Making MPD and Pulseaudio play with systemd

count-corrupt · 2012-12-31 13:43:52

The problem

After the switch to systemd, mpd does not output any sound through pulseaudio. I have mpd running as a system service and pulseaudio is started with my session through .xinitrc (start-pulseaudio-x11).

Steps taken so far

I played around for a while and discovered a few things.

The system mpd runs as as user mpd which lacks appropriate rights to connect to my session-bound pulseaudio daemon.
Connecting to pulseaudio works by turning MPD into a user service.
User service mpd makes me lose the ability to kill X at will and still have my music playing. I don't log in on a vt before starting X but have the SLiM service started by systemd.

Partial solution

Adding the user mpd to the audio group works in one of two ways:

Disabling autospawn in /etc/pulse/client.conf will make mpd connect to the right pulseaudio session, as long as the mpd service is started after I logged in
Enabling autospawn in /etc/pulse/client.conf will make mpd work as expected but block audio for all my other programs once I logged in. I can only assume that mpd starts a new pulseaudio session that my user then lacks the rights to use.

Open questions

The problem clearly is the order in which services are started. I wouldn't mind having a system-level pulseaudio service but I guess there are reasons against that. Now the question is whether or not there is a way to make system-level mpd wait for my session-bound pulseaudio daemon and connect to that when I disable autospawn for pulse clients.
Or, more generally speaking, is there a proper way to make this work? All of the guides and forum hacks I found (and there are a lot of them) are just that, hacks and partial solutions. I'd like to find a way that works out of the box and is reliable.

Maybe there is a way I haven't seen yet or we can work something out here. In the meantime I guess I'll go the user service route with mpd. Even though this makes it only an ncurses amarok for me.

Edit: formatting

Last edited by count-corrupt (2012-12-31 13:44:10)

WorMzy · 2012-12-31 14:06:33

Works fine here, but I run mpd as myself, rather than as a system daemon.

cgar · 2012-12-31 19:07:05

As described in the MPD wiki article, the following works for me.

Users of PulseAudio will need to make the following modification:

/etc/mpd.conf
audio_output {
        type                    "pulse"
        name                    "pulse audio"
}

graysky · 2012-12-31 19:14:45

https://github.com/graysky2/configs/blo … s/.mpdconf

count-corrupt · 2012-12-31 20:20:45

Maybe I haven't made myself clear enough. I know how to configure mpd. I have read the documentation. Read the arch wiki, read the mpd wiki and even part of the pulseaudio documentation. The problem is related to access rights between the system level mpd and session level pulseaudio. I'm looking for a clean way to make system level mod work with pulse. Be it system level pulse or a setup in which system level mod can use session level pulse.

firecat53 · 2012-12-31 21:03:33

I'm not sure if this helps your use case at all:

1. I start mpd from a system level systemd service file _as_ my normal user (User=firecat53)
2. In order to have the pulseaudio session that starts when I login to X (autologin) pick up the systemd-started mpd instance and still allow other sound-using applications to function at the same time, I had to uncomment these lines from /etc/pulse/default.pa:

### Publish connection data in the X11 root window
.ifexists module-x11-publish.so
.nofail
load-module module-x11-publish
.fail
.endif

3. While in X with mpd playing, if I switch to a non-logged in virtual terminal the music stops, but will restart with a quick 'mpc start' after I login. Once logged in to that VT, I can switch back and forth to/from X and the music continues just fine.

Hope that helps!
Scott

WonderWoofy · 2012-12-31 21:07:31

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MP … PulseAudio

Rasi · 2013-01-01 04:04:32

this changed with pulseaudio3.

There is no easy way i know of you can make mpd run as another user now.
Just make mpd run as your own user and make sure the mpd service file looks like this:

.include /usr/lib/systemd/system/mpd.service

[Unit]
After=network.target
After=sound.target

[Service]
User=YOUR_USER
PAMName=system-local-login

*Edit*

in theory every user can use the pulse session, by providing the appropriate XDG variable, but i dont know exactly how.

Last edited by Rasi (2013-01-01 04:05:14)

count-corrupt · 2013-01-01 17:28:18

firecat53 wrote:

I'm not sure if this helps your use case at all:
1. I start mpd from a system level systemd service file _as_ my normal user (User=firecat53)
2. In order to have the pulseaudio session that starts when I login to X (autologin) pick up the systemd-started mpd instance and still allow other sound-using applications to function at the same time, I had to uncomment these lines from /etc/pulse/default.pa:

Rasi wrote:

this changed with pulseaudio3.
There is no easy way i know of you can make mpd run as another user now.
Just make mpd run as your own user and make sure the mpd service file looks like this:
*Edit*
in theory every user can use the pulse session, by providing the appropriate XDG variable, but i dont know exactly how.

Appreciate the suggestions. But for some reason starting mpd as my user, system or user level, has never worked for me. As soon as I have the service started as my own user, the mpd-started pulse client fails with connection error messages. Plus, I'd rather not start the service as just one user. This should work for all users. I wonder why there isn't a systemd service to start a central pulseaudio instance. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the purpose of pulseaudio but I vaguely remember the old esd running as an init service. All this complexity and compromise I'm looking at right now seems to stem from pulse being started with X instead of at boot.

ngoonee · 2013-01-01 23:53:16

A bit of a workaround (mentioned in the wiki as well) is to use the TCP plugins, that's what I'm doing currently. module-native-protocol-tcp on pulse side and just set localhost server on mpd's audio_output.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-12-31 13:43:52

Making MPD and Pulseaudio play with systemd

#2 2012-12-31 14:06:33

Re: Making MPD and Pulseaudio play with systemd

#3 2012-12-31 19:07:05

Re: Making MPD and Pulseaudio play with systemd

#4 2012-12-31 19:14:45

Re: Making MPD and Pulseaudio play with systemd

#5 2012-12-31 20:20:45

Re: Making MPD and Pulseaudio play with systemd

#6 2012-12-31 21:03:33

Re: Making MPD and Pulseaudio play with systemd

#7 2012-12-31 21:07:31

Re: Making MPD and Pulseaudio play with systemd

#8 2013-01-01 04:04:32

Re: Making MPD and Pulseaudio play with systemd

#9 2013-01-01 17:28:18

Re: Making MPD and Pulseaudio play with systemd

#10 2013-01-01 23:53:16

Re: Making MPD and Pulseaudio play with systemd

Board footer