Pulseaudio strikes again!

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

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On 06/26/2012 02:22 PM, David A. De Graaf wrote:
> 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!
Well, that depends on if you have a microphone attached to your
system, and consider allowing a remote user to listen to what is
going on by your computer a security risk.
>
> 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.)
It sounds like the snd_pcm module did not get loaded.
>
> 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?
>
You may want to look into running PA as a system daemon instead of a
user daemon.


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