The audio volume applet on my KDE Neon installation indicates “Connection to the Service Lost”. This started when i recently upgraded to Ubuntu 24.04. To rule out some interference between PulseAudio and Pipewire, i uninstalled PulseAudio:
% sudo apt remove --purge pulseaudio
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Package 'pulseaudio' is not installed, so not removed
Starting pkgProblemResolver with broken count: 0
Starting 2 pkgProblemResolver with broken count: 0
Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
% dpkg -l |grep -i pulse
ii gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio:amd64 1.24.2-2+24.04+noble+release+build5 amd64 GStreamer plugin for PulseAudio (transitional package)
ii libcanberra-pulse:amd64 0.30-10ubuntu10 amd64 PulseAudio backend for libcanberra
ii libkf6pulseaudioqt5:amd64 1.8.1-0zneon+24.04+noble+release+build7 amd64 Pulseaudio bindings library for Qt
ii libpulse-mainloop-glib0:amd64 1:16.1+dfsg1-2ubuntu10.1 amd64 PulseAudio client libraries (glib support)
ii libpulse0:amd64 1:16.1+dfsg1-2ubuntu10.1 amd64 PulseAudio client libraries
ii pipewire-pulse 1.2.6-2+24.04+noble+release+build3 amd64 PipeWire PulseAudio daemon
ii pulseaudio-utils 1:16.1+dfsg1-2ubuntu10.1 amd64 Command line tools for the PulseAudio sound server
and i also confirmed that Pipewire and the pipewire-pulse interface is (apparently) running normally:
% systemctl --user status pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber
● pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; enabled; preset: d>
Active: active (running) since Sun 2026-05-31 05:27:13 EEST; 19min ago
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
Main PID: 1706 (pipewire)
Tasks: 2 (limit: 18724)
Memory: 4.1M (peak: 4.5M)
CPU: 56ms
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewi>
└─1706 /usr/bin/pipewire
May 31 05:27:13 orb systemd[1691]: Started pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimed>
● pipewire-pulse.service - PipeWire PulseAudio
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire-pulse.service; enabled; pre>
Active: active (running) since Sun 2026-05-31 05:27:13 EEST; 19min ago
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire-pulse.socket
Main PID: 1710 (pipewire-pulse)
Tasks: 2 (limit: 18724)
Memory: 1.7M (peak: 2.2M)
CPU: 30ms
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewi>
└─1710 /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse
May 31 05:27:13 orb systemd[1691]: Started pipewire-pulse.service - PipeWire Pu>
● wireplumber.service - Multimedia Service Session Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/wireplumber.service; enabled; preset>
Active: active (running) since Sun 2026-05-31 05:27:13 EEST; 19min ago
Main PID: 1708 (wireplumber)
Tasks: 5 (limit: 18724)
Memory: 8.4M (peak: 9.2M)
CPU: 174ms
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/wirepl>
└─1708 /usr/bin/wireplumber
May 31 05:27:13 orb systemd[1691]: Started wireplumber.service - Multimedia Ser>
May 31 05:27:13 orb wireplumber[1708]: SPA handle 'api.libcamera.enum.manager' >
May 31 05:27:13 orb wireplumber[1708]: PipeWire's libcamera SPA missing or brok>
May 31 05:27:13 orb wireplumber[1708]: <WpPortalPermissionStorePlugin:0x61ba529>
I have also verified that /run/user/1000/pulse/ exists and has my user (orionbelt) permissions:
% ls -l /run/user/1000/pulse/
total 4
srw-rw-rw- 1 orionbelt orionbelt 0 May 31 05:27 native
-rw-rw-r-- 1 orionbelt orionbelt 5 May 31 05:27 pid
However:
% pactl info
Connection failure: Connection refused
pa_context_connect() failed: Connection refused
and, as i said, the KDE audio fails to connect. Firefox also plays no audio when playing videos, whether on YouTube or any other site. However, mplayer and VLC do play sounds (presumably because they talk directly to the ALSA layer?)
Any pointers as to what may be going wrong would be very appreciated!