Bug#812557: pulseaudio: "refusing to start/autospawn" with multi-user setup

[Felipe Sateler]

Control: tags -1 moreinfo

On 24 January 2016 at 22:42, Rodrigo Campos <rodrigo at sdfg.com.ar> wrote:
>
> Package: pulseaudio
> Version: 7.1-2
> Severity: normal
>
> Dear Maintainer,
>
> I'be updated debian testing (didn't update in a while) and after I upgraded,
> sound from programs that run as a different user stopped working.
>
> When some other user tries to run: "/usr/bin/pulseaudio --start
> --log-target=syslog" it fails with errors like:
>
>         Jan 24 22:01:58 lindsay pulseaudio[10238]: [pulseaudio] main.c: User-configured
>         server at {d07a5e247c911a2ac8ca6d8652d822c1}unix:/run/user/1000/pulse/native,
>         refusing to start/autospawn.
>         Jan 24 22:08:13 lindsay pulseaudio[11867]: [pulseaudio] main.c: User-configured
>         server at lindsay, refusing to start/autospawn.
>
> Both users, the user that opened the desktop environment (let's call him userA)
> and the other user trying to run pulseaudio/firefox (let's call him userB) are
> member of group audio. Also, userA uid is 1000 and userB uid is 1001.

How are you running firefox/pulseaudio as different users? Just sudo
-u userB firefox or some other way?

>
> Usually, as autospawn is enabled, when running firefox as userB and sound
> was needed, pulseaudio was started and audio just worked. Now everything works
> fine, except audio doesn't play. Probably because it fails as above when trying
> to start pulseaudio.
>
> I've found the following work-around, though, to make this work again and this
> is why I'm reporting it to pulseaudio.
>
> If userA logins to the desktop env and opens a console and as userB (I'm doing
> "su - userB") runs:
>
>         pax11publish -r; /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog
>
> then audio works again.

OK, this is the x11 publish module.

>
> To check if audio works, and to be sure is nothing related to firefox, I run as
> userA in the desktop env:
>
>         sudo -u userB -- aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
>
> iAfter doing the "pax11publish ..." command above, this command works. Before it
> does not. And, of course, this also fixes the audio in firefox.

You can work around this by disabling the x11 publish module, via
disabling the autostart of start-pulseaudio-x11 (by removing/moving
away the /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop file).



-- 

Saludos,
Felipe Sateler