Qubes R4: install pulseaudio-qubes in Whonix 14 for audio support / pulseaudio and vlc should not be installed in sys-whonix

[phabricator-migrator]

Information

ID: 641
PHID: PHID-TASK-3ayklvtqnz7heykwxjkw
Author: Patrick
Status at Migration Time: resolved
Priority at Migration Time: Normal

Description

As reported at pulseaudio and vlc should not be installed in sys-whonix · Issue #2650 · QubesOS/qubes-issues · GitHub by Holger Levsen.

Qubes OS version (e.g., R3.2):

R3.2

Affected TemplateVMs (e.g., fedora-23, if applicable):

whonix-gw

Expected behavior:

pulseaudio and vlc should not be installed in sys-whonix.

Actual behavior:

#2648 is the issue suggesting to split out a qubes-gui-agent-pulseaudio package out of qubes-gui-agent.

once this has been done the whonix-workstation package should depend on qubes-gui-agent-pulseaudio
and the whonix-gateway package should not (and then vlc and pulseaudio wouldnt be installed in sys-whonix.)

See also:

qubes-gui-agent might recommend, instead of depend on, pulseaudio?

We need a Whonix-Workstation meta package (existing or new?) to depend on pulseaudio-qubes.

Need To Add Pulse Audio For Tor Browser 7.0.1?

Will qubes-gui-agent continue to depend on pulseaudio? @marmarek No, qubes-gui-agent in 4.0 only recommends pulseaudio-qubes (which depends on pulseaudio).

Comments

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Patrick

2017-10-28 14:50:50 UTC

It fits well into package qubes-whonix-workstation-packages-recommended.

qubes-whonix/debian/control at master · Whonix/qubes-whonix · GitHub

So I’ll add to Depends:…?

pulseaudio-qubes | qubes-gui-agent,

The first part pulseaudio-qubes is for Qubes R4 support and the latter part | qubes-gui-agent is for Qubes R3.2 compatibly.

Does that look alright to you? @marmarek

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marmarek

2017-10-28 14:52:51 UTC

Will that really works for 4.0? There is also qubes-gui-agent package, so it isn’t clear to me that pulseaudio-qubes will really be installed. Perhaps pulseaudio-qubes | qubes-gui-agent (<< 4.0.0)?

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Patrick

2017-10-29 14:21:51 UTC

True, my suggested solution might work for new builds but might not work
for R3.2 → R4 upgrades.

Perhaps pulseaudio-qubes | qubes-gui-agent (<< 4.0.0)?

That wouldn’t work for Qubes R3.2, since there is neither
qubes-gui-agent (<< 4.0.0) (highest available version is
3.2.18-1+deb9u1) nor pulseaudio-qubes.

Do you see any solution?

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marmarek

2017-10-29 16:53:01 UTC

(highest available version is 3.2.18-1+deb9u1)

Exactly, this do meet qubes-gui-agent (<< 4.0.0) criteria - version is lower than 4.0.0.
Not sure how to force installing pulseaudio-qubes on 3.2->4.0 upgrade (instead of keeping old qubes-gui-agent).

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Patrick

2017-12-03 13:21:36 UTC

! In T641#14707, @marmarek wrote:
Not sure how to force installing pulseaudio-qubes on 3.2->4.0 upgrade (instead of keeping old qubes-gui-agent).

It’s a manual, documented process anyhow. Can be listed here:

Release Upgrade

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Patrick

2017-12-03 13:34:57 UTC

install pulseaudio-qubes in Whonix 14 for audio support · Whonix/qubes-whonix@dac56da · GitHub

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unman

2018-04-04 15:27:48 UTC

@Patrick
Installation of pulseaudio-qubes is now included in the 13-14 upgrade guide under Qubes-Whonix instructions.

The current Whonix-14 templates from Qubes unstable correctly have no vlc in whonix-ws, although vlc libraries, vlc-data and vlc-plugins //are// still included.
Whonix-ws has the vlc binaries and browser-plugins, as expected.

I think that’s enough to close this, unless all traces of vlc should be purged from the gw? If it was necessary to remove the vlc backend, it would be possible to replace it with phonon4qt5-backend-null

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Patrick

2018-04-06 06:34:18 UTC

! In T641#15836, @unman wrote:
Installation of pulseaudio-qubes is now included in the 13-14 upgrade guide under Qubes-Whonix instructions.

Very good.

I think that’s enough to close this, unless all traces of vlc should be purged from the gw?

That would be good for feasible (dependency hell). Can be covered in T786.

If it was necessary to remove the vlc backend, it would be possible to replace it with phonon4qt5-backend-null

Created T786 for it.