[pulseaudio-discuss] sound works in console, but not in X, what gives?

[Jan Steffens]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 8:02 AM,  <pulseaudio at eli.users.panix.com> wrote:
>
> "pactl suspend-sink 0 0" returns 0 (success, one would think) but
> nothing changes with Sink #0. "pactl suspend-sink 0 1" doesn't
> change anything either (and exits with 0 as well).
>
> Now, "pactl suspend-source 0 0" exits with 1 and gives an error:
> "Failure: Invalid argument" ("pactl suspend-source 0 1", "... 1 0",
> and "... 1 1" all do the same thing).
>
> What is going on here?
>
> Elijah
>

Not having rights to use the audio devices will cause PulseAudio to
suspend the sinks until you regain rights. Ubuntu uses ConsoleKit and
udev's ACL features to remove and add rights to devices depending on
which user's virtual console is active.

You will have to start a ConsoleKit session from X somehow - otherwise
ConsoleKit will not be aware the VC belongs to you, and udev will
remove your rights on the audio devices when you switch to the X
virtual console.
This is normally done by gdm. If you use startx, this can be done in
your .xinitrc, usually with a line like:

exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch icewm