Hello World, 

Still at an early stage and still need to be confirmed and approved (by xRDP maintainers),  we are happy to let you know that there is a way to make xrdp sound redirection working when using Pipewire sound server. This solution has been worked out and shared by Hiero (one of our most active reader). 

Until today, xRDP sound redirection is only supported when Pulseaudio Sound server is used.  However, more and more Linux operating systems (like Ubuntu 22.10 or Fedora) are slowly moving away from Pulseaudio and prefer to use the new kid in town ie Pipewire.  

Hiero has been working on this specific topic and came up with different ways to allow xrdp sound redirection when Pipewire is installed by default.   Hiero has published and shared all its findings with the xRDP team.  You can find out all the explanation and code by visiting this link.

The proposed solution is still under investigation by th xRDP Team but we thought that it would be nice to already have a look at the solution, test it and share our findings…. 

So, let’s do this  ….

Overview 

As explained earlier,  xRDP sound redirection capability is only available on systems running Pulseaudio Sound server.  This is because the way the sound redirection module is compiled expect Pulseaudio as a sound server.  The solution is working quite ok when your system ships with Pulseaudio Server.  Now that Ubuntu 22.10 (and other recent linux distributions) ship with Pipewire by default,  the existing xrdp sound redirection method is not working.   

To overcome this situation, multiple solutions can be developed to re-introduce xRDP sound redirection when using Pipewire. After reviewing the discussions and proposed solution described in this link,it seems to us that the most logical choice would be to indeed rewrite a module that would work with Pipewire.  This is exactly what Hiero did.  He wrote a small module that would make xrdp sound redirection working when using Pipewire. 

In this post, we will explain how to compile this new module and test sound redirection against Pipewire 

Disclaimer

Prerequisites and assumptions  

Since this module is still quite new, we have performed the compilation in our lab environment.  In order for you to get similar result, we assume the following 

• We assume that your machine is connected to internet while performing the installation.  This is needed as additional packages and software needs to be downloaded and installed on your Ubuntu machine
• This post applies only for Ubuntu 22.10 Release
• You have already xRDP Software installed on your machine
• We are using a Virtual machine to perform our test. The VM is running on top of Hyper-V server
• All the files will be Downloaded in the ~/Downloads Folder

For your convenience, we have uploaded the necessary files in our web server.  However, we want to stress out that these files have been developped and provided by Hiero.  All the credits goes to him !  You can download them via the Terminal console by issuing the following commands 

cd ~/Downloads
wget https://www.c-nergy.be/downloads/xRDP/module-xrdp-pipewire.zip

Click on Picture for better Resolution

 

Credits  : This module has been provided by Hiero 

Step 2 – unzip the file 

After downloading the zip package containing the file, you will need to unzip it first. To unzip the package, you can use the Terminal console and issue the following command 

unzip module-xrdp-pipewire.zip
cd module-xrdp-pipewire

Click on Picture for better Resolution

Step 3 – Compile the new xrdp-pipewire module 

It’s time for us to perform the compilation of this module. Based on the instruction provided by Hiero,  the following commands needs to be issued in the Terminal console 

Install additional packages

You first need to ensure that the following packages are available and have been installed on your system.  To install them, you can issue the following command 

sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config libspa-0.2-dev libpipewire-0.3-dev pulseaudio-utils

You might get prompted for your password.  Provide it and wait for completion.  This process can take some time 

Click on Picture for better Resolution

 

Compiling the module 

In this stage, we will create the module for pipewire and xrdp support.  To create this module, we will need to compile the necessary source files provided with the download.  To compile your code, simply issue the following command in a Terminal Console

cc -o libpipewire-module-xrdp-pipewire.so module-xrdp-pipewire.c -shared -fPIC $(pkg-config --cflags libpipewire-0.3)

Click on Picture for better Resolution

System Configuration

When the module has been generated, it’s time to configure the system so it can make use of it.   The following commands needs to be executed in order to copy the files into the correct location and grant them the necessary permissions to make them working. 

sudo cp libpipewire-module-xrdp-pipewire.so $(pkg-config --variable=moduledir libpipewire-0.3)/.
sudo chmod 644 $(pkg-config --variable=moduledir libpipewire-0.3)/libpipewire-module-xrdp-pipewire.so
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/libexec/pipewire-module-xrdp
sudo cp load_pw_modules.sh /usr/local/libexec/pipewire-module-xrdp/.
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/libexec/pipewire-module-xrdp/load_pw_modules.sh
sudo cp pipewire-xrdp.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/.
sudo chmod 644 /etc/xdg/autostart/pipewire-xrdp.desktop

 

Click on Picture for better Resolution

Post-Configuration

Based on the pipewire version your system is running, you might need to perform a final post-configuration action.   If your Pipewire version is 0.3.5.8 (the one present in Ubuntu 22.10), you will need to execute the following command in your Terminal console

cc -o pw-cli_0358_mod pw-cli_0358_mod.c $(pkg-config --cflags --libs libpipewire-0.3)
sudo cp pw-cli_0358_mod /usr/local/libexec/pipewire-module-xrdp/.
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/libexec/pipewire-module-xrdp/pw-cli_0358_mod

Click on Picture for better Resolution

 

Note :

To check your pipewire version, simply issue the following command

pipewire --version

 

Step 4 – Test your configuration  

It’s time to test your configuration.  You first need to ensure that nobody is logged on locally on the Ubuntu machine.  Then, you can perform your remote desktop connection against your Ubuntu machine. You will see the xRDP login screen.  Provide your credentials and you should see your Ubuntu Desktop.  To check if sound redirection is enabled, you will open the Settings App and go to sound Node.  If you see xrdp-sink and xrdp-source, this means that sound redirection has been successfully configured against your system  

Click on Picture for better Resolution

The ultimate test is to test the sound by using the built-in tools or better by browsing the internet and play a video or a music and play it on your remote session.   If everything works as expected, you will get sound redirection working.  In our test, we have to say that the in the beginning the sound is a little bit choppy but then sound quality is quite good (over LAN). No delays and no chopping sound… Really impressive for an early stage development solution.   

Final Notes

Voila ! This is it for this post.   

We are really impressed by the work provided by Hiero.  He has deliver a possible solution to the xRDP sound redirection limitation encountered when using pipewire as Sound Server.  There are multiple other options that has been mentioned.  However, we think that the module approach is the best so far.  The expected results are there and the compilation process is really quite straight forward.  

As we are short in time (for blogging) at the moment,  we will try to integrate this piece of code in our xrdp-installer script and publish it as a preview version.  People can then perform more tests against more Linux Distributions and feedback can be provided to the xrdp maintainers. 

Special Thanks to Hiero who shared this information with us and for the great work, help and constructive comments he is providing. 

Till next time 

See ya