pulseaudio cannot start local D-Bus server

[Gregory Symons]

When I log in, pulseaudio is not started. If I try to start it in a terminal, I get the following error:

E: [pulseaudio] module-dbus-protocol.c: dbus_server_listen() failed: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.BadAddress: Abstract socket name too long
E: [pulseaudio] module-dbus-protocol.c: Starting the local D-Bus server failed.
E: [pulseaudio] module.c: Failed to load module "module-dbus-protocol" (argument: ""): initialization failed.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Module load failed.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Failed to initialize daemon.

DRILLINGINFO\gsymons@GSYMONS-DESKTOP p1 ~> lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 11.10
Release: 11.10

 apt-cache policy pulseaudio
pulseaudio:
  Installed: 1:1.0-0ubuntu3
  Candidate: 1:1.0-0ubuntu3
  Version table:
 *** 1:1.0-0ubuntu3 0
        990 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:0.9.22+stable-queue-24-g67d18-0ubuntu3.1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-updates/main amd64 Packages
     1:0.9.22+stable-queue-24-g67d18-0ubuntu3 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main amd64 Packages

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Rostik (grostik)]

I tried to debug this and this bug appears when pulseaudio tries to create socket at:
/home/likewise-open/WWPASS/r.kondratenko/.pulse/935b64df554dd2a4477d12aa00000008-default-sink
moving home directory to /home/WWPASS/r.kondratenko/.pulse/935b64df554dd2a4477d12aa00000008-default-sink
did help. However in natty this was not an issue.

[Florian Lentsch (lentschi)]

I was going crazy about what I thought to be a firefox bug:
For some reason firefox tries to connect to pulseaudio whenever a menu opens (context, searchbar, main menu). Due to the above mentioned bug I experienced short system stalls.
I could fix those firefox issues by symlinking ~/.pulse to /pulse (to make the path shorter) - HOWEVER I still couldn't get pulseaudio to work - I now get:

pulseaudio[24557]: [autospawn] core-util.c: Failed to create secure directory: Too many levels of symbolic links

Is it somehow possible to reconfigure pulseaudio to use a different path/filename?

[Peter Schwenk (schwenk)]

I see this error on my 11.10 (AMD64) machine only for users with nfs-mounted home directories. Their home directory paths are pretty long (/Network/Servers/<fqdn of server>/Volumes/Homes/<user name>) because I'm using a Mac OS X Server for my NFS sharing and that's the convention for home directory auto mount paths.

Another clue is that I'm seeing these types of errors in my syslog:
[pulseaudio] module-protocol-stub.c: Failed to remove stale UNIX socket '/Network/Servers/<fqdn of server>/Volumes/Homes/<user name>/.pulse/e735d8c8be6377c9aa3f7b4c000005f9-runtime/native': No such file or directory

If I look in a user's .pulse directory (actually symlinked into a directory in /tmp) for the 'native' socket, the name's truncated.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric) reached end-of-life on May 9, 2013.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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