is playing.
when pipewire is on, then it says when starting in terminal volumeicon:

t540@t540:~
$ volumeicon
[1] 20538
t540@t540:~
$ volumeicon: alsa_backend.c:86: asound_get_volume: Assertion 
m_elem != NULL' failed.
/bin/bash: line 8: 20540 Aborted                 volumeicon

when pipewire is switched/toogled off, when starting in terminal volumeicon the icon appears.

in startup delay i put it from 5 to 7 to 10, not helping. looking like this presently:

## Puts a volume icon on the taskbar default stand da 5
sleep 7 && volumeicon & 

i would like to have control over the sound especially the microphone with a gui.

i don’t know how to fix it and why it disapeared.

any help would be nice

• This topic was modified 1 year, 12 months ago by zeitbremse.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 12 months ago by zeitbremse.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 12 months ago by zeitbremse.

[rokytnjiForum Admin]

Look in antiXcc > session > userdesktop session around line 20 or so below and make sure nothing you need is commented out

## Uncomment if using pipewire (you need to install it). Make sure it starts before volumeicon.
#start pipewire, pipewire-pulse and wireplumber via conf file
pipewire &

## Uncomment if using pipewire (you need to install it). Make sure it starts before volumeicon.
#start pipewire, pipewire-pulse and wireplumber via script
#pipewire-start &

## Puts a volume icon on the taskbar
sleep 5 && volumeicon & 

I have a volume icon on my taskbar. I can right click mine and open the mixer.

How I run mine

` 3.4 MiB + 601.5 KiB = 4.0 MiB pipewire-pulse
4.3 MiB + 440.5 KiB = 4.7 MiB conky
5.5 MiB + 2.7 MiB = 8.2 MiB volumeicon
8.9 MiB + 1.1 MiB = 10.1 MiB pipewire
`

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.
Motorcycle racing is rocket science.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[PPCMember]

zeitbremse wrote:

i would like to have control over the sound especially the microphone with a gui.

If what is stated in the previous post does not help you to get volumeicon running on the taskbar by default, I don’t know how to help you fix that, when using pipewire, but you can always have a GUI to manage sound: pavucontrol (Pulse Audio Volume Control)- it’s a modern Powerful GUI that does what you want.

Either on Alsa or Pipewire- the volume control, available from Control Centre > Hardware > Basic System Mixer should manage volume and all audio settings including Mic. On pipewire, you may require pressing F6 and select “Pipewire” (or press F5 to select “all”). It’s not so pretty, but it works.

P.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 12 months ago by PPC.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 12 months ago by PPC.

[namida12Member]

Completed a New install because sound eventually quit playing on previous 23.1 install. In the meantime I have been using a thumb drive made from September “Monthly antiX Full snapshots”. Like all live sessions I have used there is no volume Icon installed. Without a volume icon on the panel the video volume differences on Netflix, Max, YouTube, and Vimeo and it has become very annoying.

Without messing up sound – I would like to understand how to find a way to put the Alsa volume on the panel.

JR

[PPCMember]

I would suggest that you try this:

wait several seconds, like 20 or 30, after booting, under Pipewire, before trying to start volumeicon, from the terminal, and check if it then works or you get the same error

Solution for what you ask:

namida12 wrote:

I would like to understand how to find a way to put the Alsa volume on the panel.

antiX Menu > Control Centre > Edit IceWM settings > “Toolbar” Tab > This displays the configuration file for what is displayed in your toolbar > Add, anywhere you want, this line (you can use any name, inside the quotes, and any icon, I choose the default one “alsamixer-equalizer”:

prog "Volume" alsamixer-equalizer urxvt -e alsamixer

Save the change and restart IceWM. The new icon will appear next to the rest of the quick launch icons, on the left side of the toolbar.

If you want, you can use instead Pipewire’s GUI (pavucontrol):

prog "Volume PulseAudio" /usr/share/icons/papirus-antix/48x48/categories/multimedia-volume-control.png pavucontrol

Or even my own simple GUI:

prog "Yad-Volume" /usr/share/icons/papirus-antix/48x48/categories/multimedia-volume-control.png yad-volume

After any change to the toolbar configuration file, always restart IceWM

Extra tip: you can “minimize to the system tray” any app, in IceWM, placing, for that session, the icon’s app in the system tray, near the clock (right click the window’s title bar, and check that option, near the end of the menu). As far as I know, that works only for that time, that you are running the app, antiX does not “remember” to always place the icon on the system tray.

