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For the work I need to join Microsoft Teams sessions. I used to run a Manjaro installation, on which it worked to join the sessions with the Chromium browser. Now I have switched to Fedora, where it doesn't work anymore I just get a message "Sorry, we couldn't connect you. [Retry] [Dismiss]".

Somehow I suspect that the issue is somewhere in the pipewire configuration.

So I have setup Manjaro in a (VirtualBox) VM and as expected Teams works in Chromium on the Manjaro VM. To find what is causing the trouble on Fedora I have now in total 3 VMs with Debian, Manjaro, and Ubuntu to investigate the difference in the setup.

Teams in Chromium not running on:

  • Fedora: Chromium Version 102.0.5005.115 (Official Build) Fedora Project (64-bit)
  • Debian: Chromium Version 103.0.5060.114 (Official Build) built on Debian bookworm/sid, running on Debian bookworm/sid (64-bit)

Teams in Chromium running:

  • Manjaro: Chromium Version 103.0.5060.114 (Offizieller Build) Arch Linux (64-Bit)
  • Ubuntu: Chromium Version 103.0.5060.114 (Official Build) snap (64-bit)

Looking at the packages in Debian and Ubuntu, filtering for pulseaudio and pipewire, there is no difference, both of the systems have: gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio, libcanberra-pulse, libpulse-mainloop-glib0, libpulse0, libpulsedsp, pulseaudio-module-bluetooth, pulseaudio-utils, pulseaudio, gstreamer1.0-pipewire, libpipewire-0.3-0, libpipewire-0.3-common, libpipewire-0.3-modules, pipewire-bin/testing, pipewire-media-session, pipewire.

Can anyone provide some hint on how to debug this situation or in general pipewire setups?

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  • nah, Teams is just suuuuper finnicky. Same happens sporadically on my Fedora/Chromium. It also sometimes doesn't work on our presenter's Windows laptop with Chrome, Chromium or Edge, at least one of the three, at any given day.
    – Marcus Müller
    Commented Jul 20, 2022 at 13:56
  • but your debugging is great! I just don't see how it points to pipewire. When exactly does that "sorry, we couldn't connect you" happen?
    – Marcus Müller
    Commented Jul 20, 2022 at 13:57
  • After I insert my name and click the join-button, then I'm in the "waiting room" until the host lets me in. In the moment, when the host lets me in, I'm kicked out and receive the message.
    – white_gecko
    Commented Jul 20, 2022 at 14:19
  • Actually now I have installed the chomium as flatpack, which works for teams, but doesn't work with keepassxc, so now I have a two chromium setup. Better would be to have teams running in the rpm chromium.
    – white_gecko
    Commented Jul 20, 2022 at 14:20
  • I assumed it is pipewire because I read about some similar behavior with the teams client, where people had to get pipewire working with the teams client. Also it used to work on debian, but doesn't anymore and the big change that I'm aware of, was pipewire. But as you can see, this assumption is based on a very soft foundation.
    – white_gecko
    Commented Jul 20, 2022 at 14:22

2 Answers 2

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I think that Microsoft Teams for some reason uses DRM libraries which are not included in vanilla Chromium, but may be packaged in Manjaro's Chromium and in flathub.

You may refer to https://github.com/proprietary/chromium-widevine for DRM on vanilla Chromiums.

Also, you may want to have a look into the Teams FlatPak (https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/618784/559238).

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  • Thank you, that might be an issue since netflix doesn't work in chromium as well. The script didn't work for fedora at the first attempt but I fixed it: github.com/proprietary/chromium-widevine/pull/15. I don't have a teams session to test on it right now.
    – white_gecko
    Commented Feb 7, 2023 at 12:46
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I've seen such issues with Teams mutiple times.

The fix is easy: open a firefox-window in private mode and use that to join the meeting.

It probably works with Chrome/Chromium/Vivaldi/whatever in private mode as well. The problem is with Teams cookies and cache that gets in the way. Using private mode gets rid of all that junk the easy way.

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