PulseAudio doesn't start

[Chris Bredesen]

Hi List,

About 1/3 of the time I boot my F10 laptop, PA doesn't start.  I open 
paman and find it isn't connected and I cannot connect.  Besides the 
gazillion wakeup watermark messages, here's what's in the log:

Jan 28 08:26:57 interlagos pulseaudio[4080]: pid.c: Stale PID file, 
overwriting.
Jan 28 21:42:18 interlagos pulseaudio[4080]: module-alsa-sink.c: Error 
opening PCM device front:0: Device or resource busy
Jan 28 21:42:18 interlagos pulseaudio[4080]: sink-input.c: Assertion 
'i->thread_info.rewrite_nbytes == 0' failed at 
pulsecore/sink-input.c:1150, function pa_sink_input_request_rewind(). 
Aborting.

The module-alsa-sink error is me trying to connect with the manager 
AFIAK.  The first message at 08:26 was when I booted the box.  I 
rebooted just now and all's well (still got the stale PID message though).

The only thing I can find that looks remotely related is this BZ which 
was closed ages ago:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=405351

Any clues?  The knock on effect of PA not starting is that Pidgin hangs 
hard when it tries to make noise.  Other colleagues of mine report this 
symptom as well...

-Chris