Pulseaudio server fallback

Roken · 2017-12-29 10:51:22

I have my main rig and a laptop connected on the same network, and have everything setup so that I can do everything from my main rig (power up/down the laptop with Wol and SSH, shared mouse and KB with synergy, NFS shares etc.) The laptop is usually tucked away on a shelf with just an external monitor. I've been working on getting the laptop audio playing through the main rig as well, to avoid the horrible tinny speaker, and have managed to set the default server to be the main rig which is working fine.

However, I'd like to setup the local server on the laptop as a failsafe if the main rig is either powered off, or the laptop is taken away from home. This is where I'm having a problem. I've tried adding localhost and 127.0.0.1 as fallbacks in /etc/pulse/client.conf. However, if I test (by powering up the laptop on its' own) the tray applet reports "connecting to server" and nothing else happens.

Further investigation shows that pulse is not running on the laptop, and attempted to start it result in:

E: [pulseaudio] socket-server.c: bind(): Address already in use
E: [pulseaudio] module.c: Failed to load module "module-native-protocol-unit" (argument: ""): initialization failed.

Rebooting both machines and pulse works via the desktop server again. However, there's still no sign of pulseaudio running on the laptop and trying to start it results in the same error.

ps -ef | grep pulseaudio

shows nothing.

Is there a way to have pulse use local audio as a fallback if the desktop is not available?

My google fu has failed me on this one.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-12-29 10:51:22

Pulseaudio server fallback

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