Ubuntu – Accessing PulseAudio server

13.04pulseaudio

I've set up pulseaudio on my Ubuntu server to receive tcp streams like suggested in the pulseaudio documentation and many tutorials. My /etc/pulse/default.pa now contains these lines:

load-module module-esound-protocol-tcp auth-anonymous=1
load-module module-native-protocol-tcp
load-module module-zeroconf-publish

I've restarted the daemon using

pulseaudio -k
pulseaudio -D

From my understanding I should now be able to use the server as sink from my client. Ideally I'd like to select the output device with PulseAudio Volume Control but get it to work at all. I've tried to set PULSE_SERVER to point to my server but I get playback errors.

Can anyone tell me if my server configuration is right and how to configure the client (13.04)?

Update

I finally found out that I have to load the module module-zeroconf-discover on the client. If I now restart the daemon on the client the server is discovered but the sink can't be created. /var/log/syslog says this:

pulseaudio[4877]: [pulseaudio] module-tunnel.c: Failed to create sink.
pulseaudio[4877]: [pulseaudio] module.c: Failed to load module "module-tunnel-sink" (argument: "server=[192.168.1.2]:4713 sink=auto_null format=s16le channels=2 rate=44100 sink_name=tunnel.myserver.local.auto_null channel_map=front-left,front-right"): initialization failed.
pulseaudio[4877]: [pulseaudio] module-tunnel.c: Failed to authenticate

I don't quite get how it can fail to authenticate if anonymous login is allowed.

Update

The authentication failure seems to happen randomly. If it doesn't appear the relevant log entry is

[pulseaudio] module-tunnel.c: Stream died.

instead. The other two entries look the same.

Best Answer

The same here. But in my case pulseaudio discovers a remote source, but not sink. However, there are typical error messages in log for both of them.

Another thing to mention is that fail message about module-tunnel-source is different from the one about module-tunnel-sink.

The second has server address argument written in IPv4 form (192.168.0.x) while the first mentions address in IPv6 form. Don't know why there is that difference, but it remains the whole time and somehow module-tunnel-source with an IPv6 address is loaded, but sink is not.

Maybe it's just a bug and we should think how to file a bug report correctly.

EDIT:

I think I've already found solution:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/pulseaudio-bugs/2009-October/003348.html

According to it you should disable IPv6 in avahi-daemon and restart it. It worked for me.

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Ubuntu – PulseAudio is not working at all

PulseAudio is included and configured for you already in Ubuntu by default, you don't have to run it manually. So, if you have some problems with sound, I don't think that is because of PulseAudio. It could be a bug or maybe a hardware problem.

You can check it if is working ok with pulseaudio --check in a terminal - produces no output on the console except for errors to stderr.

See man pulseaudio for more informations.

Also, for more help, you can follow this question: Sound problems after upgading to 13.04 and this Sound Troubleshooting Procedure.

Ubuntu – How to get pulseaudio to start automatically in Ubuntu 17.04 and 17.10 for Firefox

This is a workaround that I'm treating as the answer until someone can identify to me that this is fixed in the upstream Ubuntu installation logic that handles desktop user configuration:

I have a script I run at startup using the Startup Applications shown in this answer: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/32616/21372 , so in that script I added:

# Start pulseaudio because something got broken in Ubuntu or Firefox
# or PulseAudio or or
# or... (https://askubuntu.com/questions/962920/how-do-i-get-pulseaudio-to-start-automatically-in-ubuntu-17-04-for-firefox):
if ! pulseaudio --check
then
  # But not via the old way:
  #
  #   nohup pulseaudio > /dev/null 2>&1 &
  #
  # Use the proper way to enable this at login time per https://askubuntu.com/a/989674/340383
  systemctl --user enable pulseaudio && systemctl --user start pulseaudio
fi

This checks to see if the pulseaudio process is started with the --check option, and if it is not running, start it.

UPDATE #1:

I changed the workaround slightly to use the systemctl commands as indicated in https://askubuntu.com/a/989674/340383

This is still a workaround as Ubuntu should have this enabled by default for desktop users.

I am reasoning that unfortunately I still have to have this workaround in place because the next time I upgrade or install from scratch, and run my new account the first time, if I don't have the above in my startup script, I will hence be baffled as to why sound stopped working.

A counter-argument: Since the systemctl calls will update the ~/.config files thusly (this is from the above systemctl... command line):

Created symlink /home/drunkard/.config/systemd/user/default.target.wants/pulseaudio.service → /usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service.
Created symlink /home/drunkard/.config/systemd/user/sockets.target.wants/pulseaudio.socket → /usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.socket.

then upon the next reinstallation of Ubuntu, then it should just be working properly. But that is only if I kept my ~/.config files which is not a good assumption: I keep all (except for files deep inside ~/.config!) of my "user configuration" files under a Git repository for this very reason of having to workaround usability problems that end up, just like this one, wasting a lot of my time in debugging it down to the root cause, which I don't want to do more than once.

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – PulseAudio is not working at all

Ubuntu – How to get pulseaudio to start automatically in Ubuntu 17.04 and 17.10 for Firefox

UPDATE #1:

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