pulseaudio causing crashing of applications

[Kevin Kofler]

Lennart Poettering <mzerqung <at> 0pointer.de> writes:
> This is somewhat expected behaviour. Access to the audio device
> follows the active session on the display. I.e. if you switch VTs than
> ConsoleKit+HAL will change the ACLs of the audio devices and tell PA
> to stop accessing the audio device. This will cause playback to pause
> for all applications accessing PA. However, as soon as you switch back
> the session, the playback should continue. This is not perfect
> however, since we don't inform Gst/Rhyhtmbox that the audio device is
> temporarily stopped (there's no way to do that afaik).

Have you considered just muting the sound rather than blocking the 
applications? The obvious drawback is that the user doesn't automatically get 
back to where he/she left, but on the other hand, you can't really expect sound 
applications to know how to handle a blocked sound device, and it is also 
application-specific whether returning to where you left is a good or bad idea 
(think of a live stream, for example: in that case, returning to where you left 
might not even be possible, and if it is, it's usually not what the user 
wants).

        Kevin Kofler