Setting up an audio VM

kef · September 19, 2021, 6:54am

Just got this working.

Roughly the steps that I can recall now were to download the template vm that the sys-audio salt state uses - the salt states can be found here btw:

github.com

QubesOS/qubes-mgmt-salt-dom0-virtual-machines/blob/master/qvm/sys-audio.sls

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# vim: set syntax=yaml ts=2 sw=2 sts=2 et :

##
# qvm.sys-audio
# ===========
##

{% from "qvm/template.jinja" import load -%}

{% if salt['pillar.get']('qvm:sys-audio:name', 'sys-audio') != salt['pillar.get']('qvm:sys-gui:name', 'sys-gui') %}

{% set vmname = salt['pillar.get']('qvm:sys-audio:name', 'sys-audio') %}

{% load_yaml as defaults -%}
name:          sys-audio
present:
  - label:     black
  - mem:       400
prefs:

This file has been truncated. show original

and fedora-33-xfce is the template vm it uses.

Once the state is run and the sys-audio vm created the template vm needs to have the qubes-core-admin-client rpm installed - this provides the qvm-start-daemon python script that is used to start the pacat processes for each vm audio client.

Next, startup the sys-audio vm and create ~/.config/autostart entries for qvm-start-daemon and pulseaudio:

eg. ~user/.config/pulseaudio.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Pulseaudio
Comment=Starts Pulseaudio
Icon=qubes
Exec=pulseaudio
Terminal=False
Type=Application
NotShowIn=KDE;

eg. ~user/.config/qvm-start-daemon.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Qubes Guid/Pacat
Comment=Starts GUI/AUDIO daemon for Qubes VMs
Icon=qubes
Exec=qvm-start-daemon --all --watch
Terminal=False
Type=Application
NotShowIn=KDE;

Next there are some problems with the policy that the salt state creates. It’s a bit of a pain to work though but the popup notifications are helpful - the policy is defined in /etc/qubes/policy.d/50-sys-audio.policy on dom0

I’d paste it here but tbh I’m a bit lazy and it’s on dom0

Finally, each vm needs to have the audiovm adjusted w/

eg. qvm-prefs audiovm sys-audio