[pulseaudio-discuss] Issues with pulseaudio and gdm

[Neil Bird]

Around about 03/11/12 11:44, Colin Guthrie scribbled ...
> Sorry for the crazy late reply.

   No probs.


> 'Twas brillig, and Neil Bird at 09/06/12 00:39 did gyre and gimble:
>>   What's *supposed* to start pulseaudio?  I replaced pulseaudio in my
>> test VM with a script that would do a ps and then run the real
>> pulseaudio, and that indicates that it's gnome-settings-daemon that's
>> spawning the pa exe, but I can't find anything explicit in the gsd source.
>
> Pulseaudio autospawns itself when it's needed so it's in the libpulse
> code. By trying to connect to a PA daemon that is not running, g-s-d's
> use of the libpulse code will trigger the autospawn.

   When I tried the same trick on my main box, pa simply never got 
launched, as I recall, there was just no attempt to start it.


> Certainly I don't have issues with that here with newer gsd+PA, so it's
> perhaps a problem that has just "gone away" now :s

   At the moment, I'm running a 5-minute cron job that checks to see if 
there's a gdm-owned pa process, and if not it starts a shell with the 
same env. vars. as gdm and launches pa.  That, at least, is stopping 
/var/log/messages from being swamped.

   It also creates a pa that lasts until the next person creates a fresh 
login (seems as if the gdm login session *becomes* that person, so the 
next user-switch launches a new gdm, which in turn doesn't start its own 
pa).


#!/bin/bash

# Not if already running
pgrep -u gdm pulseaudio >/dev/null  &&  exit 0

# Get gdm env
pid=$(pgrep -u gdm gnome-shell)
[ "$pid" == "" ]  &&  exit 0
[ -f "/proc/$pid/environ" ]  ||  exit 1
echo '#!/bin/bash' > /tmp/gdm-pa
sed -e 's/\x00/\x0aexport /g' -e 's/^/export /g' /proc/$pid/environ >> 
/tmp/gdm-pa
echo "JOBBY=restart" >> /tmp/gdm-pa
echo "/usr/bin/pulseaudio --start" >> /tmp/gdm-pa

# Do it
chmod +x /tmp/gdm-pa
su - -s /bin/bash gdm -c /tmp/gdm-pa
/bin/rm -f /tmp/gdm-pa



   When I get a chance, possibly over Xmas, I'm going to chance a fresh 
install of F18 on a second root partition I've prepared (possibly 
64-bit), and I'm expecting that to sort out any oddities.  My PC has 
largely only been upgraded (from RedHat 6.1, 2000!) and not installed 
again since then (and by copying partitions when HDs are changed), so 
I've definitely accrued a bit of cruft along the way, so it's probably 
time to swallow my pride.

   The fact that all fresh installs I've tried don't have a problem does 
mean that it's something that's lying around, and at this stage I'm just 
unlikely to find it.  I just don't like sweeping issues under the carpet!

-- 
[phoenix at fnx ~]# rm -f .signature
[phoenix at fnx ~]# ls -l .signature
ls: .signature: No such file or directory
[phoenix at fnx ~]# exit