Audio qube

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sys-audio working locally but client qubes show Dummy Output (Qubes 4.3.1)

System Info

  • Qubes OS: 4.3.1
  • Audio hardware: Intel Raptor Lake High Definition Audio (ALC897), onboard
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060

Setup

I followed the official community guide by @neowutran to set up sys-audio manually.

Qube structure:

  • audio-template: cloned from fedora-44-minimal
  • audio-app: AppVM based on audio-template, marked as template_for_dispvms
  • sys-audio: named DispVM based on audio-app, HVM, no network

Packages installed in audio-template:

pipewire-qubes qubes-audio-daemon pavucontrol qubes-core-admin-client qubes-usb-proxy alsa-utils pasystray

PCI passthrough in dom0:

qvm-pci attach --persistent sys-audio dom0:00_1f.3 --option no-strict-reset=True

Global setting:

qubes-prefs default_audiovm sys-audio

What works

  • sys-audio starts successfully (Running, DispVM, HVM)
  • aplay -l in sys-audio shows card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC897 Analog
  • speaker-test -t sine -f 440 -l 1 in sys-audio produces audible sound
  • systemctl --user status pipewire in sys-audio: active (running)
  • qubesdb-read /qubes-audio-domain-xid in client qube returns 4
  • qvm-ls sys-audio shows XID = 4 — XID matches
  • pw-cli info all | grep qubes confirms libpipewire-module-qubes is loaded
  • /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/30_qubes.conf exists and is correct

The Problem

All client qubes (Kicksecure-18 based, fedora-44-xfce based) show Dummy Output in wpctl status:

Audio
├─ Devices:
├─ Sinks:
│  *  38. Dummy Output   [vol: 1.00]
├─ Sources:

Running systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse in client qubes does not help.

qubesdb-read /qubes-audio-domain-xid returns 4 in client qubes, matching sys-audio XID.

However, /etc/qubes/audio-vm-xid does not exist in client qubes.

The vchan connection appears to be silently failing — no errors in journalctl --user -u pipewire in client qubes.

Similar existing report

This appears identical to:

Question

Is this a known regression in Qubes 4.3 when using a non-dom0 AudioVM? Is there any workaround?

Thank you.