Fox 2026-06-06: "fedora chrome is flawless besides not able to hear
any mics it was working a few days back and nothing was changed on
the system, only thing we changed was our zebra codes."
The race: on a listener joining a room with existing speakers, the
SFU sub PC ontrack can fire BEFORE the signal-server peer-joined
event populates `members`. handleRemoteSfuTrack already does prefix
resolution at line ~4640:
let pubHex = pubHex16;
for (const [, mm] of members){
if (fh.startsWith(pubHex16)){ pubHex = fh; break; }
}
When the roster is empty, the loop finds nothing, pubHex stays the
16-char streamID prefix, and sfuStreamsByPubHex.set(pubHex, stream)
caches under that short key. peer-joined arrives later,
flushSfuStreams runs to attach what was cached — but its inner match
was strict ===:
if (mm.pubkey && hex(unb64(mm.pubkey)) === pubHex){
mm.pubkey decodes to the FULL 64-char hex; pubHex from the cache is
the 16-char prefix; === never matches; listener stays permanently
silent for every speaker who was already in the room.
Pre-cascade this defect was masked: the old guard `!remoteAudio.has(uuid)`
was always true for worklet listeners (remoteAudio is the <audio>
fallback path only), so flushSfuStreams re-attached every cached
stream on every peer-joined — the eventual second ontrack from a
later renegotiation would land with members populated, cache key
became the full pubhex, and === matched. The 2e74b92 fix replaced
the always-true guard with `!listenerAudioNodes.has(uuid)`, which
correctly skipped re-attach but also exposed the strict-equality
matcher in the cold path.
Fix: switch flushSfuStreams' inner match from `=== pubHex` to
`fh.startsWith(pubHex)`. Symmetric with handleRemoteSfuTrack's own
prefix resolution. Works for both cases:
- cache key is full 64-char pubhex → startsWith with a full string
requires equality, so behavior is unchanged when ontrack arrived
after peer-joined (the common case).
- cache key is 16-char prefix → startsWith matches the first 16
chars of any member's full pubhex. 64 bits of prefix entropy =
astronomical collision probability.
Pinned by 29 new assertions in test/listener-audio-attach.test.js,
extracted from the live page so they cannot drift:
- 22 cover the attach FSM (chain reachability, dedup, in-place
swap, jbuf race, idempotent re-attach).
- 7 cover handleRemoteSfuTrack including the failing scenario:
"ontrack ARRIVES BEFORE peer-joined (member roster empty) →
cached + audible after flush" — fails pre-fix, passes post-fix.
Makefile gets test-listener-audio + adds it to test-all.
Russell Ballestrini
0ce1339f8e