Can the primary or first user to log on temporarily lock up Pipewire discovery of inputs and outputs for other users?

Help
1

Sometimes, with Pipewire, audio devices aren’t found and running “systemctl --user restart pipewire” is usually enough to fix the issue. But as of late, it’s getting worse.

A user could see a subset of inputs and outputs (not all). Running the usual fix of restarting Pipewire no longer works and those inputs and outputs will simply refuse to load.

Until the primary user logs out of their account. At least, this is what I am noticing as of late.

Anyone else with multiple users noticing this?

2

That sounds correct. The unique resources are allocated to the first login session and it keeps them until that session logs out.

Remember that it’s assumed that a single user will be using the PC.

3

thanks @barryascott

But forgive me, I refuse to believe the following

There is no way this is an official assumption by KDE or any distro, or am I bugging?

4

Is it? That seems, if true, at the very least flawed reasoning by all involved (kde, pipewire, etc.).