Audio stopped working in all VMs (AppVMs, DispVMs). This started after trying KDE and making some changes in dom0, including uninstalling and reinstalling audio-related packages. The audio icon disappeared from the status tray, and audio never came back.
What I’ve tried so far:
I checked the PulseAudio socket activation using systemctl --user status pulseaudio.socket and enabled it. I reinstalled all relevant audio packages in dom0 using sudo qubes-dom0-update pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils qubes-audio-dom0 qubes-desktop-linux-common. I also confirmed that the audio hardware is properly detected in dom0 with aplay -l, and that PulseAudio sinks are either missing or not functioning, using pactl list short sinks. Testing audio directly in dom0 with paplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav doesn’t work either. I confirmed the audio settings are correctly pointing to dom0 by checking qubes-prefs | grep audio and using qvm-prefs <vm-name> audiovm to make sure the AudioVM is set to dom0. I also removed any old PulseAudio configuration by deleting ~/.config/pulse, then rebooted dom0 and the VMs after all changes. Despite all this, audio still doesn’t work in any VM.
Current status:
- Audio still does not work in any VM.
- No sound in browser, media player, or speaker-test.
- No obvious errors in logs.
pactl list sinks may return nothing or default device not working.
Request: Looking for help restoring default audio functionality in dom0 so that QVMs can play sound again.
dom0 uses pipewire, not pulseaudio; you can re-install (at least some of) audio packages using sudo qubes-dom0-update --switch-audio-server-to=pipewire
Then check if pipewire.socket and pipewire-pulse.socket are running.
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Thanks, switching back to PipeWire using:
sudo qubes-dom0-update --switch-audio-server-to=pipewire
did the trick — audio is now working again in all VMs! Really appreciate the help.
However, I noticed that the volume control icon still doesn’t appear in the dom0 status tray, and the media keys (volume up/down/mute) on my keyboard don’t have any effect. Is there a way to restore volume control integration in XFCE? Not sure if this is related to missing packages or configuration.
Thanks again!
Do you have xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin installed in dom0?
Maybe you’ve removed a bit too much of the packages related to pulseaudio. Here are the packages installed in my dom0:
[user@dom0 ~]$ dnf list installed | grep pulse
pipewire-pulseaudio.x86_64 0.3.84-1.fc37 @qubes-dom0-cached
pulseaudio-libs.x86_64 16.1-4.fc37 @anaconda
pulseaudio-libs-glib2.x86_64 16.1-4.fc37 @anaconda
xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin.x86_64 0.4.4-1.fc37 @anaconda
2 Likes
The issue is now fully resolved.
So, first, as @marmarek mentioned, I switched back to PipeWire since dom0 uses PipeWire instead of PulseAudio.
I ran the command sudo qubes-dom0-update --switch-audio-server-to=pipewire and verified that the necessary PipeWire sockets (pipewire.socket and pipewire-pulse.socket) were running.
Next, I followed @MellowPoison’s advice and installed the missing xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin package. This was required for the volume control icon to appear in the XFCE panel.
After adding the PulseAudio plugin manually to the panel, the volume icon appeared, and the volume keys (volume up/down/mute) began working again.
Thanks again to everyone for the suggestions and help! Really appreciate the guidance! 
