Ubuntu
pulseaudio package

  1. Bug #433654
  2. Comment #47

Comment 47 for bug 433654

Revision history for this message
Igor Wojnicki (wojnicki) wrote : Re: [Karmic]&[Lucid] Only one user has sound; no hw shows in Sound Preferences

Guys I found it!!! Here is the solution!

1st the lucid daily build (28.02.10) doesn't perform better than karmic, but it gave me some clues.
When it logged in (the daily build) as ubuntu I started rythmbox to play.
I added another user aa.
I switched to aa, and... the music stopped playing :)
then I started rhtythmox as aa, it plays nice.
Swithed back to ubuntu and.... bummer, aa music keeps playing....
So I added another user bb and repeated the procedure but swichinch between aa and bb. In either case whichever user starts the music first it gets access to the audio device and it's not willing to give it beack upon switching.
Why than ubuntu user behaves differently, giving back access to the audio device?
I checked permissions: System->User Settings->Advanced->User Priviledges.
It turns out that by default ubuntu DOES NOT have 'Use audio devices checked' hmmm interesting.
So I unchecked this option for both aa and bb users. Guess what It started working!

So I went back to karmic to investigate the user privileges there. ANd guess what, by default a desktop user has 'Use audio device' checked. So I unchecked it and... sound upon user switching started to work :)

Bottom line. If you want to have a user, which currently uses the display, to have access to the sound device with all the benefits from sound muting upon user switch, you need to uncheck 'Use audio devices' privileges for this user. As a matter of fact I unchecked it for all my users.

These privileges are very confusing then.
I guess their proper interpretation is that if:
- checked: the user locks the audio device as long as he wants, no sound switching upon user switching,
- unchecked: the user which currently uses the display has access to the audio device, sound switching takes place upon user switching.

Ant the last word. I think it is very sad what happens here. None of the developers/packagers could help the community with this problem. But the solution was there! It seems that this is a kind of undocumented feature nobody knows about. Isn't there something wrong with software/package care at ubuntu then?

Anyway, have fun with your audio now!