pulseaudio fails to start

rockin turtle · 2017-11-28 07:13:25

My pulseaudio.service will not start.

I haven't learned anything from the logs, but if I try a manual start by:

$ systemctl start pulseaudio

It comes back with:

Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1:
GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.TimedOut:
Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1': timed out

Failed to start pulseaudio.service: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1'

I run just vanilla openbox (no Gnome, KDE, etc.) and the pulseaudio service ran fine up intill a few days ago. Now there seems to be a hard dependancy on PolicyKit which I don't seem to have on my system.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can fix this?

Scimmia · 2017-11-28 07:27:28

You should be dealing with the systemd user session, not the system session. Staring pulse in the system session doesn't make much sense.

rockin turtle · 2017-11-28 08:02:54

I did run that systemctl command as my normal user, not root.

Is there some other way to start pulseaudio.service as my normal user?

jasonwryan · 2017-11-28 08:03:49

systemctl --user start your.service

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd/User

rockin turtle · 2017-11-28 19:49:09

Well,

$ systemctl --user start pulseaudio

did something, although I'm not sure what.

$ systemctl --user status pulseaudio

● pulseaudio.service - Sound Service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: activating (start) since Tue 2017-11-28 12:38:41 MST; 1min 26s ago
 Main PID: 8437 (pulseaudio)
   CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/pulseaudio.service
           └─8437 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no

Nov 28 12:38:41 myhost systemd[370]: pulseaudio.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Nov 28 12:38:41 myhost systemd[370]: pulseaudio.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 29.
Nov 28 12:38:41 myhost systemd[370]: Stopped Sound Service.
Nov 28 12:38:41 myhost systemd[370]: Starting Sound Service...

My system seems to be continuously trying to restart the service. I believe it was already trying to do this before I instigated the manual start.

Anybody else have any ideas as to why pulseaudio won't start for me?

V1del · 2017-11-29 08:05:23

Post the output of the two last commands (but run all of them)

systemctl --user mask pulseaudio.socket
systemctl --user stop pulseaudio
sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*
pulseaudio -vvvv

Last edited by V1del (2017-11-29 09:42:45)

rockin turtle · 2017-11-29 21:08:27

Thanks for your response.

I ran those commands. I don't have sudo set up to allow it, so I ran

 $ fuser -v /dev/snd/*

as root. There was no output.

as for

 $ pulseaudio -vvvv

there was an enormous amount of output, over 200K. I didn't see anything that would indicate a problem, but I didn't understand a lot of it.

I don't know what is going on. I originally noticed the problem when I couldn't use pamixer to set my sound level. This, I discovered, was due to the pulseaudio.service not running. The thing is, I'm getting sound from Youtube videos under Firefox (which is why I installed pulseaudio in the first place) and I've found I can use amixer to set the sound level.

So my system seems to work as I want, I just don't understand what is going on. I may try to delete and reinstall pulseaudio to see if that will clear things up.

V1del · 2017-11-30 15:01:17

Which is why I said to post the output, I don't expect you to be able to discern what is written there at first glance if this is your first time debugging pulseaudio, but we can only help you if we have the diagnostics from your system, don't worry about the length of the lines, code tags are prefectly capable to create readable chunks out of lengthy text, or use a pasting website Also that $ you copied from the fuser call indicates to me that you weren't in a root shell when you copied that, I'd expect a # to preceed the command.

If there is a configuration or setup issue, reinstalling pulseaudio is quite unlikely to help unless you made some changes to the default files in /etc/pulse

rockin turtle · 2017-12-01 01:56:09

Thanks, here's a link to the pulseaudio -vvvv output.

https://pastebin.com/xeUY0E8D

I let it run for about an hour before I hit ctrl-C to end it.
The link is set to expire in a week.

I did run the fuser command in a root shell (I typed the '$' when I posted.)

V1del · 2017-12-01 08:28:16

This indeed doesn't look like it'd be having any obvious errors, were you able to normally use pavucontrol during that time? If you undo the mask (

systemctl --user unmask pulseaudio.socket

) and e.g. reboot/relog does pulse autostart correctly again? If it doesn't how are you starting X/openbox ? if by xinit/startx can you post your ~/.xinitrc ?

rockin turtle · 2017-12-01 19:05:30

I don't have pavucontrol installed; I use pamixer instead. pamixer does not work now, nor did it during the pulseaudio -vvvv thing you suggested.

If I type 'pacmd', the response is

No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.

The reason I noticed the problem was because pamixer stopped working. I now use 'amixer' to set the volume.

I did unmask the pulseaudio.socket and I shut off my system at the end of every day.

Here is my ~/.xinitrc

#!/bin/sh

#
if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ]; then
	for f in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/*; do
		[ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
	done
	unset f
fi

[[ -f ~/.Xresources ]] && xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

conky &

# change the mouse characteristics
xset m 5/4 0

# 'openbox-session' is a script provided by openbox
exec 'openbox-session'

Arch Linux

#1 2017-11-28 07:13:25

pulseaudio fails to start

#2 2017-11-28 07:27:28

Re: pulseaudio fails to start

#3 2017-11-28 08:02:54

Re: pulseaudio fails to start

#4 2017-11-28 08:03:49

Re: pulseaudio fails to start

#5 2017-11-28 19:49:09

Re: pulseaudio fails to start

#6 2017-11-29 08:05:23

Re: pulseaudio fails to start

#7 2017-11-29 21:08:27

Re: pulseaudio fails to start

#8 2017-11-30 15:01:17

Re: pulseaudio fails to start

#9 2017-12-01 01:56:09

Re: pulseaudio fails to start

#10 2017-12-01 08:28:16

Re: pulseaudio fails to start

#11 2017-12-01 19:05:30

Re: pulseaudio fails to start

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