[pulseaudio-discuss] unable to remove sink or source suspension when switching desktop environment

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Tue, 2015-05-26 at 19:48 -0700, Oz Dror wrote:
> I have pulsesaudio running on ubuntu 15.04 desktop on vt7
> 
> I have a container running arch on vt8 using the PULSE_SERVER on vt7
> 
> /etc/pulse/default.pa includes the following lines:
> 
> load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-anonymous=1
> load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-ip-acl=127.0.0.1;192.168.0.0/24
> 
> as soon as I switch form vt7 to vt8 the pulseaudio sinks and sources
> becomes suspended. If I am switching to any of the terminals tty1-7
> I have no problem. Even If the container uses that terminal. I get IDLE
> instead of SUSPENDED.
> 
> When I apply any of the following commands the suspension does  not change:
> 
> pactl suspend-source 1 0
> pactl suspend-source 0
> pactl suspend-sink 1 0
> pactl suspend-sink 0
> 
> There is something in the X11 environment that  force
> this irreversible suspension.
> 
> I suspect that there is a conflict. I cannot tell where it is coming form.
> Possibly from one of the the modules.

PulseAudio suspends the devices when your user doesn't have access to
them any more. Your user loses access to the devices when you switch to
a vt on which your user is not active. These access control changes are
done by logind.

I don't know if there's any way to make logind think that your user is
in active on the container vt. If not, you can work around this problem
by adding your user to the "audio" group. Then your user will always
have access to the audio devices. However, if you have other users on
the system, there will be problems when multiple users are logged in
simultaneously, because when another user is active, both you and that
other user have access to the audio devices, but only one can actually
have the devices open. When both try to open the devices, things will
break.

-- 
Tanu