[pulseaudio-discuss] system-wide daemon

[Markus Rechberger]

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 9:38 AM, Colin Guthrie <gmane at colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
> 'Twas brillig, and Markus Rechberger at 09/02/10 02:16 did gyre and gimble:
>> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 3:01 AM,  <olin.pulse.7ia at shivers.mail0.org> wrote:
>>> Bill Cox:
>>>> While the "right" way is not system-wide mode, in practice, I find
>>>> system-wide mode to be very stable and usable on Ubuntu systems that
>>>> have multiple users trying to send sound to the speakers.
>>>
>>> So, I'm still wondering: what *is* the "right way" for this use case? Is it
>>> the case that PulseAudio just doesn't address it?
>>
>> There is no right way pulseaudio was not designed to support multiple
>> users at the same time (without the depreciated exception of running
>> it as system wide daemon).
>
> Indeed. PA is principally meant to be run per-user. Each user logged in
> will have their own PA process running and each will monitor a system
> service called "ConsoleKit" which tracks which user is active. We adhere
> to whatever ConsoleKit tells us with regards to which user is currently
> "active" (see ck-list-sessions) and only the active user has access to
> the sound hardware.
>
> Think about how switching users works (on Linux and on Windows/OSX).
> Only the user whose desktop is currently presented will be allowed to
> use sound, the other user's sound is "corked" until they become active
> again.


Bad example as usual, on OSX everyone (who's permitted to use the
audio unit) can just log in and use the audio unit.

Markus