Just a little notice:
I found that if you installed and enabled hardened-malloc on your template, sys-audio will not run properly, other vm’s will not truely passthrough to sys-audio (because the vm’s soundbar aren’t shown on sys-audio’s pavucontrol “Playback” section, which should be shown).
Maybe there’s a solution of using both of them but it seems need lots of works. I just disable it and it runs properly.
Because this is in line with how Qubes provides security: security through compartmentalization. With sys-audio, you don’t have to trust the huge code of PulseAudio running in dom0 anymore. Moreover, you can securely use Bluetooth without interfering with dom0. It’s basically the same reason as the one for the sys-gui.
After 5 days, sys-audio still works perfect but I now missed the shortcut keys “fn+F1/F2/F3”. Is it possible to make it persistent? Or possibilities of making shortcut keys on services qube?
To deal with Fn hotkeys needs to interact with EC on your motherboard, so it’s mostly impossible to keep it persistent. Maybe you can define a hotkey to run a script in dom0, that qvm-run some commands in sys-audio, that tunes volume in sys-audio.
amixer sset Master 2%+
amixer sset Master 2%-
amixer sset Master 0 (note that for better experience of switching between mute/unmute, using the same hotkey, see below)
Thanks @tzwcfq ,
amixer sset Master toggle
Go to dom0 → Settings Manager → Keyboard → Application Shortcut → +Add:
Command: qvm-run -p sys-audio ‘@augsch command’ (Increase, decrease, mute respectively)
Then make your decided keyboard shortcut.
Done!
Yep! I’ve also tested it.
In my KDE environment, I can reassign those Fn hotkeys, so it’s native experience.
Oh I’m using XFCE. I once used KDE in another linux distro, but this time in Qubes I tried to configure the looks in… should I called it raw? Anyway it is a good experience! 
To use Fn+F1 to switch between mute/unmute, I created 3 little script.
mute.sh:
#!/bin/sh
qvm-run sys-audio "amixer sset Master mute"
./swap.sh
unmute.sh:
#!/bin/sh
qvm-run sys-audio "amixer sset Master unmute"
./swap.sh
swap.sh:
#!/bin/sh
cat mute.sh > temp
cat unmute.sh > mute.sh
cat temp > unmute.sh
And in your desktop env, create a hotkey to run mute.sh.
This solution is better than the previous one.
It seems nice, I make this later!
But isn’t the swap.sh should looks like:
#!/bin/sh
cat ./mute.sh > temp
cat ./unmute.sh > ./mute.sh
cat temp > ./unmute.sh
this?
I’ve tested your version and doesn’t succeed to the goal, and I’ve tested different version, whether have ./ or not, whether in swap, or mute or unmute. I’m still testing and report if success…
Still cannot success…
I thought it was the wrong formatting but it’s not.
I ran it through terminal: sh mute.sh, the function of mute and unmute can be swap, but when ran the <mute-function-stored>.sh, it will return this error:
<mute-function-stored>.sh: line 4: h: command not found
“What? It is not possible! Maybe I’ve typed wrong” But the result of cat <mute-function-stored>.sh tells me, I typed correctly, there’s no line 4… Whatever, it works through terminal.
The point is, when I make the hotkey, press the hotkey, IT WON’T WORK.
The hotkey is just straightly mute.sh or unmute.sh right?
I’m sorry that maybe I’m still Linux noob, but I really don’t know what’s going wrong…
Well, I think that “./” just means to “execute” here. When using cat, you just need to provide the files’ directory. Maybe I’m wrong.
I experienced the same error, however, it simply doesn’t matter on my side. My speakers are correctly muted and unmuted.
Yes, but maybe you have to provide it with mute.sh’s absolute directory. Or did you chmod +x mute.sh?
On my side, it doesn’t matter if it runs in terminal, however if it’s run through hotkey, it doesn’t works.
I’ve done all of two, still not work…
I found that. The reason is they must put in /home/user directory, if not, they will not works as they are in the directory which is group of root, not group of user.
Now it works.
Sorry, maybe I’ve annoyed you, I should consider learning Linux seriously…
Just use toggle function to mute/unmute:
amixer sset Master toggle
Thanks! You are right. Sorry for my ignorance.
Thanks! We missed that!