Can't get rhasspy to work after autostart - Manual start works without problems

1

Hi together,
i’ve a rhasspy 2.5.11 .deb installation on a Bullseye light. Everything works well as long as I start it in a terminal session ‘rhasspy --profile de’ as ‘pi’ user. But as many users that I found here I can’t get it autostarted. The problem is that aplay doesn’t work after autostart with rasspy but it works in a terminal. Rhasspy shows "AudioServerException: Command ‘[‘aplay’, ‘-q’, ‘-t’, ‘wav’, ‘-D’, ‘pulse’]’ returned non-zero exit status 1 " when I make a speak test. I#ve tried several described scenarios with cron. rc.local and as service without success.
This seems to show the problem:

[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:13,802] asyncio: Using selector: EpollSelector
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:13,803] rhasspyremote_http_hermes: Connected to MQTT broker
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:13,807] rhasspyremote_http_hermes: Subscribed to hermes/intent/#
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:13,809] rhasspyremote_http_hermes: Subscribed to rhasspy/handle/toggleOn
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:13,810] rhasspyremote_http_hermes: Subscribed to rhasspy/handle/toggleOff
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,826] rhasspywake_porcupine_hermes: -> HotwordDetected(model_id='/home/pi/.config/rhasspy/profiles/de/porcupine/jarvis_raspberry-pi.ppn', model_version='', model_type='personal', current_sensitivity=0.6, site_id='default', session_id=None, send_audio_captured=None, lang=None, custom_entities=None)
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,828] rhasspywake_porcupine_hermes: Publishing 262 bytes(s) to hermes/hotword/jarvis_raspberry-pi/detected
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,848] rhasspydialogue_hermes: <- HotwordDetected(model_id='/home/pi/.config/rhasspy/profiles/de/porcupine/jarvis_raspberry-pi.ppn', model_version='', model_type='personal', current_sensitivity=0.6, site_id='default', session_id=None, send_audio_captured=None, lang=None, custom_entities=None)
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,852] rhasspydialogue_hermes: Playing sound /home/pi/.config/rhasspy/profiles/de/guuude-thorsten.wav
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,865] rhasspydialogue_hermes: -> HotwordToggleOff(site_id='default', reason=<HotwordToggleReason.PLAY_AUDIO: 'playAudio'>)
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,869] rhasspydialogue_hermes: Publishing 44 bytes(s) to hermes/hotword/toggleOff
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,875] rhasspydialogue_hermes: -> AsrToggleOff(site_id='default', reason=<AsrToggleReason.PLAY_AUDIO: 'playAudio'>)
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,877] rhasspydialogue_hermes: Publishing 44 bytes(s) to hermes/asr/toggleOff
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,881] rhasspydialogue_hermes: -> AudioPlayBytes(27692 byte(s)) to hermes/audioServer/default/playBytes/5c49823c-b4bd-4c57-a75d-1e83bf5e4b94
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,884] rhasspydialogue_hermes: Waiting for playFinished (id=5c49823c-b4bd-4c57-a75d-1e83bf5e4b94, timeout=0.876938775510204)
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,896] rhasspywake_porcupine_hermes: <- HotwordToggleOff(site_id='default', reason=<HotwordToggleReason.PLAY_AUDIO: 'playAudio'>)
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,897] rhasspywake_porcupine_hermes: Disabled
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,900] rhasspyspeakers_cli_hermes: <- AudioPlayBytes(27692 byte(s))
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,902] rhasspyspeakers_cli_hermes: ['aplay', '-q', '-t', 'wav', '-D', 'pulse']
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,902] rhasspyasr_kaldi_hermes: <- AsrToggleOff(site_id='default', reason=<AsrToggleReason.PLAY_AUDIO: 'playAudio'>)
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:40,904] rhasspyasr_kaldi_hermes: Disabled (AsrToggleReason.PLAY_AUDIO)
ALSA lib pulse.c:242:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection refused

aplay: main:830: audio open error: Connection refused
[ERROR:2022-08-01 10:02:41,005] rhasspyspeakers_cli_hermes: handle_play
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/rhasspy/rhasspy-speakers-cli-hermes/rhasspyspeakers_cli_hermes/__init__.py", line 88, in handle_play
    subprocess.run(self.play_command, input=wav_bytes, check=True)
  File "/usr/lib/rhasspy/usr/local/lib/python3.7/subprocess.py", line 512, in run
    output=stdout, stderr=stderr)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['aplay', '-q', '-t', 'wav', '-D', 'pulse']' returned non-zero exit status 1.
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:41,027] rhasspyspeakers_cli_hermes: -> AudioPlayError(error="Command '['aplay', '-q', '-t', 'wav', '-D', 'pulse']' returned non-zero exit status 1.", site_id='default', context='5c49823c-b4bd-4c57-a75d-1e83bf5e4b94', session_id='5c49823c-b4bd-4c57-a75d-1e83bf5e4b94')
[DEBUG:2022-08-01 10:02:41,028] rhasspyspeakers_cli_hermes: Publishing 224 bytes(s) to hermes/error/audioServer/play

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance … Jo

2

I assume you’ve read the Rhasspy as a service (without Docker) thread ? I am still running my headless satellites as i described there (running with root privileges).

3

The problem might be your pulseaudio server.
That is a user specific service and probably not started up when you run headless.

Try to play directly to ALSA instead.

4

Hi,
thanks for your hints so far. Indeed I’ve read topic ‘Rhasspy as a service’ because that’s my scenario but I had no succses. I did a lot trial and error but in the meantime i have no further idea. At least i tried WallyDWs tip without pulseaudio but i can’t get my bluetooth connection working without it. It’s a pity, maybe i should open a issue on github to get the reason for this message.
AudioServerException: Command ‘[‘aplay’, ‘-q’, ‘-t’, ‘wav’, ‘-D’, ‘pulse’]’ returned non-zero exit status 1

5

Read this on Pulseaudio on headless.
Notice the comments.

6

Hi Guys, thanks for all your tips an ideas but I was not able to bring them to success. So far the bad news. Nevertheless, the good news are that i got it running. After fiddling around lots of hours i used at least the Bullseye full desktop version. Starting rhasspy as service, with rc.local or a cronjob shows the same problem. Then i tried it with a .desktop file and voilà -bingo- everything works as expected now. I don’t know what is different in this case but those that are familiar with the rhasspy and Linux internals may have a idea what the root cause could be.
Thanks again for all you supporters … Jo