[pulseaudio-discuss] How do I use PulseAudio?

[Tanu Kaskinen]

ti, 2010-04-06 kello 18:17 +0200, Fabrice DELENTE kirjoitti:
> > The man page says this:
> > 
> >         -n     Don't  load  default  script  file  default.pa  (see
> >         below)
> >                on startup. Useful in conjunction with -C or --file.
> > 
> > I guess your problem with your config file is that you're not using it
> > at all.
> 
> Thanks for the tips, I had guessed about this :^)
> 
> However, I still don't know if I need to start the daemon at boot time (if
> so, how? su to user pulse before starting the daemon? doing it as root?).

I suggest you read these three blog articles by Colin Guthrie:

http://colin.guthr.ie/2009/08/sound-on-linux-is-confusing-defuzzing-part-1-alsa/
http://colin.guthr.ie/2009/08/sound-on-linux-is-confusing-defuzzing-part-2-pulseaudio/
http://colin.guthr.ie/2009/08/sound-on-linux-anti-fud-calm-certainty-and-confidence/

The second is the one that gives answers to those particular questions.

> I guess alsa starts the daemon when it needs it (that what the "pulse" alsa
> type is for, right?) but then how do I tell it to use such or such config
> file? Is it hard-coded in the daemon? Or is there a central config file that
> must be present no matter what? Then, how do I create and edit such a file?

So maybe you didn't start from http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/FirstSteps
after all? Because that page says "The best idea is to configure your
daemon in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and /etc/pulse/default.pa and to run
pulseaudio without any arguments."

/etc/pulse/ is the central place for pulseaudio configuration. The files
there can be overridden with files in ~/.pulse/ (so if for example
~/.pulse/default.pa exists, it will be used instead
of /etc/pulse/default.pa).

You should not need to edit any of the configuration files. But if you
must, see "man pulse-daemon.conf" for daemon.conf documentation and
http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/CLI and http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/Modules
for default.pa documentation (default.pa is really a script that uses
the CLI syntax).

-- 
Tanu Kaskinen