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

[Rodrigo Campos]

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.

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.

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.


Please let me know if I can help you in any way



Thanks a lot,
Rodrigo



-- Package-specific info:
File '/etc/default/pulseaudio' does not exist


-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers testing-proposed-updates
  APT policy: (900, 'testing-proposed-updates'), (900, 'testing'), (500, 'proposed-updates'), (500, 'stable'), (400, 'unstable'), (200, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.3.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages pulseaudio depends on:
ii  adduser                       3.113+nmu3
ii  libasound2                    1.0.29-1
ii  libasound2-plugins            1.0.29-1
ii  libc6                         2.21-6
ii  libcap2                       1:2.24-12
ii  libdbus-1-3                   1.10.6-1
ii  libfftw3-single3              3.3.4-2
ii  libgcc1                       1:5.3.1-5
ii  libice6                       2:1.0.9-1+b1
ii  libltdl7                      2.4.2-1.11
ii  liborc-0.4-0                  1:0.4.24-1
ii  libpulse0                     7.1-2
ii  libsm6                        2:1.2.2-1+b1
ii  libsndfile1                   1.0.25-10
ii  libsoxr0                      0.1.2-1
ii  libspeexdsp1                  1.2~rc1.2-1
ii  libstdc++6                    5.3.1-5
ii  libsystemd0                   228-4
ii  libtdb1                       1.3.8-1
ii  libudev1                      228-4
ii  libwebrtc-audio-processing-0  0.1-3
ii  libx11-6                      2:1.6.3-1
ii  libx11-xcb1                   2:1.6.3-1
ii  libxcb1                       1.11.1-1
ii  libxtst6                      2:1.2.2-1+b1
ii  lsb-base                      9.20160110
ii  pulseaudio-utils              7.1-2
ii  udev                          228-4

Versions of packages pulseaudio recommends:
pn  pulseaudio-module-x11  <none>
pn  rtkit                  <none>

Versions of packages pulseaudio suggests:
pn  paman        <none>
pn  paprefs      <none>
ii  pavucontrol  3.0-3+b2
pn  pavumeter    <none>