F10 - pulseaudio not running

[Mike Fleetwood]

Kevin Kofler:
> Mike Fleetwood wrote:
>> On my work Fedora 10 desktop (upgraded directly from F8) pulseaudio
>> doesn't run and I don't know how to fix it.  On my home Fedora 10
>> desktop (upgraded to F9 then F10) pulseaudio runs OK.  As a workaround
>> I have run "chmod o+rw /dev/snd/*" to allow Audacious audio player as
>> non-root user access to ALSA kernel audio devices to be able to play
>> music.  Help troubleshooting pulseaudio appreciated.
>
> How are you starting your desktop? If the sound device is not accessible for
> your user, PulseAudio can't use it either, as it also runs as your user.
> You need to log in in a way which is recognized by ConsoleKit, which in F10
> means GDM or KDM. (In F11, other ways to log in should work.)


I login to the desktop using GDM.

To me Fedora 10 appears to set the permissions of the ALSA sound
devices to read-write for root only and none for all other users.  To
allow this to work pulseaudio is a setuid root executable.

However my workaround on my broken work desktop was to allow all users
read-write access to the sound devices, so now pulseaudio can access
the sound device but it still fails to start.

>From my functional home desktop ...
[mike at rockover ~]$ ls -l /dev/snd
total 0
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 8 2009-04-08 13:16 controlC0
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 7 2009-04-08 20:06 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 6 2009-05-04 07:10 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 5 2009-04-08 13:16 pcmC0D1c
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 4 2009-04-08 13:16 pcmC0D1p
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 3 2009-04-08 13:16 seq
crw-rw----+ 1 root root 116, 2 2009-04-08 13:16 timer
[mike at rockover ~]$ ls -l /usr/bin/pulseaudio
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 70044 2009-01-13 12:46 /usr/bin/pulseaudio
[mike at rockover ~]$ ps -ef | fgrep pulseaudio
mike     11044 22078  0 09:43 pts/3    00:00:00 fgrep pulseaudio
mike     14834     1  0 Apr08 ?        01:33:26 /usr/bin/pulseaudio
--start --log-target=syslog
[mike at rockover ~]$ su -c "lsof -p 14834" | fgrep dev
Password:
pulseaudi 14834 mike  mem    REG        8,3     8492 7092995
/usr/lib/pulse-0.9/modules/module-default-device-restore.so
pulseaudi 14834 mike  mem    REG        8,3    12564 7092305
/usr/lib/pulse-0.9/modules/module-device-restore.so
pulseaudi 14834 mike  mem    REG       0,16 67108904   66470
/dev/shm/pulse-shm-2254029202
pulseaudi 14834 mike    0r   CHR        1,3      0t0     355 /dev/null
pulseaudi 14834 mike    1w   CHR        1,3      0t0     355 /dev/null
pulseaudi 14834 mike    2w   CHR        1,3      0t0     355 /dev/null
pulseaudi 14834 mike   12u   REG        8,3    13853 4563821
/home/mike/.pulse/1e7c731be7e02f0d97ac220045bb773d:device-volumes.i386-redhat-linux-gnu.gdbm
pulseaudi 14834 mike   19u   CHR      116,8      0t0    3106 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 14834 mike   25u   CHR      116,8      0t0    3106 /dev/snd/controlC0

>From my broken work desktop ...
[mfleetwo at mfleetwo3 ~]$ ls -l /dev/snd
total 0
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 116, 7 2009-04-22 13:13 controlC0
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 116, 6 2009-04-22 13:13 hwC0D0
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 116, 5 2009-05-04 13:13 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 116, 4 2009-05-04 15:03 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 116, 3 2009-04-22 13:13 seq
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 116, 2 2009-04-22 13:13 timer
[mfleetwo at mfleetwo3 ~]$ ls -l /usr/bin/pulseaudio
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 75772 2009-01-13 12:46 /usr/bin/pulseaudio
[mfleetwo at mfleetwo3 ~]$ ps -ef | fgrep pulseaudio
mfleetwo 32520 22684  0 09:55 pts/0    00:00:00 fgrep pulseaudio
[mfleetwo at mfleetwo3 ~]$ pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog
I: caps.c: Limited capabilities successfully to CAP_SYS_NICE.
I: caps.c: Dropping root privileges.
I: caps.c: Limited capabilities successfully to CAP_SYS_NICE.
[WARN 32524] polkit-session.c:144:polkit_session_set_uid(): session != NULL
 Not built with -rdynamic so unable to print a backtrace
[mfleetwo at mfleetwo3 ~]$ echo $?
1
[mfleetwo at mfleetwo3 ~]$ ps -ef | fgrep pulseaudio

Thanks,
Mike