VirtualBox Intel HD Audio and PipeWire Incompatibility / Audio broken after increasing ram to 5 GB / No sound after latest updates - PipeWire Bug?

Confirmed.

I think this is most likely a pipewire bug. I was able to reproduce this issue.


Non-issues:
swap-file-creator is not the cause. To exclude that possiblity, disable swap-file-creator.


More likely changes causing this:


debug output:

journalctl | grep pipew

Jan 24 13:31:12 host pipewire-pulse[1088]: mod.protocol-pulse: client 0x591d3aff9870 [VLC media player (LibVLC 3.0.20)]: stream 0x591d3afa39f0 OVERFLOW channel:0
Jan 24 13:31:12 host pipewire-pulse[1088]: mod.protocol-pulse: client 0x591d3aff9870 [VLC media player (LibVLC 3.0.20)]: stream 0x591d3afa39f0 OVERFLOW channel:0
Jan 24 13:31:12 host pipewire-pulse[1088]: mod.protocol-pulse: client 0x591d3aff9870 [VLC media player (LibVLC 3.0.20)]: stream 0x591d3afa39f0 OVERFLOW channel:0

cvlc Downloads/videoplayback.m4a

VLC media player 3.0.20 Vetinari (revision 3.0.20-0-g6f0d0ab126b)
[00005863995bcc70] dummy interface: using the dummy interface module…
[000077b04c000e60] mp4 demux: Fragment sequence discontinuity detected 1 != 0
[0000586399594210] pulse audio output error: overflow, flushing
[0000586399594210] pulse audio output error: overflow, flushing
[0000586399594210] pulse audio output error: overflow, flushing

mpv Downloads/videoplayback.m4a

(+) Audio --aid=1 --alang=eng (*) (aac 2ch 44100Hz)
AO: [pipewire] 44100Hz stereo 2ch floatp
A: -00:00:00 / 00:02:23 (0%)


This issue might be unspecific to Whonix. Generic Bug Reproduction might be required.

This could be a a pipewire bug. There are some bug reports against the Debian pipewire package (but upstream issues).

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=pipewire

For example: OOM killed

Speculation: More RAM being available might confuse pipewire and trigger some memory leak, resulting in pipewire RAM usage ballooning and therefore getting OOM killed. But really it could be anything.

I don’t have a solution and this issue might be difficult to fix, meaning might remain unfixed for a long time unless a contributor helps. Related: Self Support First Policy