[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#712980: alsa-utils startup script creates /.pulse files ("Failed to create secure directory") when pulseaudio is installed

[Michael Tokarev]

Package: alsa-utils
Version: 1.0.25-4
Severity: important

When pulseaudio is installed, which basically replaces alsa whith
itself for userspace, /etc/init.d/alsa-utils starts creating
.pulse files in system root directory during system startup/shutdown
(when the script is run):

$ ls -ld /.pulse*
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 May 25 07:54 /.pulse/
-rw------- 1 root root  256 Feb 15 20:10 /.pulse-cookie

This happens on all systems where alsa-utils and pulseaudio
is installed.

When the root filesystem is read-only, running /etc/init.d/alsa-utils
produces this:

# /etc/init.d/alsa-utils start
Setting up ALSA...Failed to create secure directory: Read-only file system
Failed to create secure directory: Read-only file system
Failed to create secure directory: Read-only file system
[message repeated 74 times total]
Failed to create secure directory: Read-only file system
done.

In all these cases, it tries to create /.pulse/ directory, and
before that, it tries to create /.pulse-cookie.

(this happens when $HOME is unset, if it is set and the script
run as root, it creates files in ~root obviously).

I'm filing this against alsa-utils instead of pulseaudio package
(but it might be pulseaudio bug after all), because the alsa-utils
initscript calls amixer and explicitly tells it to act on specified
_hardware_ devices, so that pulse should not be called, but yet it
is being called.  If that's a function marked as a constructor in
libpulse, that should be libpulse bug.

At any rate it is definitely a bug, -- it should not mess with
the root directory like that.

Thanks,

/mjt

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.1
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: amd64

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=ru_RU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages alsa-utils depends on:
ii  dialog          1.1-20120215-2
ii  kmod            9-3
ii  libasound2      1.0.25-4
ii  libc6           2.13-38
ii  libncursesw5    5.9-10
ii  libsamplerate0  0.1.8-5
ii  libtinfo5       5.9-10
ii  lsb-base        4.1+Debian8+deb7u1
ii  whiptail        0.52.14-11.1

Versions of packages alsa-utils recommends:
ii  alsa-base  1.0.25+3~deb7u1
ii  pciutils   1:3.1.9-6

alsa-utils suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information