After I updated packages last sunday evening and booted into Fedora (36) yesterday (monday), I’ve been having strange issues with audio that weren’t there before. At first, my sound card wasn’t getting detected, but I discovered that this was a kernel issue (5.19.8-200) and it was fixed by booting into an older kernel.
However, in KDE my audio settings are gone, I’m unable to adjust the volume or mute with my keyboard, and the sound icon in the system tray is gone. Pipewire services (pipewire.service and pipewire-pulse.service) all give messages like these:
Sep 13 20:33:00 fedora systemd[1474]: Started pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service.
Sep 13 20:33:00 fedora pipewire[4495]: mod.rt: RTKit error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied
Sep 13 20:33:00 fedora pipewire[4495]: mod.rt: could not make thread 4500 realtime using RTKit: Permission denied
Sep 13 20:56:22 fedora systemd[1474]: pipewire.service: Current command vanished from the unit file, execution of the command list won't be resumed.
The wireplumber service says things like this:
Sep 13 20:59:18 fedora wireplumber[6209]: SPA handle 'api.libcamera.enum.manager' could not be loaded; is it installed?
Sep 13 20:59:18 fedora wireplumber[6209]: PipeWire's libcamera SPA missing or broken. libcamera not supported.
Sep 13 21:03:15 fedora wireplumber[6209]: dbus[6209]: Attempted to unregister path (path[0] = MediaEndpoint path[1] = A2DPSink) which isn't registered
Sep 13 21:03:15 fedora wireplumber[6209]: dbus[6209]: Attempted to unregister path (path[0] = MediaEndpoint path[1] = A2DPSink) which isn't registered
Sep 13 21:03:15 fedora wireplumber[6209]: dbus[6209]: Attempted to unregister path (path[0] = MediaEndpoint path[1] = A2DPSink) which isn't registered
Sep 13 21:03:15 fedora wireplumber[6209]: dbus[6209]: Attempted to unregister path (path[0] = MediaEndpoint path[1] = A2DPSink) which isn't registered
Sep 13 21:03:15 fedora wireplumber[6209]: dbus[6209]: Attempted to unregister path (path[0] = MediaEndpoint path[1] = A2DPSink) which isn't registered
Sep 13 21:03:15 fedora wireplumber[6209]: dbus[6209]: Attempted to unregister path (path[0] = MediaEndpoint path[1] = A2DPSink) which isn't registered
Sep 13 21:03:15 fedora wireplumber[6209]: Error opening hctl device: Permission denied
Sep 13 21:03:15 fedora wireplumber[6209]: can't open control for card hw:3: Permission denied
I do have to add that initially when I stumbled upon the missing sound issue, the audio settings, media key functionality and audio icon were still there, albeit the sound card was missing from the output. But I tried some things like reinstalling and downgrading pipewire and adjacent packages, and at some point all of these just disappeared.