implement a way for daemons to play audio

[Alistair Buxton]

The use case is software like gmediarender, a uPNP media player which runs as a daemon. It should be ready to accept uPNP commands from the network at any time, regardless of whether there is a user session active or not. Users logging in and out should not interrupt it or affect the audio in any way, because it is a system daemon.

[Zygmunt Krynicki (zyga)]

Hey

I'm not sure if I understand your request correctly.

On a classic system where pulseaudio only runs in session mode as the local user this won't be possible as when the user is not logged in there's no pulseaudio to talk to (or specifically it might exist for the login screen but we cannot easily talk to it).

In an all-snap device this should be easy to achieve with pulseaudio running in system mode and arbitrary media player talking to it directly over the existing pulseaudio interface. I think that this is the preferred way to implemented network playback devices.

Please let me know if this captures the intent of your request.

[Alistair Buxton (a-j-buxton)]

Snaps should work on any Ubuntu system. That means the snap should work on an all-snap system, and it should also be possible to make it work on a classic system in any of the following states:

* At user desktop.
* At login screen.
* At session lock screen.
* During transition between any of the above states.
* When no login manager or desktop installed (Ubuntu Server).

[Alistair Buxton (a-j-buxton)]

That said, just making it work on all-snap would be enough for my specific use case.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

The pulseaudio snap is now available which means an app can 'plugs: [ pulseaudio ]' and it can be expected to work on classic or all snaps (if the pulse snap is installed). There is also an 'alsa' interface now. Based on comments in this bug, I believe this can be marked 'fix released'.