Arch Linux

drankinatty

Member

From: Nacogdoches, Texas

Registered: 2009-04-24

Posts: 75

Website

How to enable sound at boot system-wide, not as user-service?

All,

  I have a small Arch box I want to use as a media player for an office. It will be used to stream audio, etc. Currently Arch enables sound as a user-service on user login on the physical machine.

  What is the easiest way to reconfigure sound to start at boot as a system-wide service so the sound system is active without requiring a user interactive login? I will manage this box via ssh and currently sound is dead until there is an actual login on the Arch box. Then sound can be started by the same user via ssh. I need to be able to start sound with a ssh login alone. What is the best way to go about this?

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David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,897

Re: How to enable sound at boot system-wide, not as user-service?

Autologin into a user session is probably the best option -- assuming you actually want a proper pipewire/pulse setup.

Alternatively look into: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System … _instances

Also what's your goal for "sound"? If it's about simple playback maybe setting up a system wide mpd instance or so that directly talks to the ALSA card might be more fruitful.

Last edited by V1del (2024-12-15 00:29:34)

drankinatty

Member

From: Nacogdoches, Texas

Registered: 2009-04-24

Posts: 75

Website

Re: How to enable sound at boot system-wide, not as user-service?

Autologin will do. I didn't think of it because I despise having a multi-user box automatically login to a user that may or may not use it. However, for this media server, that is exactly what will work fine. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. That is by far the simplest solution. The goal is simple using mplayer for audio streams for playing through bluetooth speakers mounted in the ceiling of the business. I suspect trying to setup a dedicated process at boot that weaves together the sources and sinks with the bluetooth pairing may be touchy. If I just autologin, then pipewire and pulse and the user-service can handle it.

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David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.