Bug#546193: pulseaudio initscript problem: pid file handling changed

[Alexander Zangerl]

Package: pulseaudio
Version: 0.9.21-3
Severity: normal

the reason for pulseaudio's init-script failing miserably is that 
it assumes old pid-file behaviour. 

pulseaudio now uses a "randomized" pid directory, not /tmp/pulse_$USER 
anymore (see pa_pid_file_create() in pulsecore/pid.c) 
result: the start-stop-daemon op looks at the wrong pidfile and
refuses to shut pulseaudio down.

the man page is outdated and still describes the old behaviour, as per
http://www.mail-archive.com/pulseaudio-discuss@mail.0pointer.de/msg08017.html

unfortunately i haven't found an easy way of determining what actual pid file
is used, except following the symlink ~/.pulse/*-runtime - that points to
the right pid dir and is consulted by pulseaudio --kill. 

unfortunately --kill works only if it's executed by the user that started 
pulseaudio (no provision for root, which to me seems a brittle/silly design).

a workable temporary solution might be to forget start-stop-daemon
and rely solely on pulseaudio --start, --check and --kill.

regards
az


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (980, 'testing'), (970, 'unstable'), (500, 'squeeze-updates')
Architecture: i386 (i686)