Pulseaudio strikes again!

[David A. De Graaf]

Does anyone know how to allow root and users other than me to use the
sound system?

Ever since pulseaudio was introduced in Fedora 8 and Mr. Lennart
Poettering inflicted his peculiar ideas of security on us, the default
installation hasn't worked properly, despite many BZ's and copious
complaints!  Specifically, pulseaudio invents the "seat" and only the
one person in the "seat" can use the sound system.  This precludes
having root, or anyone else, from generating sounds - presumably it's a
security risk.  Bosh!

A simple workaround was found - remove the alsa-plugins-pulseaudio
package, and edit /etc/group, adding everyone on the system to the
audio group (what a nutty idea).  That removed the restrictions and
restored sanity.  Root could even generate a login tune via the
/etc/rc.d/rc.local script, before anyone had logged on.

With F17, this escape hatch has been removed. 
With the alsa-plugins-pulseaudio package absent, a simple command to
play a sound yields a core dump:

  $ play /usr/share/sounds/KDE-Sys-Log-In.ogg
  dsp_protocol_open_node(): Could not open pcm device file /dev/dsptask/pcm2
  Segmentation fault (core dumped)

The pcm device file is, indeed, absent from the file system.
In fact, no sounds whatever can be generated by any of the standard
methods I use.  (Except that Windows running inside VirtualBox seems
able to manage it.)

To get any sound at all, I've had to reinstall the
alsa-plugins-pulseaudio package, but this allows only me to generate
sound and destroys my crontab-simulated grandfather clock, among other
things.

On an i386 netbook, F17 sound works fine, as it always has, with the
alsa-plugins-pulseaudio package removed.  The play program doesn't
complain about the absence of /dev/dsptask/pcm2, but just plays the
sound.

What new magic incantation is now required that I may be permitted
to use my x86_64 sound system fully?

-- 
        David A. De Graaf    DATIX, Inc.    Hendersonville, NC
        dad at datix.us         www.datix.us