Bug#845938: pulseaudio: bt headset: a2dp sink is not selectable - only hsp/hfp works

[Stefan Monnier]

> This is still an issue in Debian stretch: the gdm3 package runs
> pulseaudio, which takes over the bluetooth device and makes it
> impossible for regular users to connect to their bluetooth device
> using the hifi A2DP sink.  See #805414 for more details on that
> side.  There's a workaround for gdm3 (disabling the BT sink in gdm), so
> I'll leave that aside for now and focus on the basic issue here.

The problem is not limited to GDM, tho.

If you have several users logged in at the same time, only one of them
gets to use the bluetooth speaker, and once he gets it, the only way to
"free" the speaker (so another user can use it) seems to be to kill that
user's pulseaudio daemon.

The worst part is that the bluetooth speaker can easily get awarded to
a user who hasn't actually played any sound at all.

Currently, I work around this by manually removing bluetooth from the
pulseaudio config of all users except for the lucky one who is "more
deserving".  But it's a real PITA.


        Stefan