Bug 736991

Summary: Pulseaudio unstable unless root is logged on
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Valentin Villenave <valentin>
Component: pulseaudioAssignee: Lennart Poettering <lpoetter>
Status: CLOSED WORKSFORME QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 16CC: lkundrak, lpoetter
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Hardware: x86_64   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2011-09-22 14:31:23 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Valentin Villenave 2011-09-09 09:24:46 UTC 
Description of problem:

Recently upgraded to F16. Pulseaudio crashes after a dozen seconds (regardless of the desktop environment: even tested under ratpoison) ; when there's an application reactivating it (e.g. kmix) it spawns over multiple processes (a new pulseaudio process is issues every ten seconds or less) and the audio is full of glitches.

For some reason, the bug disappears if a terminal (or tty) is opened and logged in as root. (Note that pulseaudio is *not* running as root, however.)

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

pulseaudio 0.9.23
kmix 3.9-alpha

How reproducible:

Every time the OS is booted.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot the computer.
2. Log on as standard user.
3. Launch audio app (or have a look at the running process list).
  
Actual results:

Audio is full of glitches. If kmix (or equivalent) isn't running, audio stops after a few seconds.

Expected results:

Pulseaudio shouldn't crash.

Additional info:

The easy workaround is to open a terminal (or a tty) and log in as root: pulseaudio stops crashing.
(On several occasions a stdout warning "pulseaudio: daemon already running" was issued. But the workaroung still works.)
Comment 1 Valentin Villenave 2011-09-22 14:31:23 UTC 
Latest yum update fixed the issue. (Strangely enough, no pulseaudio or sound-related package was part of the update; could've been kernel 3.1-rc6 or some change to the initscripts.)

Sound server is now stable (and F16 in general is looking pretty good). Thanks!