[pulseaudio-discuss] Pulseaudio and bluetooth - first instanz grabs bt-device

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Tue, 2016-09-06 at 11:55 +0200, Jakob Schürz wrote:
> Hi there!
> 
> I have a special setup for my pulseaudio. It uses RTP on localhost, so 
> that i can listen to mpd (running as systemwide service under user mpd) 
> whether I'm logged in or not.

What does "running as systemwide service under user mpd" mean?
Apparently you're not running pulseaudio in the system mode, since
pulseaudio can be started in the system mode only as root.

> I have a default.pa in the usedir from mpd (contains only a rtp-send), 

Surely it contains other modules too? mpd won't be able to send audio
to pulseaudio if module-native-protocol-unix isn't loaded, and rtp-send 
requires some kind of a source to be present in order to work.

> and i use /etc/pulse/default.pa for all other users (activated rtp-receive).
> 
> Now is the problem, when i add a bluetooth-device the first instanz of 
> pulseaudio grabs this device. This pa-instanze is the pa-server from 
> Debian-gdm or mpd. Not the loggedin user.
> 
> If i want to pair a bt-keyboard or my mobile-phone, or an external 
> bt-speaker (Headset) as user in gnome, nothing is found. Or the pairing 
> doesn't work, or the connection to the audio-device is refused.
> 
> When i kill the pulseaudio-server from gdm and mpd, bluetooth works like 
> a charme for the loginuser.
> 
> I found in Archwiki the hint, to mask the pa for gdm. But this is not 
> what i want, because in this case, i can't listen to my music, when i'm 
> not logged in (what i want!!!)
> 
> Any ideas?

You could run pulseaudio in the system mode. In that case there will be
only one pulseaudio instance, and no need for rtp. To be able to use
bluetooth, add module-bluetooth-discover to /etc/pulse/system.pa (and
module-bluetooth-policy can be useful too), and add user "pulse" to
group "bluetooth".

Standard disclaimer:
https://wiki.freedesktop.org/www/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/WhatIsWrongWithSystemWide/

-- 
Tanu