[pulseaudio-discuss] State not restored in system mode

[Florian Lindner]

Am 20.10.2016 um 15:16 schrieb Tanu Kaskinen:
> On Sat, 2016-10-15 at 16:40 +0200, Florian Lindner wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> this is a follow up to my previous thread.
>>
>> I'm using pulseaudio in system mode. It basically works fine, besides
>> that the state is not restored. So I need to login and unmute the device
>> after each boot.
>>
>> The device is an Asus Xonar PCIe card.
>>
>> Currently, for debugging I start pulseaudio manually after boot using
>> the service file
>>
>> [Service]
>> Type=notify
>> ExecStart=/usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no --system --realtime
>> --disallow-module-loading --disallow-exit --log-target=journal
>> --log-level=debug
>>
>> I also changed the home directory of the pulse user from /var/run/pulse
>> to /var/lib/pulse, to check if there are issues with an home that is
>> cleared on each boot (what happens to /var/run/ afaik)
>>
>> The distribution is Arch, pulseaudio is on 9.0.
>>
>> Restore modules are loaded:
>>
>> # grep load-module /etc/pulse/system.pa
>> load-module module-udev-detect
>> load-module module-detect
>> load-module module-esound-protocol-unix
>> load-module module-native-protocol-unix
>> load-module module-default-device-restore
>> load-module module-stream-restore
>> load-module module-device-restore
>> load-module module-card-restore
>> load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-anonymous=true
>> load-module module-zeroconf-publish
>> load-module module-rescue-streams
>> load-module module-always-sink
>> load-module module-suspend-on-idle
>> load-module module-position-event-sounds
>>
>> The log output is attached or at http://pastebin.com/AxJBCqAz
> 
> The log doesn't show any changes in the sink mute state. The log shows
> some mute toggling of tunnel streams, however:
> 
> Okt 15 16:25:52 marduk pulseaudio[855]: The mute of sink input 2 changed from no to yes.
> Okt 15 16:25:52 marduk pulseaudio[855]: The mute of sink input 2 changed from yes to no.
> Okt 15 16:25:53 marduk pulseaudio[855]: The mute of sink input 1 changed from no to yes.
> Okt 15 16:25:53 marduk pulseaudio[855]: The mute of sink input 1 changed from yes to no.
> Okt 15 16:25:55 marduk pulseaudio[855]: The mute of sink input 3 changed from no to yes.
> Okt 15 16:25:55 marduk pulseaudio[855]: The mute of sink input 3 changed from yes to no.
> 
> It seems that sink input 1 is a tunnel stream for the internal sound
> card, and sink inputs 2 and 3 are both tunnel streams for the Xonar
> card. Do you have two tunnel sinks loaded for the Xonar card?

As I noted above, I have module native-protocol-tcp without auth loaded.
However, during this log (which is only startup of pulseaudio) I did not
connect from the outside (at least not played a stream, maybe the other
machine connected anyway to the server, since the remote source was
available)

> The mute events don't really match your description of the problem,
> though, because the initial mute state seems to be unmuted, and these
> events just quickly toggle unmuted -> muted -> unmuted, so there's only
> a very short time (less than a second according to the time stamps)
> when the stream is muted.
> 
> What if you don't connect from outside at all? If you ssh into the
> server after booting, do you get audio if you run

I always test with a local sound source, no network stream.

>     paplay --device=alsa_output.pci-0000_03_04.0.analog-stereo /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

Right after boot, login via SSH:

paplay --device=alsa_output.pci-0000_03_04.0.analog-stereo
/usr/share/kodi/addons/resource.uisounds.confluence/resources/notify.wav
-> no sound

pactl set-sink-mute alsa_output.pci-0000_03_04.0.analog-stereo 0


pactl set-sink-volume alsa_output.pci-0000_03_04.0.analog-stereo 100%

paplay --device=alsa_output.pci-0000_03_04.0.analog-stereo
/usr/share/kodi/addons/resource.uisounds.confluence/resources/notify.wav
-> sound

(side note: the volume state is also not restored)

>> After I unmute the device, a restart pulseaudio.service does not mute it
>> again. It only happens at a system reboot.
>>
>> Is there a way to use pacmd or alike to connect to the system daemon and
>> unmute the device? Currently I login and use pavucontrol.
> 
> "pactl set-sink-mute", see "man pactl" for details.

Is it ok, pactl fails, when executed as root?

# pactl set-sink-mute alsa_output.pci-0000_03_04.0.analog-stereo 0
Connection failure: Access denied

I hope it was a little bit helpful to pin down the problem, I'm very
happy to provide any more information.

It helped me much you mentioned pacctl, at least now I don't need to
login graphically to set the mute status.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Florian