[pulseaudio-discuss] Accessing audio as root

[Bill Cox]

Hi, Lennart.   The blind run all sorts of GUI-driven applications like
Synaptic, from the System/Administration menu.  Howeve, Orca makes
these applications accessible when things are working correctly.  I
agree that we don't want people to login through gdm as root.  They do
things like su to root and launch Synaptic all the time.  It currently
works fine.

The primary problem I'm running into is that the console screens
(Ctrl+Alt+F1-7) aren't read by Orca, they're read by speakup, and
speakup currently is very diffiicult to get talking with user-land
PulseAudio.  I'm not saying impossible, but difficult because speakup
is a kernel module.  I'll work on this, or some other workaround, so
that the version of Vinux/Ubuntu I want to publish in the Fall can
have PA back in user mode.  The best way to do this is still unclear
to me, but I agree pulseaudio should run in user mode.

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Lennart Poettering
<lennart at poettering.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 01.01.10 22:25, Bill Cox (waywardgeek at gmail.com) wrote:
>
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 4:52 AM, Lennart Poettering
>> <lennart at poettering.net> wrote:
>> > I don't see why anyone would want to have audio when changing to root
>> > for admin purposes. Playing music certainly does not fall under "admin
>> > purposes".
>>
>> Ever consider what happens when a blind user switches to root, and his
>> sound card stop speaking?  This is no hypothetical situation, like
>> someone trying to spy on me through Alsa by taking over my mike.
>
> It is. You should not run GUIs as root. And as long as the UI is in
> the terminal only everything should be fine.
>
> Lennart
>
> --
> Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
> lennart [at] poettering [dot] net
> http://0pointer.net/lennart/           GnuPG 0x1A015CC4
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