Comment 0 for bug 663019

In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick plus ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev/ppa which provides pulseaudio-1:0.9.22~git20100719-0ubuntu1~ppa2

1. Pulseaudio was choosing incorrect default-sink, so I created a very simple file in ~/.pulse/default.pa. It had only two lines, and both lines were initially commented out (I was planning to uncomment them later):

# set-default-sink output 1
# set-default-source input 1

When this useless little file exists, pulseaudio fails to start, giving a fatal error:

  E: main.c: Daemon startup without any loaded modules, refusing to work.
  I: main.c: Daemon terminated.

Why?

The error message is really useless because it gives no clue as to the cause of the problem.
Maybe the error message could be changed to something more informative related to the cause.
It took me a long time to find out why pulseaudio was not starting.
Anyway, the answer is:

2. If I move the file out of ~/.pulse/, pulseaudio is able to start normally:

  $ mv ~/.pulse/default.pa ~/unused-default.pa

3. And if I move the file back again,

 $ mv ~/unused-default.pa ~/.pulse/default.pa

pulseaudio fails to start, giving a fatal error:

  E: main.c: Daemon startup without any loaded modules, refusing to work.
  I: main.c: Daemon terminated. :

Why?
Is it normal?
Is it a bug?

Thanks for any thoughts.