P.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by PPC.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by PPC.

[zeitbremseMember]

i don’t have that columm:

## Uncomment if using pipewire (you need to install it). Make sure it starts before volumeicon.
#start pipewire, pipewire-pulse and wireplumber via script
#pipewire-start &

i have only those two columms and they are like that looking:

## Uncomment if using pipewire (you may need to install it). Make sure it starts before volumeicon.
#start pipewire, pipewire-pulse and wireplumber via conf file
pipewire &

## Puts a volume icon on the taskbar default stand da 5
sleep 7 && volumeicon & 

i waited 40sec still the failed message as mentioned earlier appears in the terminal.

i also don’t understand what is the difference between alsa and pipewire, or better what is alsa and what pipewire. and if they both are soundprogramms why they both have to run.
@ PPC

when i start in terminal pavucontrol it’s states: “establishing connection to pulse audio” but from there never goes further

is it not just possible to run one programm which does the sound and gives an icon by default after startup?

[abc-nixMember]

Is your system up to date?

If it is, go to Control Centre – Hardware tab – Disable/Enable PipeWire. Disable to use pure ALSA. Enable to use pipewire.

ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) – what manages audio input/output with different devices on Linux.
Pipewire – An abstraction layer over ALSA for easier sound API configuration. Has compatibility with other audio abstraction layers like Pulseaudio and Jack (and replaces them).

Any extra layers use more resources, so some users don’t have pipewire enabled and only use pure ALSA. Decide what is easier/better for you (try with pipewire enabled and disabled and decide what you want to keep).

Corruption has two hands: the Right and the Left. Don't let them squeeze you.

[zeitbremseMember]

yes system is up to date

ok so i understand pipewire is a kind of addon for alsa making it more usuful overall, sametime it consumes recources. for me it would be ok to have it running as the laptop is strong enough for any benefits, also as i remember it had a pretty easy to use mixer adjustment gui therefore i would like to have it.
but my problem still is that with pipewire toggled on it gives me no volumeicon so i can’t use the advantages of pipewire.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by zeitbremse.

[PPCMember]

Like abc-nix said ALSA and Pipewire are both Sound Servers, the software that the OS uses in order to produce sound.
Your computer seems to be having some kind of problem correctly running Pipewire. Some users do not like or don’t need Pipewire- for those cases, running Alsa can be enough.

zeitbremse wrote:

is it not just possible to run one programm which does the sound and gives an icon by default after startup?

Yes. It’s possible. That’s exactly what antiX does on all the computers I tried to run it. The worst that can happen is that the computer is tool slow and it requires adding more “Sleep” time before starting volumeicon (or start it manually).
My point: it’s some kind of problem when running antiX on that particular hardware, not a “general problem” with antiX.
If all the software you try to run on your computer produces sound just using Alsa, then Toggle Pipewire off. That’s what that Control Centre option is there for.
Once toggled on/off, it will remain that way until you toggle it back again.

If the error you got running pavucontrol was when you were running Pipewire (it does not work under ALSA), then there’s something very wrong…

Do alsa-mixer and yad-volume work for you?

Just one last question: when running Live, do you get the volume icon on the system tray? Do you get the same error, trying to manually launch volumeicon? I ask that because it may be a problem with the more modern kernel. If that’s so, in Grub boot menu you can select the legacy, 5.X Kernel…

P.

[abc-nixMember]

Try disabling and enabling in the control centre first.

Also, check to see what version of pipewire is installed
apt policy pipewire
If the nosystem version is installed, then it should work normally. If the Debian version is installed instead, it is possible the mirror used for the antiX repository is outdated. (If so, you could try using the Repo manager to change the antiX mirror and update the system again).

I am saying this because:

zeitbremse wrote:

when i start in terminal pavucontrol it’s states: “establishing connection to pulse audio” but from there never goes further

pipewire is not starting properly with the system. The toggle should enable it, but if it doesn’t, we need to start searching for the real cause of the issue.

EDIT: Ninja’d by PPC

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by abc-nix.

