Ubuntu 16.04 Pulseaudio does not use /etc/pulse/default.pa if ~/.config/pulse/default.pa does not exist

[brian mullan]

System is Ubuntu 16.04

According to Ubuntu Pulseaudio MAN page:

    http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man5/default.pa.5.html

it says...

       The PulseAudio sound server interprets a configuration script on
       startup, which is mainly used to define the set of modules to load.
       When PulseAudio runs in the per-user mode and
       ~/.config/pulse/default.pa exists, that file is used. When PulseAudio
       runs in the per-user mode and that file doesn't exist,
       /etc/pulse/default.pa is used.

On my system I have put the following into - /etc/pulse/default.pa

    load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-ip-acl=127.0.0.1;10.204.151.0/24

The contents of my ~/.config/pulse/ directory contains NO default.pa file only the cookie file:

    $ ls ~/.config/pulse
    cookie

After a reload I issue the command patcl list modules and the "module-native-protocol-tcp" is NOT listed ?

$ pactl list modules
Module #0
 Name: module-augment-properties
 Argument:
 Usage counter: n/a
 Properties:
  module.author = "Lennart Poettering"
  module.description = "Augment the property sets of streams with additional static information"
  module.version = "8.0"

Module #1
 Name: module-always-sink
 Argument:
 Usage counter: n/a
 Properties:
  module.author = "Colin Guthrie"
  module.description = "Always keeps at least one sink loaded even if it's a null one"
  module.version = "8.0"

Module #3
 Name: module-xrdp-sink
 Argument:
 Usage counter: 0
 Properties:
  module.author = "Jay Sorg"
  module.description = "xrdp sink"
  module.version = "8.0"

Module #4
 Name: module-xrdp-source
 Argument:
 Usage counter: n/a
 Properties:
  module.author = "Laxmikant Rashinkar"
  module.description = "xrdp source"
  module.version = "8.0"

Module #5
 Name: module-native-protocol-unix
 Argument:
 Usage counter: n/a
 Properties:
  module.author = "Lennart Poettering"
  module.description = "Native protocol (UNIX sockets)"
  module.version = "8.0"

Module #6
 Name: module-cli-protocol-unix
 Argument:
 Usage counter: n/a
 Properties:
  module.author = "Lennart Poettering"
  module.description = "Command line interface protocol (UNIX sockets)"
  module.version = "8.0"

I am filing this bug because according to the MAN page (see above)... since I do NOT have a ~/.config/pulse/default.pa Ubuntu/Pulseaudio should be executing the /etc/pulse/default.pa configuration instead... which should be loading:

load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-ip-acl=127.0.0.1;10.204.151.0/24

but it not.

[Miroslav Tzonkov (atvservice)]

It seems that the correct config file location is /etc/xrdp/pulse/default.pa, because of the xrdpd usage. :)