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Bug 1888553

Summary:	pulseaudio should not be started when users login via SSH
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	Reporter:	Christian Horn <chorn>
Component:	systemd	Assignee:	systemd maint <systemd-maint>
Status:	CLOSED MIGRATED	QA Contact:	Frantisek Sumsal <fsumsal>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	8.1	CC:	msekleta, ndegraef, rmetrich, systemd-maint-list, watts, wtaymans, yzheng
Target Milestone:	rc	Keywords:	MigratedToJIRA
Target Release:	8.0	Flags:	pm-rhel: mirror+
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2023-09-29 19:44:23 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Christian Horn 2020-10-15 07:54:44 UTC

Description of problem:
pulseaudio should not be triggered when a user logs in via SSH.
It seems to make no sense, so "KISS" alone would be a reason to request that.
Additionally, it leads to issues like bz1885553, where this happened:
a) user logins via SSH
b) pulseaudio started
c) bluetooth packages installed, triggered by pulseaudio in a way leading to a systemd crash
Let's just cut off the whole chain in preventing the first thing which seems to serve no purpose at all for SSH logins from remote: prevent pulseaudio from being run.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
All rhel8 versions affected, it seems

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
- Login as user via SSH (also happens for Xorg/Wayland, but might make sense then)

    user@<uid>.service executes
  this spawns "systemd --user"


Actual results:
1. "systemd --user" sets up pulseaudio.socket (listening on /run/user/<uid>/pulse/native) as part of reaching sockets.target
  this is because pulseaudio.socket is installed (/usr/lib/systemd/user/sockets.target.wants/pulseaudio.socket)

2. "systemd --user" sets up pulseaudio.service as part of reaching default.target
  this is because pulseaudio.service is installed (/etc/systemd/user/default.target.wants/pulseaudio.service)

2.) is then in our other scenarios leading to issues.

Expected results:
Pulseaudio should not be triggered when a user logs in via SSH.

Comment 1 Christian Horn 2021-02-04 06:00:49 UTC

Hi engineering, any updates?
rhel8.4 would be a chance to fix this..

Comment 2 Wim Taymans 2021-02-12 14:22:12 UTC

No update. I have no idea where to begin with this..

I will try to ask someone who knows about systemd and the ssh login process and
how we can disable pulseaudio in the ssh case.

Comment 3 Christian Horn 2021-02-15 05:40:43 UTC

Thanks.

I would plainly request the removal of the 'sockets.target.wants/pulseaudio.socket'
in Fedora or systemd upstream, and then wait for someone to scream.
It might need to be reintroduced for desktop sessions, and the way to do it properly
needs discussion.  Just doing it by default, for example when someone logs in via
ssh, is causing issues.

Comment 4 Christian Horn 2021-02-18 05:57:33 UTC

Brainstormed today with our partner about this.

For normal service units, we can define filter criteria.
For example microcode_ctl is not run in virtual guests,
/usr/lib/systemd/system/microcode.service :
  ConditionVirtualization=false

If pulseaudio.socket could have something like this, for
example evaluating environment variables could then be used
to understand if the user is running x11/wayland and only then
run pulseaudio.

Comment 5 Renaud Métrich 2021-02-18 07:33:41 UTC

This is a possibility, but I'm not sure this is feasible at all, indeed the user may spawn a VNC service and want to benefit from the audio (I believe VNC has audio support as well).

I think this should be handled at 'systemd --user' level, more globally.
For example, it doesn't make sense to start 'systemd --user' when a sftp session is started (for now it starts).
When a ssh session is started, startup of 'systemd --user' should be done only *on demand*, e.g. when the user does a systemctl --user command for example.

Comment 7 yzheng 2022-08-18 10:01:30 UTC

Hi, all 

This issue is disappeared from RHEL 8.3 which uses this version of pulseaudio: 
~~~
pulseaudio-13.99.1-1.el8.x86_64
~~~ 

Thank you.

Comment 8 Jeffrey Watts 2022-08-18 13:00:11 UTC

yzheng, I'm using CentOS 8 Stream using the package pulseaudio-14.0-2.el8.x86_64 and I still have this problem.  Occurs when someone logs in via SSH and also spawns a process when certain cronjobs start.

Comment 9 yzheng 2022-08-18 17:39:10 UTC

Hi, Jeffrey

You're right... I found this only does not happen on the root user. The non-root users' ssh logins still generate the pulseaudio process.

Thank you.

Comment 12 Jeffrey Watts 2022-12-27 16:10:27 UTC

Tested CentOS Stream 14.0-4.el8.x86_64, which appears to be the latest.  Remote root logins do not spawn the pulseaudio processes (as mentioned before), but non-root remote logins still spawn processes.  Is there a way to disable this in the configuration?  Thanks in advance.

Comment 13 Michal Sekletar 2023-01-09 13:51:09 UTC

Either socket or the service should be enabled but not both at the same time. How to start pulseaudio (or pulse socket) just for the sessions associated with seat that actually have access to sound card is something to figure out.

Comment 14 RHEL Program Management 2023-09-29 19:44:00 UTC

Issue migration from Bugzilla to Jira is in process at this time. This will be the last message in Jira copied from the Bugzilla bug.

Comment 15 RHEL Program Management 2023-09-29 19:44:23 UTC

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