Making sound back after december update broke Pixel Desktop

[yserra]

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB RAM, external USB HD Drive, a Meanwell 5V/5A Power supply, my RetroPie 4.7.1 has kernel release 5.4.79-v7l+ and I installed the Pixel Desktop.

How can I get a RetroPie configuration with the sound working in games and the menu bar working in Pixel desktop? These options seem incompatible.

The story: after the december 2020 update, like many people here, I lost my sound, because of the PulseAudio replacing the Alsa driver in Raspberry Pi OS. Following a advice given by @mitu in this thread , I run the following command to get back my sound:

systemctl --user mask pulseaudio.socket

Then my sound was back. Very low, but back.

Now, I have another problem: apparently the previous command broke the LXPanel (the menu bar) in Pixel Desktop and without the menu bar, the Pixel Desktop becomes pretty useless.

Here is what I can read at the end of the /home/pi/.xsession-errors file:

** (lxpanel:2118): WARNING **: 22:57:38.864: init context: err:6 Connexion refusée

Assertion 'pthread_mutex_lock(&m->mutex) == 0' failed at pulsecore/mutex-posix.c:90, function pa_mutex_lock(). Aborting.
** Message: 22:57:38.872: app.vala:130: lxpanel exit with this type of exit: 6
** Message: 22:57:38.872: app.vala:148: Exit not normal, try to reload
** Message: 22:57:38.877: app.vala:76: Launching lxpanel 
** Message: 22:57:38.942: x-terminal-emulator has very limited support, consider choose another terminal

** (lxpanel:2143): WARNING **: 22:57:38.959: The directory '/home/pi/Templates' doesn't exist, ignoring it
grep: /home/pi/.config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/panels/*: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type
** Message: 22:57:39.162: Connecting ...
** Message: 22:57:39.162: Status changed to down

** (lxpanel:2143): WARNING **: 22:57:39.226: init context: err:6 Connexion refusée

Assertion 'pthread_mutex_lock(&m->mutex) == 0' failed at pulsecore/mutex-posix.c:90, function pa_mutex_lock(). Aborting.
** Message: 22:57:39.233: app.vala:130: lxpanel exit with this type of exit: 6
** Message: 22:57:39.233: app.vala:148: Exit not normal, try to reload
** Message: 22:57:39.234: app.vala:156: Application crashed too much, stop reloading

How can I get back my desktop menu bar without losing the sound again in the emulated games ?

EDIT: I suspect the LXPanel crashes because it has a graphic tool to configure sound volume using the PulseAudio driver, but this driver/service has been deactivated by the command to get back the Alsa sound in games.

[mitu]

Yes, the lxpanel crash is cause by the lxplug-volumepulse applet. Removing it with sudo apt remove lxplug-volumepulse should bring back the panel, without the audio applet.

[yserra]

@mitu said in Making sound back after december update broke Pixel Desktop:

sudo apt remove lxplug-volumepulse

Yes! Many thanks @mitu, my menu bar is back. You're fantastic!