pulseaudio not launched when loggin as root

[Nicola Bonelli]

After upgrading from karmic, for some reasons pulseaudio (per-session daemon mode) is not launched (?) on login as root. If launched manually it works properly.

Logging as other users it is launched as expected.

/etc/default/pulsaudio:

PULSEAUDIO_SYSTEM_START=0
DISALLOW_MODULE_LOADING=1

/etc/pulse/client.conf has no autospawn = no set.

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. I have classified this bug as a bug in Pulseaudio.

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport, either via the appropriate application's "Help -> Report a Problem" menu or using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Attach all modified conffiles in /etc/pulse and ~/.pulse

[Nicola Bonelli (nicola-bonelli)]

Daniel, I'm using the default ones...

I don't know if this can help but /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop which aims to launch pulseaudio by means of start-pulseaudio-x11 fails.

I'm able to run pulseaudio manually, not via start-pulseaudio-x11.

Here's what happens:

root@valhalla:~$ start-pulseaudio-x11
Connection failure: Connection refused

root@valhalla:~$ bash -x start-pulseaudio-x11
+ set -e
+ '[' -z '' ']'
+ '[' x:0.0 '!=' x ']'
+ /usr/bin/pactl load-module module-x11-publish display=:0.0
Connection failure: Connection refused

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Upstream says that it's a very bad idea to run pulse as root. What's the specific use case for doing so?

[Nicola Bonelli (nicola-bonelli)]

I'm not running pulseaudio in system mode. Instead I'm running it as per-user daemon as suggested. The point is that logging as root pulseaudio is not launched.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Please provide an strace.

[Nicola Bonelli (nicola-bonelli)]

If I run pulseaudio manually it works. The point is that is not automatically launched when the user root log in.

The script supposed to run it is start-pulseaudio-x11... it fails at the line 26:

/usr/bin/pactl load-module module-x11-publish "display=$DISPLAY" > /dev/null
with the error connection refused.

I have attached the strace of pactl...

[Nicola Bonelli (nicola-bonelli)]

The bug I've been reporting is the #551589 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-media/+bug/551589).

[Chemtox (chemtox)]

I got the same error after upgrading to Lucid, with a normal user, but I had autospawn disabled. Enabling it back made it all good (jackd works without having to kill pulseaudio now).

Did you check your ~/.pulse/client.conf?

[Nicola Bonelli (nicola-bonelli)]

I have no ~/.pulse/client.conf for root user. Anyway I confirm the bug is also present after installing Lucid from scratch (not only after upgrading).

[Jack D (jdonohue654-ubuntu)]

I can confirm this bug as well when running X as root. But it is not a problem when X is run as any "normal" user.

I did a bit of sleuthing tonight, and the underlying problem is: For a regular user, when X is initiating:

1. first, the gnome-settings-daemon makes the following call:

/bin/bash /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog

2. Then, later in the X start-up sequence, x-session-manager calls:

/bin/sh /usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11 (as defined in /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop)

But, for the root user, the step #1 is never happening (i.e., gnome-settings-daemon never attempts to start the pulseaudio process). So step #2 fails with a connection refused.

I don't know enough about gnome or gnome-settings-daemon to know why it isn't starting pulse for root. Hopefully someone with a good background in gnome can say why it starts pulseaudio for regular users but not root.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for pulseaudio (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]