[pulseaudio-discuss] Accessing audio as root

[Lennart Poettering]

On Fri, 01.01.10 22:42, Bill Cox (waywardgeek at gmail.com) wrote:

> 
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 6:57 AM, Lennart Poettering
> <lennart at poettering.net> wrote:
> >> And this is the problem because it works with alsa, simply add every
> >> user you want to give audio access to the audio group and it worked.
> >> Even with OSS this worked. But PA breaks this behaviour.
> >
> > First of all, we broke exactly nothing. You can always bypass PA and do
> > stuff like this.
> >
> > Secondly, allowing access to the audio device to all users is a
> > security hole as I tried to explain quite a few times. Allowing that
> > means a user can evesdrop into your voip calls, he can even completely
> > monitor whatever you say when you sit in front of your computer.
> 
> How can I "bypass PA" on a Ubuntu Karmic or Lucid?  If I disable
> user-land pulseaudio, several applications break, including the volume
> control.  PulseAudio has been Vulcan mind-melded into the system.  If
> you know of a realistic way to bypass PulseAudio, by all means, please
> state it!

Simply use the "front:xxxx" device string when using ALSA instead of
the default of "default" or "pulse".

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
lennart [at] poettering [dot] net
http://0pointer.net/lennart/           GnuPG 0x1A015CC4