Pulseaudio: disabling module-role-cork

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1

I’ve just installed NixOS on my previously Arch Linux desktop and I’m in the progress of migrating the setup. Currently have some issues with Pulseaudio.

By default, Pulseaudio loads module-role-cork which mutes audio streams (e.g. MPD) when a phone stream (e.g. Teamspeak) is active. On Arch, the line containing this module was simply commented out of /etc/pulse/default.pa, but I’m unsure how I should do it on NixOS; especially when there seems to be no option for it suitable in hardware.pulseaudio.daemon.config.

How do I unload this module?

Cheers.

2

Looking at my system to figure this out:

$ cat /etc/pulse/default.pa 
.include /nix/store/nvy5djzrzmm6kp07lmhpslmxxnq1s3a8-pulseaudio-11.1/etc/pulse/default.pa
$ grep role-cork /nix/store/nvy5djzrzmm6kp07lmhpslmxxnq1s3a8-pulseaudio-11.1/etc/pulse/default.pa
load-module module-role-cork

So it looks like the default config loads the config from the package, with loads module-role-cork.

Looking at NixOS Search - Loading... it looks like the target is actually configurable.

So now we have a problem. We could replace the file entirely but it would mean re-writing the whole config file. One solution is to take the original file and wrap it in a derivation to grep out the module-role-cork:

{ config, pkgs }:
{
  hardware.pulseaudio.configFile = pkgs.runCommand "default.pa" {} ''
    grep -v module-role-cork ${config.hardware.pulseaudio.package}/etc/pulse/default.pa > $out
  '';
}
1 Like
3

That does it; thanks!

4

I feel like simply hardware.pulseaudio.extraConfig = "unload-module module-role-cork"; is less hacky, if inelegant.

1 Like
5

Nice, that is ideed a clearer and more concise solution.

6

I didn’t know that directive existed. Thank you.