Where is pulseaudio started?

[Steve Blackwell]

On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:10:47 +0100
Mark Knoop <mark at opus11.net> wrote:

> At 14:49 on 27 Aug 2009, Steve Blackwell wrote:
> > On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:12:39 +0930
> > Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Thu, 2009-08-27 at 10:12 -0400, Steve Blackwell wrote:
> > > > I'd like to know where (which file) the information is
> > > > stored in and what program starts it. gdm? gnome? gconf?
> > > 
> > > A hint for finding out things like that:  Change a setting, and
> > > search for a very recently changed file.
> > > 
> > Interesting. 
> > I had already found a directory called ~/.config/autostart but
> > there was no hint of anything pulseaudio related in there. Then I
> > followed your suggestion and disabled its autostart and searched for
> > recently changed files. Now there is a file called
> > ~/.config/pulseaudio.desktop. That is backward to what I would have
> > expected and if I enable pulseaudio again, the file is removed.
> 
> Come on, it's not exactly rocket-science. 

Well, I'm not exactly a rocket scientist.

> Perhaps you could start by reading what you've posted:
> 
> > The pulseaudio.desktop file contains this:
> > 
> > [Desktop Entry]
> <snip>
> > X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false

Even mere non-rocket-scientist-mortals like me can read. It's not the
fact that there is a line disabling autostart that puzzled me, it was
the fact that the file was removed altogether when PA did get
autostarted so then what caused start-pulseaudio-x11 to be run?

> Look also in /etc/xdg/autostart/ and at
> http://standards.freedesktop.org/autostart-spec/autostart-spec-latest.html
> 

This provides the answer.

"If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME and $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS are not set and the two
files /etc/xdg/autostart/foo.desktop and
~/.config/autostart/foo.desktop exist then only the file
~/.config/autostart/foo.desktop will be used because
~/.config/autostart/ is more important than /etc/xdg/autostart/"

So when ~/.config/pulseaudio.desktop is
removed, /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop is used instead and this
file contains the start-pulseaudio-x11.

Do you have any links to more information about autostart? For instance,
how does it interact with GDM?

Thanks,
Steve