The PipeWire device reservation utility

SYNOPSIS

pw-reserve [options]

DESCRIPTION

Reserves a device using the DBus org.freedesktop.ReserveDevice1 device reservation scheme [1], waiting until terminated by SIGINT or another signal.

It can also request other applications to release a device. This can be used to make audio servers such as PipeWire, Pulseaudio, JACK, or other applications that respect the device reservation protocol, to ignore a device, or to release a sound device they are already using so that it can be used by other applications.

OPTIONS

-r | --release: Request any client currently holding the device to release it, and try to reserve it after that. If this option is not given and the device is already in use, pw-reserve will exit with error status.

-n NAME | --name=NAME

Name of the device to reserve. By convention, this is

AudioN: for ALSA card number N

pw-reserve can reserve any device name, however PipeWire does not currently support other values than listed above.

-a NAME | --appname=NAME: Application name to use when reserving the device.

-p PRIO | --priority=PRIO: Priority to use when reserving the device.

-m | --monitor: Monitor reservations of a given device, instead of reserving it.

-h | --help: Show help.

--version: Show version information.

EXIT STATUS

If the device reservation succeeds, pw-reserve does not exit until terminated with a signal. It exits with status 0 if terminated by SIGINT or SIGTERM in this case.

Otherwise, it exits with nonzero exit status.

EXAMPLES

pw-reserve -n Audio0

Reserve ALSA card 0, and exit with error if it is already reserved.

pw-reserve -n Audio0 -r

Reserve ALSA card 0, requesting any applications that have reserved the device to release it for us.

AUTHORS