[pulseaudio-discuss] system-wide daemon

[Maarten Bosmans]

2010/2/10 samuel <samuel at eightonions.com>:
> On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:45:33 +0100
> Maarten Bosmans <mkbosmans at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Perhaps the confusion stems from the fact that PulseAudio has two
>> different modes. The normal per-user mode, which should almost always
>> be used, uses the model of a single user having access to the hardware
>> of a single seat. This works great and really polishes the whole
>> desktop experience, including support for fast user switching, remote
>> ssh logins, etc.
>>
>> The other mode is the system-wide daemon mode. This follows more the
>> traditional unix model of a dedicated pulse user running a daemon to
>> which other users can connect. The system mode is more applicable to
>> an audio server/appliance scenario.
>> I have, for example, PulseAudio running as a system daemon on a
>> dedicated server, connected to several speakers around the house. A
>> local MPD process on the server can play music through the pulse
>> server, or I can ssh to the box and start an internet radio stream.
>> Moreover, sound can be redirected from any desktop to the pulse
>> server, so that even the neighbors can enjoy the YouTube clips I'm
>> watching.
>>
> I have basically the same setup - would you mind sharing your config
> files with me? Preferably of both, the server, and of your "clients",
> that is e.g. the computer you watch the youtube clips on, that your
> neighbors enjoy...

The box is currently out of order, so I can't check the config files.
Following is from memory.

To run PulseAudio on the server in system mode: pulseaudio --system
As mentioned earlier, in Ubuntu you have a script in /etc/init.d for
it. Read it and set the appropriate settings. Don't forget to
configure users and groups correctly
(http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/SystemWideInstance)
Make sure module-native-protocol-tcp is loaded with authentication
settings as to let users on other computers access PulseAudio.
http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/Modules is your friend here.

On the client side you can start a program with the PULSE_SERVER
environment variable set to your server name. This redirects all
libpulse audio to your audio server.
For more control you can make tunnels, see module-tunnel-* and
module-zeroconf-*. Then you can switch streams between local playback
and on the audio server, e.g. using pavucontrol.

I hope this gives you enough information to get you in the right direction.

Maarten


>> So when talking about what model PulseAudio uses, it is good to keep
>> the distinction between per-user and system-wide mode, which have of
>> course very different models.
>>
>> Maarten
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>> pulseaudio-discuss at mail.0pointer.de
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>
> Thank you very much.
>
> --
> samuel
>
> < samuel at eightOnions.com >
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