[pulseaudio-discuss] PulseAudio ssh -X equivalent

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and rozelak at volny.cz at 02/02/11 08:50 did gyre and gimble:
> Hallo
> I would like to ask if there is (planned) something as -X option in ssh for
> PulseAudio as well. I know from the pulseaudio FAQ that it supports
> playback over the network, but I would like to have it working
> transparently - playing on my desktop office computer when I sitting in
> from of it, or playing through my laptop speakers when ssh-ing to the
> office desktop and invoking *play commands on the desktop remotely.
> 
> Or should this question rather be asked on ssh forum?

In short, unless it's ratified, the openssh guys likely wont support any
specific hacks for PA.

It would likely take someone to draft up a proposal to IETF

Lauri actually discussed this on IRC the other day.
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg64855.html



That said, in a private network, what you describe works fine and
transparently provided the destination (client) machine can connect back
to the source (server) machine.

The X11 connection is tunnelled over SSH, but the PA connection has to
be direct.

Provided you run paprefs on your source machine and tick the box to
enable network access, then ensure that the script
"start-pulseaudio-x11" is run at login, and ensure port 4713/tcp is
open, then SSH'ing around your network should work fine.

PA piggy backs onto X11 root window for connection properties (including
the server to connect to and the cookie to use for auth).

See: xprop -root | grep PULSE

More info here:
http://colin.guthr.ie/2009/08/sound-on-linux-is-confusing-defuzzing-part-2-pulseaudio/

HTHs

Col



-- 

Colin Guthrie
gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

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