Forward remote Chromium's audio to the travel laptop

Waypipe only carries the window, so audio played on the remote's
speakers. Load a PulseAudio tunnel sink on the remote pointing back
over the tailnet and target only this Chromium at it via PULSE_SINK;
the snap sandbox rules out forwarding the audio socket over ssh.
Modules are unloaded on exit and leftovers cleared on the next run.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Tommy Rantti 2026-10-02 14:24:35 +03:00
parent 9593b233aa
commit e0c8678410
2 changed files with 32 additions and 4 deletions

View file

@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
# Run on the travel laptop: closes any Chromium running for you on the remote
# machine (Chromium allows one process per profile, so a running instance
# would swallow the new window), then launches it there with its window
# drawn here.
# drawn here. Its audio is forwarded here too (needs pactl on both ends).
#
# Usage: remote-chromium.sh [--x11] [host]
# --x11 classic X11 forwarding instead of waypipe
@ -42,7 +42,35 @@ if pgrep -u "$USER" -f "$PAT" >/dev/null; then
fi
EOF
# Audio: Chromium plays through the remote's audio system, so give that system
# a virtual speaker that forwards over the tailnet to this machine, and point
# only this Chromium at it (PULSE_SINK). The snap sandbox rules out simply
# forwarding the audio socket over ssh. Both ends need pactl (pulseaudio-utils).
AUDIO_ENV=()
LOCAL_MOD="" REMOTE_MOD=""
SINK="chromium_to_$(hostname | tr -c 'a-zA-Z0-9\n' '_')"
if command -v pactl >/dev/null 2>&1 && ssh "$HOST" command -v pactl >/dev/null 2>&1; then
LOCAL_IP=$(tailscale ip -4)
REMOTE_IP=$(tailscale ip -4 "$HOST")
# unload leftovers from a run that didn't clean up, so reruns don't fail
pactl list short modules | awk -v ip="$LOCAL_IP" '/module-native-protocol-tcp/ && index($0, ip) {print $1}' | xargs -r -n1 pactl unload-module
ssh "$HOST" "pactl list short modules | awk '/module-tunnel-sink/ && /sink_name=$SINK/ {print \$1}' | xargs -r -n1 pactl unload-module"
LOCAL_MOD=$(pactl load-module module-native-protocol-tcp port=4713 listen="$LOCAL_IP" auth-ip-acl="$REMOTE_IP")
REMOTE_MOD=$(ssh "$HOST" pactl load-module module-tunnel-sink server="tcp:$LOCAL_IP:4713" sink_name="$SINK")
AUDIO_ENV=(env "PULSE_SINK=$SINK")
else
echo "pactl missing here or on $HOST - no audio forwarding (sudo apt install pulseaudio-utils on both)"
fi
cleanup() {
[ -n "$REMOTE_MOD" ] && ssh "$HOST" pactl unload-module "$REMOTE_MOD" 2>/dev/null
[ -n "$LOCAL_MOD" ] && pactl unload-module "$LOCAL_MOD" 2>/dev/null
return 0
}
trap cleanup EXIT
case "$MODE" in
waypipe) exec waypipe ssh "$HOST" chromium --ozone-platform=wayland ;;
x11) exec ssh -X "$HOST" chromium ;;
waypipe) waypipe ssh "$HOST" "${AUDIO_ENV[@]}" chromium --ozone-platform=wayland ;;
x11) ssh -X "$HOST" "${AUDIO_ENV[@]}" chromium ;;
esac

View file

@ -159,7 +159,7 @@ install_packages() {
fi
if sudo apt-get update -qq && sudo apt-get install -y -qq \
vim tmux mosh git curl ca-certificates jq gnupg firefox-esr code waypipe >/tmp/apt-install.log 2>&1; then
vim tmux mosh git curl ca-certificates jq gnupg firefox-esr code waypipe pulseaudio-utils >/tmp/apt-install.log 2>&1; then
step_ok "apt packages"
else
step_fail "apt packages" "see /tmp/apt-install.log"