Is there a way to disable audio altogether?

[gvolpe]

Alternatively, a way to use pipewire instead of Pulse Audio? I saw that #442 was closed a while ago, but since version 8.1 QEMU supports a native pipewire backend, and I was wondering if anyone managed to get this working with quickemu?

A simple Ubuntu machine fails to start due to PulseAudio:

$ quickemu --vm ubuntu-24.04.conf                                
Quickemu 4.9.6 using /nix/store/y44d5ai0h64hvw9jkq7axvap87416yna-qemu-9.1.1/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 v9.1.1
 - Host:     NixOS 25.05 (Warbler) running Linux 6.12.3 thinkpad-x1
 - CPU:      13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1370P 
 - CPU VM:   host, 1 Socket(s), 4 Core(s), 2 Thread(s)
 - RAM VM:   16G RAM
 - BOOT:     EFI (Linux), OVMF (/nix/store/38hgw2w1sprb2vk81b22x0x0jx2cyf87-OVMF-202411-fd/FV/OVMF_CODE.fd), SecureBoot (off).
 - Disk:     ubuntu-24.04/disk.qcow2 (16G)
             Looks unused, booting from ubuntu-24.04/ubuntu-24.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso
 - Boot ISO: ubuntu-24.04/ubuntu-24.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso
 - Display:  SDL, virtio-vga-gl, GL (on), VirGL (on) @ (1280 x 800)
 - Sound:    intel-hda (hda-micro)
/nix/store/qw6c0r3x4rwbql973hggmc1bxll825bg-quickemu-4.9.6/bin/.quickemu-wrapped: line 985: ubuntu-24.04/ubuntu-24.04.ports: Permission denied
/nix/store/qw6c0r3x4rwbql973hggmc1bxll825bg-quickemu-4.9.6/bin/.quickemu-wrapped: line 993: ubuntu-24.04/ubuntu-24.04.ports: Permission denied
 - ssh:      On host:  ssh user@localhost -p 22220
 - WebDAV:   On guest: dav://localhost:9843/
 - 9P:       On guest: sudo mount -t 9p -o trans=virtio,version=9p2000.L,msize=104857600 Public-gvolpe ~/Public
 - smbd:     On guest: smb://10.0.2.4/qemu
 - Network:  User (virtio-net)
 - Monitor:  On host:  socat -,echo=0,icanon=0 unix-connect:ubuntu-24.04/ubuntu-24.04-monitor.socket
 - Serial:   On host:  socat -,echo=0,icanon=0 unix-connect:ubuntu-24.04/ubuntu-24.04-serial.socket
/nix/store/qw6c0r3x4rwbql973hggmc1bxll825bg-quickemu-4.9.6/bin/.quickemu-wrapped: line 1521: ubuntu-24.04/ubuntu-24.04.log: Permission denied
 - Process:  ERROR! Failed to start ubuntu-24.04.conf as ubuntu-24.04

XDG_RUNTIME_DIR (/run/user/1000) is not owned by us (uid 0), but by uid 1000! (This could e.g. happen if you try to connect to a non-root PulseAudio as a root user, over the native protocol. Don't do that.)
pulseaudio: pa_context_connect() failed
pulseaudio: Reason: Connection refused
pulseaudio: Failed to initialize PA contextqemu-system-x86_64: could not connect to PulseAudio server

I don't need audio at all, just want to get the machine started. I tried passing the following arguments without success:

--extra_args '-audiodev pipewire,id=snd1'

I don't have pactl installed, as I only use pipewire/wireplumber.

FWIW this works, but I can't get the same working with quickemu:

$ qemu-system-x86_64 -audiodev pipewire,id=snd1

[lj3954]

This should be resolved in master as of 0c772d5. I don't believe completely disabling audio is currently supported.