[pulseaudio-discuss] Loss of Sound

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Mon, 2017-09-18 at 11:37 +0200, mycomp at tutanota.com wrote:
> Can anyone please help with the following problem ?
> 
> The sound on a desktop PC running Debian Jessie has stopped working - no
> sound from any websites (e.g. BBC or YouTube) and trying to play a
> standard sound file I have saved which is used to test the sound with
> vlc gives:
> 
> Audio output failed:
> The audio device "default" could not be used:
> Device or resource busy.
> 
> and in the terminal window it says:
> 
> VLC media player 2.2.6 Umbrella (revision 2.2.6-0-g1aae78981c)
> [00000000013f0608] pulse audio output error: PulseAudio server
> connection failure: Connection refused

This error usually means that pulseaudio isn't running.

> [0000000001318118] core libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface.
> Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
> [00000000013f0608] alsa audio output error: cannot open ALSA device
> "default": Device or resource busy

VLC tried to use alsa instead of pulseaudio, but some other application
kept the sound card busy.

> [00000000013f0608] core audio output error: module not functional
> [00007fc2a8c02b08] core decoder error: failed to create audio output
> 
> The sound was then suddenly regained.
> 
> The sound has now been suddenly lost again.
> 
> Loose wiring is not suspected.
> 
> The only file in /etc/pulse is client.conf

That sounds like you've removed pulseaudio. client.conf is shipped with
libpulse, which you clearly have installed, but /etc/pulse should also
contain daemon.conf, default.pa and system.pa, and those files come
with the main pulseaudio daemon package.

-- 
Tanu

https://www.patreon.com/tanuk