Corruption has two hands: the Right and the Left. Don't let them squeeze you.

[zeitbremseMember]

$ apt policy pipewire
pipewire:
  Installed: 1.2.4-1~bpo12+1
  Candidate: 1.2.4-1~bpo12+1
  Version table:
 *** 1.2.4-1~bpo12+1 100
        100 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.3.65-3+deb12u1 500
        500 http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian bookworm/main amd64 Packages

does this mean i have the wrong version ?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by zeitbremse.

[abc-nixMember]

Possibly you disabled the antiX repo because of the expresskey error when updating.

Please share the output of
inxi -r
If it says “No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list”, then use repo-manager to enable the antiX’ bookworm repo again, change the mirror, and if you see a GPG key error when updating with
sudo apt update
then run the first fix mentioned in the top of the Announcements (in the forum’s landing page).

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by abc-nix.

Corruption has two hands: the Right and the Left. Don't let them squeeze you.

[zeitbremseMember]

when i try to post something it says you are moving too fast ????

[zeitbremseMember]

i don’t know why there is an error in the forum telling “slow down,you move to fast” in red
so i couldn’t reply yet

the output says this:

$ inxi -r
Repos:
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list
    1: deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/antix-archive-keyring.gpg] http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/mxlinux/packages/antix/bookworm bookworm main nonfree nosystemd
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/atom.list
    1: deb [arch=amd64] https://packagecloud.io/AtomEditor/atom/any/ any main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bookworm-backports.list
    1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list
    1: deb http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list
    1: deb http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
    2: deb http://security.debian.org/ bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/librewolf.list
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/liquorix.list

[abc-nixMember]

zeitbremse wrote:

`Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list
1: deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/antix-archive-keyring.gpg] http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/mxlinux/packages/antix/bookworm bookworm main nonfree nosystemd
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/atom.list`

Good. I have used these repo mirrors in the past, and they seem to be up-to-date.

Now that I am paying attention, I see that the pipewire version you have installed comes from backports (probably it got upgraded with a apt dist-upgrade or similar command).
antiX repos for bookworm contain updates for up to 1.0.3 version of pipewire (which is more than enough for normal update, but cannot match backports). Backports are used to get newer software, but sometimes have compatibility problems with the default software in the stable repos, so it is not recommended to upgrade all the packages to it (it has generated dependency problems in the past). For our case we won’t go into this further and only concentrate on pipewire.

We will try to deal with these 2 issues separately.

1. pipewire proper launch. We won’t change the package version and will add a config file for pipewire in your home config folder
1.1. Create a folder for pipewire in ~/.config
mkdir ~/.config/pipewire
1.2. Copy over the default config file to the folder just created:
cp /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf
1.3. Open it in a text editor.
geany ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf
1.4. Scroll down to the end of the file. Edit the text inside the context.exec function, adding new execution options to it. For example, locate the line that starts with “# Run the session manager with -h for options.” and add the execution commands underneath, so it looks like this:

    # Run the session manager with -h for options.
    { path = "wireplumber" args = "" }
    { path = "pipewire-pulse" args = "" }
    #{ path = "/usr/bin/pipewire-media-session" args = ""

1.5. Save and close the text editor.
What we just added are the default startup commands for pipewire, so it automatically runs the session manager (named wireplumber) and the compatibility layer with pulseaudio (pipewire-pulse) when the pipewire audio server is started. This is the default behavior in the nosystemd package, so you can also use it for the Debian-based package (I have it configured this way in testing and it works for both Debian and antiX packages).

Now the pipewire Disable/Enable toggle in the control centre should work properly. Try to disable and re-enable pipewire again and it should fix the volumeicon and pavucontrol issue.

2. Figuring out the issue with antiX repo not showing for some packages.
First check if there are any errors when running the command
sudo apt update
One of the messages shoud be
Hit:XX http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/mxlinux/packages/antix/bookworm bookworm InRelease
If it displays something different, like “Err:” or “Ign:”, then we know there is an issue for this mirror. Check the final lines of the terminal output for possible error messages. If they are related to the GPG key, the fix is described in the Announcements in the forum landing page. If it is something else, please share the terminal output so we can figure out what is going wrong and propose a solution.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by abc-nix.

Corruption has two hands: the Right and the Left. Don't let them squeeze you.

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