This package configures PipeWire, WirePlumber, and PipeWire-Pulse to run as a single system-wide daemon as the root user. This setup is optimized for headless media servers, HTPCs, or multi-user audio environments.

This project addresses several non-obvious hurdles required to make PipeWire stable in a root context.

We use the WirePlumber 0.5.x main-systemwide profile, but with critical modifications.

• Problem: WirePlumber's default main-systemwide profile (defined in wireplumber.conf) inherits from mixin.systemwide-session, which disables support.reserve-device and monitor.alsa.reserve-device.
• Solution: We explicitly re-enable these in our override:

  wireplumber.profiles = { main-systemwide = { support.reserve-device = required ... } }

• Rationale: Without device reservation, the root PipeWire instance cannot "claim" ALSA hardware through D-Bus, leading to the "Dummy Output" issue.
• Reference: WirePlumber 0.5 Migration Guide

Root requires explicit permissions to own specific "well-known" names that are normally requested by session users.

• org.pulseaudio.Server: Required for pipewire-pulse to be discoverable by PulseAudio clients.
• org.freedesktop.ReserveDevice1: Required for ALSA hardware claiming. Reference: Device Reservation Specification.
• org.pipewire.Telephony & org.bluez.Telephony1: Required for PipeWire's native telephony backend to expose its API.
• org.bluez.Profile1: Necessary for PipeWire to register A2DP and HFP/HSP profiles with BlueZ.

• Problem: Bluetooth Hands-Free Profile (HFP/HSP) requires a "backend" to handle voice data on the SCO socket. By default, bluetoothd (BlueZ) may attempt to handle this internally via a plugin.
• Solution: We use a systemd drop-in to start bluetoothd with --noplugin=hfp,sap.
• Rationale: This prevents BlueZ from binding to the RFCOMM/SCO socket, allowing PipeWire's native backend to take over. This resolves the Address already in use and RegisterProfile failed errors.
• Reference: PipeWire Bluetooth Backend Docs

• Rationale: In a root system-wide context, there is no "active user seat" tracked by logind. By using the main-systemwide profile and setting monitor.bluez.seat-monitoring = false, we allow the Bluetooth monitor to activate even when no user is logged into a physical session.

• XDG_RUNTIME_DIR Redirect: Redirected to /run/pipewire via systemd units.
• Permissions: Mode 0755 is used for /run/pipewire and specifically the /pulse subdirectory to allow non-root users (like GDM or your local user) to "traverse" the directory and connect to the socket.

1. Build: makepkg -f

2. Verify: namcap PKGBUILD and namcap *.pkg.tar.zst

3. Generate Metadata: makepkg --printsrcinfo > .SRCINFO

4. Install Locally: sudo pacman -U pipewire-system-*.pkg.tar.zst

5. AUR Submission:

   • Create a new repository on AUR.
   • Add the AUR remote: git remote add aur ssh://aur@aur.archlinux.org/pipewire-system.git
   • Push: git push aur master

6. Permission Setup: Ensure your user is a member of the audio group to access the sockets:

   sudo usermod -aG audio $USER

7. Clean Restart:

   sudo systemctl daemon-reload
   sudo systemctl reload dbus
   sudo systemctl restart bluetooth
   sudo systemctl restart wireplumber pipewire-pulse pipewire