[pulseaudio-discuss] Start condition failed - ConditionUser=!root not met

[Colin Guthrie]

Tanu Kaskinen wrote on 13/10/2021 20:25:
> On Wed, 2021-10-13 at 14:51 +0000, Joel wrote:
>> Tanu -
>>
>> Thank you.  I made the changes you suggested (removed
>> pulseaudio.socket from two locations where I found the file:
>> /etc/systemd/system/and /etc/systemd/system/sockets.targets.wants.
>> In the file pulseaudio.service, I commented out the lines
>> "Requires=pulseaudio.socket"; "ConditionUser=!root" and
>> "Also=pulseaudio.socket".  Please note that there also two
>> occurrences of this file: /etc/systemd/system/and
>> /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.targets.wants. Perhaps the second
>> occurrences are system-generated.
>>
>> I then had sound from the web browser!  VLC was still providing sound
>> as before (but I gather not using pulsesaudio).  After logging out
>> then logging back in (not rebooting), there was no web browser sound
>> and a new error:  Failed to load module "module-x11-publish".  This
>> also occurred after rebooting and booting from a cold start. After
>> the reboot, a further error arose: Error opening PCM device front:0:
>> Device or resource busy.  Also, the /var/run/.pulse cookie does
>> exist.  The systemctl status reports in full are at
>> https://susepaste.org/99540079 .  I'm unable to determine what I did
>> to cause these errors.
> 
> The module-x11-publish error is probably caused by
> /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop, which is loaded on login,
> causing /usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11 to be run. You could try removing
> the pulseaudio.desktop file (take a backup if you want). You shouldn't
> lose any essential functionality by doing that (and since PulseAudio
> was unable to connect to X11, whatever PulseAudio wanted to do didn't
> succeed anyway).
> 
> If you see "Device or resource busy", something else is using the ALSA
> device. You can check with "lsof /dev/snd/*" what programs are using
> the ALSA devices.

Forgive my ignorance since it's been *years* since I did any PA hacking 
(just a drive by message on the list as I clicked on the folder in my 
email client!) but do you really want your system-wide PA instance 
running as root (that's what the systemd unit files suggests!)

Wouldn't you want a User=pulse in there in the system unit (and make 
sure the user pulse can access the audio devices via suitable ACLs/group 
ownerships)

It would be fine to have a system-wide pulseaudio.socket here that 
started up the system-wide pulseaudio.service?

Or have things changed so much that the system-wide pulseaudio instance 
no longer runs as the pulse user?

Col