Re: No audio in KDE on OpenBSD – “No audio devices found”

[alex]

Rafael Sadowski <raf...@sizeofvoid.org> writes:

Hello,

I initially tried using PulseAudio on KDE Plasma, but it showed “No output or 
input devices found”
When I ran pulseaudio in the terminal, I got the following messages:

    [(null)] pid.c: Daemon already running.
    [(null)] main.c: pa_pid_file_create() failed.

My ~/.xsession file was configured as follows:

    export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp/run/$(id -u)
      if [ ! -d "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR" ]; then
         mkdir -m 700 -p "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR"
      fi

    if [ -x /usr/local/bin/dbus-launch -a -z "${DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS}" ]; 
then
      eval `dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-x11`
    fi

    /usr/local/bin/ck-launch-session /usr/local/bin/startplasma-x11

Because PulseAudio didn’t work, I switched to using the native sndiod.
With sndiod, audio works perfectly in lightweight window managers such as cwm, 
i3, and bspwm.

I installed KDE Plasma via pkg_add kde-plasma.
Could you please advise where the issue might be?

Thank you for any guidance!

Best regards

> On Fri Nov 28, 2025 at 02:06:33PM +0800, alex wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I’ve installed the KDE desktop environment on OpenBSD, but after logging 
>> into KDE, there is no sound, and the system reports “No audio devices found.”
>> 
>> I’ve already verified the following:
>> 
>>     The sndiod daemon is running and enabled at boot (rcctl enable sndiod);
>>     My user account is a member of the _sndio group, and I’ve relogged in;
>>     Audio works fine from the terminal (e.g., aucat -i 
>> /usr/share/misc/au/chimes.au);
>>     I’m using official pre-built packages installed via pkg_add (including 
>> KDE and Qt5).
>> 
>> However, KDE’s System Settings > Sound still shows no audio devices, and 
>> many KDE applications (e.g., Dolphin, Kaffeine) cannot produce sound.
>> 
>> Do I need additional configuration to make Qt/KDE use sndio? Or is this a 
>> known compatibility issue?
>> 
>> Thank you for any advice!
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>
> It should work out-of-box with pulseaudio. You can install kmix if you want
> sndio support via KDE. However, could you share your pkg_info(1) output.
>
> Rafael