[pulseaudio-discuss] running pulseaudio as user on boot

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Christoph Groth at 25/09/10 14:12 did gyre and gimble:
> Hello,
> 
> At home, I have a little server, which is connected to a screen but
> usually not used as a desktop.  The server is connected to decent
> speakers which I would like to use via the local network from my laptop.
> 
> Now, what is the recommended setup for this?  As there is not always
> someone logged-in graphically on the server, I thought of running a
> system-wide pulseaudio server, but this is not recommended.  On the
> other hand, requiring someone to be logged in does not sound as a nice
> solution either.
> 
> Is running a pulseaudio as a user from an init script a good solution?

Running in system wide mode is generally not recommended for a normal
desktop with users logging in etc. In this case your setup is one of the
circumstances where it makes sense. You'll be accessing them via the
network anyway, which means that the SHM access is impossible (which is
one of the reasons against system-wide in a typical setup).

So the options I'd say are:
 1. Run in system-wide mode.
 2. Run as a your normal user via a screen session or init script - but
make sure you add that user to the audio group so it can always access
the sound device when you are not logged in).

The latter is probably nicer if you do sometimes log in as a user on
that box, but in the over all scheme of things it wont make a huge
difference what approach you take.

Col

-- 

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

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