Description of problem: My gnome desktop isn't giving me any sound. the volume controls don't even work. Upon investigation, I find that root has sound, non-root users don't: $ aplay /usr/share/sounds/gtk-events/clicked.wavPlaying WAVE '/usr/share/sounds/gtk-events/clicked.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Mono *** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to create stream. aplay: set_params:962: Unable to install hw params: ACCESS: RW_INTERLEAVED FORMAT: S16_LE etc $ aplay -l /usr/share/sounds/gtk-events/clicked.wav aplay: device_list:205: no soundcards found... $ sudo aplay -l /usr/share/sounds/gtk-events/clicked.wav **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC260 Analog [ALC260 Analog] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 #So root has something... non-root doesn't.... $ sudo aplay /usr/share/sounds/gtk-events/clicked.wav W: core-util.c: Failed to open configuration file '/users/jjensen/.pulse/client.conf': Permission denied E: authkey.c: Failed to open cookie file '/users/jjensen/.pulse-cookie': Permission denied E: authkey.c: Failed to load authorization key '/users/jjensen/.pulse-cookie': Permission denied *** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused aplay: main:546: audio open error: Connection refused Now I comment out the line "/etc/alsa/pulse-default.conf" in /etc/alsa/alsa.conf, to remove pulse from the equation: $ sudo aplay /usr/share/sounds/gtk-events/clicked.wav (I hear it!) So I need your guidance here... I'm not sure if this is a pulse audio problem, or if pulse is just confusing the issue and it is a "non-root users can't get to alsa" problem. Please help! Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): f8 x86_64, with all updates as of Nov 14th 2007.
I have found a common theme here... when I use xdm or wdm, I get no sound. When I use gdm the sound works. SURELY gdm isn't required to get sound working in Gnome!?
ConsoleKit is required to set the permissions on the sound devices properly. If your login manager doesn't use ConsoleKit then it won't grant you the right permissions on your sound devices.
Wow... so this is a big change in what DMs are/were expected to do. Is there no way to make ConsoleKit aware of a *local* login via pam, or via the ConsoleKit daemon? Seems like DMs shouldn't have to do something special to make sound work.
On the contrary, *something* has to change permissions to ensure that the logged-in user (and only that person) has access to things like sound devices. In the past it was pam_console, but this is being obsoleted by ConsoleKit / PolicyKit. See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureRemovePAMConsole or http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/FastUserSwitching for some details. GDM and KDM both support ConsoleKit. It's a bug in wdm/xdm that they don't. There are actually patches that add ConsoleKit support to xdm floating around; not sure about wdm.
I'll buy that... pam_console needs to go away, and HAL/ConsoleKit is the way to handle permissions. Should we change this to a bug against wdm then?
I guess you're using wdm then? Moving this to a wdm bug.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 228079 ***