[pulseaudio-discuss] Hpw to start the pa server

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Gene Heskett at 12/04/10 16:31 did gyre and gimble:
> On Monday 12 April 2010, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>> 'Twas brillig, and Gene Heskett at 12/04/10 07:34 did gyre and gimble:
>>> How do I go about starting or restarting PA from a root shell?  None of
>>> the other paman or pactl utilities can connect to the server so
>>> everything is greyed out ATM.
>>
>> This is quite a specific question, but I want to ask a more basic
>> question in return. Why do you want to run pulse from a root shell? Is
>> there a specific reason to do this.
>>
>> Normally PA is started at X11 login by a normal user (see
>> start-pulseaudio-x11) but also via autospawning whenever it's needed
>> (see client.conf)
>>
>> The normal situation of running a sound producing application as root is
>> to piggy back on to the X11 root window in order to get connection
>> credentials. The root user would then connect to the users PA daemon and
>> not create his own one.
>>
>> The reason for this revolves around which user is "active". When you
>> become root via e.g. su or sudo, the root session is not considered
>> "active" and thus consolekit will not hand over device control
>> gracefully. If your sound h/w supports it, it would be possible to run
>> two PAs at the same time, but like I say, it's generally easier to just
>> piggy back on to the users PA via it's root window.
>>
>> See here for an explanation of how piggy backing on ot the X11 root
>> window actually works.
>>
>> http://colin.guthr.ie/2009/08/sound-on-linux-is-confusing-defuzzing-part-2-
>> pulseaudio/
>>
>> HTHs
>>
> And I just found xinitd/50pulseaudio, which when I try to launch it as root, 
> replies:
> [root at coyote xinit.d]# ./50pulseaudio
> Pulseaudio startup disabled due to soundprofile configuration

This means you've used draksound to configure your system not to use PA.
draksound takes care of setting up autospawn and other things for you.

If you use draksound to re-enable pulse, this will work (as will autospawn).

> However, going into the desktop configuration tool->multimedia, shows that 
> the PAServer is the only facility, and the test audio button does nothing but 
> kill time while the test plays.  And running paman as me the user now shows 
> its connected.  But I'm still silent.

When this happens (e.g. while it's silent but "playing", run pacmd ls
and then pastebin or attach the oputput.

Cheers.




-- 

Colin Guthrie
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http://colin.guthr.ie/

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