No audio in fresh install of Excalibur

sephiroth · 2026-05-06 16:34:16

I have installed Excalibur in a VirtualBox VM running on Windows 11 Pro. Installation was fairly easy and I did a barebones install. I then installed the core Plasma package and standard desktop (not the big, full one). Everything seems to be fine except for audio. When clicking the mixer icon in the system try I only get "Connection to the Sound Service Lost" and nothing else. Pipewire is installed from what I can tell. I installed the ALSA utilities. Where do I even begin here?

greenjeans · 2026-05-06 17:07:25

Hmm, pipewire is not my area of expertise, but off the top of my head i'd open a terminal and type alsamixer to see if I could get an idea of what's available, could be wrong device or maybe a muted channel.

Problem is with a big DE like that not to mention pipewire, you might not get proper output from that command, but it's what i'd do first.

Robin · 2026-05-06 19:50:52

On my (Xfce) panel I have an icon in the system tray for "alsamixer" that fixes sound for me.

The fix doesn't "stick," though, after a reboot. I'm sure there's a way to make it the default, some file to edit, probably. If anyone can suggest such an edit, I would be very grateful!

golinux · 2026-05-06 20:10:59

Maybe try .asoundrc ?

greenjeans · 2026-05-06 21:50:38

Maybe try .asoundrc ?

This is the way!

goat · Yesterday 03:58:21

Audio has been broken, out-of-the-box, in my experience of both latest Stable Debian and Devuan. I just uninstalled pipewire to fix it I think. Might have installed pulseaudio after the uninstall.

Last edited by goat (Yesterday 03:58:45)

sephiroth · Yesterday 15:43:28

I thought that pipewire was the new requirement for Plasma? I have been using Gentoo for at least a decade now (maybe longer? I left Debian due to systemd) and things just work when built right. I am trying to find a desktop Linux solution that isn't woefully out-of-date and works without a lot of custom mess, so Devuan is my first stop. I looked at PCLinuxOS but the team over there are incredibly narcissistic and rude.

IIRC in the past (Debian 7?) KDE required a different system. ALSA was always underneath everything, but it used to use something else. It escapes me at the moment. Pulse Audio! Just hit me.

Also, alsamixer responds that the host is down. Considering that this is audio and not a network, my guesses are that a service is down, possibly due to a missing kernel module.

EDIT -
I tried starting the alsa-utils service and it failed.

alsa-lib main.c:1554:(snd_use_case_mgr_open) error: failed to import hw:0 use case configuration -2

Something isn't happy.

Last edited by sephiroth (Yesterday 15:46:17)

kapqa · Yesterday 18:26:43

if you want to use alsa for sound and get rid of pulseaudio/pipewier

the forumuser igorzwx has posted the most elegant solution have seen so far (been ubunt/debian user since ubuntu 12.04) -
it is not perfect , but function very well and steadfast; please it can become more universally adaptable with fall-back-mechanisms when more devices are used (a bit like on kde with phonon) (maybe this is already achievable, but just did not figure it out).

since have had to setup the devuan 6 once again lastly, have wrote down the adapted instructions posted here in the so called "manual".

for installing alsa devuan 6 maybe like this

sudo apt-mark manual libpulse0 libpulse-mainloop-glib0 libpulsedsp

sudo apt-mark hold pulseaudio* pipewire*

sudo apt-get purge wireplumber pipewire-alsa pipewire-audio pipewire pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils pavucontrol pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pipewire pipewire-bin pipewire-pulse

then you can configure .asoundrc after reboot or so, or use the tool "arateconf" which don't know if it already available in the repositories.

it can be installed via these instructions.
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=57771

(just use under point "Install gcc-10 and g++-10 from Devuan's oldstable repositories." oldoldstable instead of oldstable

then you can use "arateconf" to create the .asoundrc and alsa will can function beautifully for you; as said, not perfect, but viable , and gentler to the ears.

Last edited by kapqa (Yesterday 18:29:38)

fsmithred · Yesterday 20:40:18

Here's one simple way to get pipewire working:
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=47569#p47569

PedroReina · Today 07:19:21

sephiroth wrote:

I thought that pipewire was the new requirement for Plasma?

Just my 2 cents here: I run happily Devuan 5 with KDE Plasma with pure ALSA. I had to tailor /etc/modprobe/alsa.conf to convince Plasma to use my prefered sound output. YMMV.

VLC can be handy to troubleshoot, because in it you can change sound output on the fly.

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#1 2026-05-06 16:34:16

No audio in fresh install of Excalibur

#2 2026-05-06 17:07:25

Re: No audio in fresh install of Excalibur

#3 2026-05-06 19:50:52

Re: No audio in fresh install of Excalibur

#4 2026-05-06 20:10:59

Re: No audio in fresh install of Excalibur

#5 2026-05-06 21:50:38

Re: No audio in fresh install of Excalibur

#6 Yesterday 03:58:21

Re: No audio in fresh install of Excalibur

#7 Yesterday 15:43:28

Re: No audio in fresh install of Excalibur

#8 Yesterday 18:26:43

Re: No audio in fresh install of Excalibur

#9 Yesterday 20:40:18

Re: No audio in fresh install of Excalibur

#10 Today 07:19:21

Re: No audio in fresh install of Excalibur

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