multiple pulseaudio daemons blocking each other

buergi · 2010-02-15 12:16:18

Hello,
i've got a problem with pulse and mpd.
I'm definitely not the only one, there are lots of posts about the topic out there. But i'm beginning to doubt that it can work in principle.
I'm using mpd-pulse (configured the '/var/lib/mpd'-way) and a per-user pulseaudio daemon. Both works perfectly on their own.

The only problem is when mpd plays music it launches a pulse daemon for the user mpd. When another application wants to play a sound through pulse it launches a second pulse daemon under my username. And of course only one of those daemon can access the sound card at a time. The other app's output is either my graphic cards HDMI output or a dummy device.

So is in possible in principle to have mpd & pulse working together with a per user daemon, or do i have to configure a system-wide one?
I've already tried putting the pulse-cookie into mpd home directory, i've also tried to disable the authentication completely but not even that worked.
Most likely, i guess, i've to mess around with pulse tcp sinks or something similar.

thanks a lot in advance
buergi

ngoonee · 2010-02-15 14:15:31

Run mpd as your own user and it works fine. Otherwise just use mpd (not mpd-pulse) and it works fine as well.

The way pulseaudio works is 'one-user one daemon', anything else requires a bit of hacking. Fortunately, its not really a big problem having mpd run as your own user, mine works fine that way.

buergi · 2010-02-15 17:33:33

Run mpd as your own user and it works fine.

thx ngoonee, of course that's a simple workaround, think i'll do that.

Otherwise just use mpd (not mpd-pulse) and it works fine as well.

Yes i got it working with with alsa dmix too. But i though pulse would be somewhat cooler :)

Think the whole concept of pulse is quite strange. I think it would make more sense to have one daemon controlling the sound device.
I mean, it's not that unusual that multiple users should have access to the sound device, e.g. the normal user and a notifier daemon or so. But doesn't matter as long as it works for me :)

ngoonee · 2010-02-17 05:48:20

buergi wrote:

Otherwise just use mpd (not mpd-pulse) and it works fine as well.
Yes i got it working with with alsa dmix too. But i though pulse would be somewhat cooler

I wasn't referring to alsa dmix, but to setting your device in .asoundrc to be 'pulse', it should work that way, no need to have dmix and thus mpd being outside pulseaudio.

buergi wrote:

Think the whole concept of pulse is quite strange. I think it would make more sense to have one daemon controlling the sound device.
I mean, it's not that unusual that multiple users should have access to the sound device, e.g. the normal user and a notifier daemon or so. But doesn't matter as long as it works for me

There's this debate on the pulse ML every 2 months or so. In the end, the belief of Lennart (main dev for pulse) is that your notifier should use your UID, and not 'root' or some other UID. They follow the ck logic, which is actually where they get their permissions from. Check out the pulse ML archives, but watch out for the fella named Markus, his posts are pretty confrontational and may not be worth the time.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-02-15 12:16:18

multiple pulseaudio daemons blocking each other

#2 2010-02-15 14:15:31

Re: multiple pulseaudio daemons blocking each other

#3 2010-02-15 17:33:33

Re: multiple pulseaudio daemons blocking each other

#4 2010-02-17 05:48:20

Re: multiple pulseaudio daemons blocking each other

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