Introduce audio-volume feature

[alimirjamali]

Allowing user to set the default audio volume per qube via audio-volume feature. By default it is 100% (except some select qubes which will be always muted).

resolves: QubesOS/qubes-issues#2724

[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 0% with 4 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 76.07%. Comparing base (a5ea121) to head (1149895).
⚠️ Report is 8 commits behind head on main.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
qubesadmin/tools/qvm_start_daemon.py	0.00%	4 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main     #405      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   76.10%   76.07%   -0.04%     
==========================================
  Files          53       53              
  Lines        9287     9291       +4     
==========================================
  Hits         7068     7068              
- Misses       2219     2223       +4     

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[marmarek]

pulseaudio / pipewire (or rather wireplumber) has similar feature already - it already remembers volume of each stream. You can adjust it in pavucontrol and it should be preserved across qube restart. Overriding it via qubes-specific feature isn't great, will lead to problems and unexpected situations (like needing to re-adjust volume at each qube start again, GUI tools for volume control no longer effective etc).

There is probably a way to set it also for future streams. Quick search suggests it's stored in ~/.local/state/wireplumber/stream-properties, but editing it directly sounds like a very bad idea. Maybe wpctl or pactl can do that, or some other related tool.

[alimirjamali]

pulseaudio / pipewire (or rather wireplumber) has similar feature already - it already remembers volume of each stream. You can adjust it in pavucontrol and it should be preserved across qube restart. Overriding it via qubes-specific feature isn't great, will lead to problems and unexpected situations (like needing to re-adjust volume at each qube start again, GUI tools for volume control no longer effective etc).

There is probably a way to set it also for future streams. Quick search suggests it's stored in ~/.local/state/wireplumber/stream-properties, but editing it directly sounds like a very bad idea. Maybe wpctl or pactl can do that, or some other related tool.

How should it be dealt with DispVMs based on whonix-workstation-xx-dvm? Shouldn't they be muted by default?

For those we do not want to set and we want pulse to remember the previous setting, I could easily adjust pacat-simple-vchan to pass NULL (like before) to pa_stream_connect_playback if audio-volume feature is not set. So the previous volume is preserved.

[marmarek]

Should it be maybe called audio-initial-volume? It's just about the state at the qube startup after all.

And also, can you add some integration tests for this? See qubes/tests/integ/audio.py in core-admin. It's probably enough to check if audio stream is in desired state initially (especially for numerical value). But if want to check if really nothing got played, there are similar tests for microphone already (search for audio_rec_muted).

[alimirjamali]

Should it be maybe called audio-initial-volume? It's just about the state at the qube startup after all.

This is done. Salt formula PR is also amended accordingly

And also, can you add some integration tests for this? See qubes/tests/integ/audio.py in core-admin. It's probably enough to check if audio stream is in desired state initially (especially for numerical value). But if want to check if really nothing got played, there are similar tests for microphone already (search for audio_rec_muted).

I submitted a patch to add the integration unittests. It currently only checks the audio volume and muting status:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-core-admin/pull/768/files

[qubesos-bot]

OpenQA test summary

Complete test suite and dependencies: https://openqa.qubes-os.org/tests/overview?distri=qubesos&version=4.3&build=2026031319-4.3-debian&flavor=pull-requests

Test run included the following:

• splitgpg2: allow xauthority OPTION for Flatpak clients qubes-app-linux-split-gpg2#33 (QubesOS/qubes-app-linux-split-gpg2@db1c458)
• Introduce audio-volume feature #405 (791d573)
• Integration tests for audio-initial-volume feature qubes-core-admin#768 (QubesOS/qubes-core-admin@6a38ab0)
• Add label to system_info qubes-core-admin#786 (QubesOS/qubes-core-admin@76e3517)
• Speed disposable performance tests without a GUI qubes-core-admin#787 (QubesOS/qubes-core-admin@3b7a41a)
• qrexec-policy-graph: add qube colors qubes-core-qrexec#222 (QubesOS/qubes-core-qrexec@f4e05be)
• qvm-appmenus: remove unstable-format gate for --get-available qubes-desktop-linux-common#72 (QubesOS/qubes-desktop-linux-common@e4cb94a)
• appmenus: update menus when template_for_dispvms changes qubes-desktop-linux-common#74 (QubesOS/qubes-desktop-linux-common@9789d4f)
• global config: fix unclickable dom0 file access link qubes-desktop-linux-manager#303 (QubesOS/qubes-desktop-linux-manager@dbb4d8b)
• Don't hang is-system-running when GUI is disabled qubes-gui-agent-linux#255 (QubesOS/qubes-gui-agent-linux@9129d1c)
• Allow user to set qube audio volume qubes-gui-daemon#174 (QubesOS/qubes-gui-daemon@c4faa21)
• Fix odict deprecation warnings qubes-mgmt-salt-base-topd#16 (QubesOS/qubes-mgmt-salt-base-topd@e07e6fd)

New failures, excluding unstable

Compared to: https://openqa.qubes-os.org/tests/overview?distri=qubesos&version=4.3&build=2026020304-devel&flavor=update

Failed tests

No failures!

Fixed failures

Compared to: https://openqa.qubes-os.org/tests/166096#dependencies
Nothing fixed

Unstable tests

Details

Performance Tests

Performance degradation:

No issues

Remaining performance tests:

13 tests

• debian-13-xfce_dom0-dispvm-api (mean:6.539): 78.47 🟢 ( previous job: 79.83, improvement: 98.29%)
• debian-13-xfce_dom0-dispvm-gui-api (mean:7.827): 93.92 🔻 ( previous job: 92.49, degradation: 101.55%)
• debian-13-xfce_dom0-dispvm-preload-2-api (mean:3.149): 37.79 🟢 ( previous job: 44.94, improvement: 84.08%)
• debian-13-xfce_dom0-dispvm-preload-2-delay-0-api (mean:2.917): 35.00 🟢 ( previous job: 41.46, improvement: 84.42%)
• debian-13-xfce_dom0-dispvm-preload-2-delay-minus-1d2-api (mean:3.307): 39.69 🟢 ( previous job: 47.01, improvement: 84.43%)
• debian-13-xfce_dom0-dispvm-preload-4-api (mean:2.284): 27.41 🟢 ( previous job: 37.67, improvement: 72.75%)
• debian-13-xfce_dom0-dispvm-preload-4-delay-0-api (mean:2.809): 33.71 🟢 ( previous job: 36.76, improvement: 91.71%)
• debian-13-xfce_dom0-dispvm-preload-4-delay-minus-1d2-api (mean:2.441): 29.29 🟢 ( previous job: 37.87, improvement: 77.36%)
• debian-13-xfce_dom0-dispvm-preload-2-gui-api (mean:4.989): 59.87 🔻 ( previous job: 55.58, degradation: 107.71%)
• debian-13-xfce_dom0-dispvm-preload-4-gui-api (mean:4.135): 49.62 🔻 ( previous job: 47.73, degradation: 103.97%)
• debian-13-xfce_dom0-dispvm-preload-6-gui-api (mean:4.198): 50.38 🔻 ( previous job: 47.11, degradation: 106.93%)
• debian-13-xfce_dom0-vm-api (mean:0.038): 0.45 🔻 ( previous job: 0.41, degradation: 109.93%)
• debian-13-xfce_dom0-vm-gui-api (mean:0.039): 0.47 🟢 ( previous job: 0.48, improvement: 96.67%)

[alimirjamali]

PipelineRetryFailed