Linux – Pulseaudio daemon not running for pacmd

embeddedlinuxpulseaudio

I'm currently trying to make HSP bluetooth profile works on a custom board based on Atmel SAMA5D2. I'm using a custom Linux made from Buildroot-2017-08.

I'm at the point where I try to configure pulseaudio. The pulseaudio package is the one from buildroot and I ticked "start as system daemon".

When the system starts, pulseaudio seems to be running

# ps aux | grep pulse
  174 pulse    usr/bin/pulseaudio --system --daemonize --disallow-exit --disallow-module-loading
  197 root     grep pulse

However when I try to communicate with the daemon it fails

# pacmd 
No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.
# pacmd info
No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.
# pactl info
Connection failure: Access denied

I realized that the message change if I export the following environement variable

# export PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH="/run/pulse"
# pacmd info
Daemon not responding.
# pactl info
Connection failure: Access denied

Concerning rights to access this folder here they are

# ls -la /run/pulse/
total 8
drwx------ 3 root  root  120 Jan  2 05:09 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root  root  240 Jan  2 05:09 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 pulse pulse  60 Jan  2 05:09 .config
-rw------- 1 pulse pulse  16 Jan  2 05:09 .esd_auth
srwxrwxrwx 1 pulse pulse   0 Jan  2 05:09 native
-rw------- 1 pulse pulse   4 Jan  2 05:09 pid

From this question Problems with pulseaudio – pavucontrol and pacmd not connecting to pulseaudio I tried to change rights about the directory but it didn't changed anything.

# ls -la /run/pulse/
total 8
drwx------ 3 pulse pulse 120 Jan  2 05:09 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root  root  240 Jan  2 05:09 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 pulse pulse  60 Jan  2 05:09 .config
-rw------- 1 pulse pulse  16 Jan  2 05:09 .esd_auth
srwxrwxrwx 1 pulse pulse   0 Jan  2 05:09 native
-rw------- 1 pulse pulse   4 Jan  2 05:09 pid

It seems that there are some problems when looking at logs but I can't say if this is a big deal or not.

# cat /var/log/messages | grep pulse
Jan  2 05:43:19 buildroot pulseaudio[174]: [pulseaudio] caps.c: Normally all extra capabilities would be dropped now, but that's impossible because PulseAudio was built without capabil.
Jan  2 05:43:19 buildroot pulseaudio[174]: [pulseaudio] main.c: OK, so you are running PA in system mode. Please note that you most likely shouldn't be doing that.
Jan  2 05:43:19 buildroot pulseaudio[174]: [pulseaudio] main.c: If you do it nonetheless then it's your own fault if things don't work as expected.
Jan  2 05:43:19 buildroot pulseaudio[174]: [pulseaudio] main.c: Please read http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/WhatIsWrongWithSystemWide/ for an exp.
Jan  2 05:43:19 buildroot pulseaudio[174]: [pulseaudio] module.c: module-detect is deprecated: Please use module-udev-detect instead of module-detect!
Jan  2 05:43:19 buildroot pulseaudio[174]: [pulseaudio] alsa-util.c: Disabling timer-based scheduling because high-resolution timers are not available from the kernel.
Jan  2 05:43:20 buildroot pulseaudio[174]: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to open cookie file '/var/run/pulse/.config/pulse/cookie': No such file or directory
Jan  2 05:43:20 buildroot pulseaudio[174]: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to load authentication key '/var/run/pulse/.config/pulse/cookie': No such file or directory
Jan  2 05:43:20 buildroot pulseaudio[174]: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to open cookie file '/var/run/pulse/.pulse-cookie': No such file or directory
Jan  2 05:43:20 buildroot pulseaudio[174]: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to load authentication key '/var/run/pulse/.pulse-cookie': No such file or directory

Also I have no choice to run pulseaudio as root because there is no other user on my target.

EDIT :

After restarting pulseaudio in verbose mode (-vvv) it seems that the problem comes from an invalid connection data

# pactl info -vvv
Connection failure: Access denied
# cat /var/log/messages | grep pulse | tail -n 20
Jan  2 06:27:51 buildroot pulseaudio[250]: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup successful.
Jan  2 06:27:51 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup complete.
Jan  2 06:27:51 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] module.c: Unloading "module-detect" (index: #0).
Jan  2 06:27:51 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] module.c: Unloaded "module-detect" (index: #0).
Jan  2 06:27:56 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] module-suspend-on-idle.c: Sink alsa_output.0.analog-stereo idle for too long, suspending ...
Jan  2 06:27:56 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] sink.c: Suspend cause of sink alsa_output.0.analog-stereo is 0x0004, suspending
Jan  2 06:27:56 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [alsa-sink-CLASSD PCM atmel-classd-hifi-0] alsa-sink.c: Device suspended...
Jan  2 06:27:56 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] core.c: Hmm, no streams around, trying to vacuum.
Jan  2 06:28:28 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] client.c: Created 0 "Native client (UNIX socket client)"
Jan  2 06:28:28 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Protocol version: remote 31, local 31
Jan  2 06:28:28 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Got credentials: uid=0 gid=0 success=0
Jan  2 06:28:28 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Denied access to client with invalid authentication data.
Jan  2 06:28:28 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] client.c: Freed 0 "Native client (UNIX socket client)"
Jan  2 06:28:28 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Connection died.
Jan  2 06:28:43 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] client.c: Created 1 "Native client (UNIX socket client)"
Jan  2 06:28:43 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Protocol version: remote 31, local 31
Jan  2 06:28:43 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Got credentials: uid=0 gid=0 success=0
Jan  2 06:28:43 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Denied access to client with invalid authentication data.
Jan  2 06:28:43 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] client.c: Freed 1 "Native client (UNIX socket client)"
Jan  2 06:28:43 buildroot pulseaudio[252]: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Connection died.

After adding root user to pulse group the problem persists.

EDIT 2 :

Changing the process access rights to allow pulse group's members to read/write and execute files seems to unlock a bit the situation as I can now communicate with the daemon but not act on it.

# pactl info
Server String: /run/pulse/native
Library Protocol Version: 31
Server Protocol Version: 31
Is Local: yes
Client Index: 1
Tile Size: 65496
User Name: pulse
Host Name: buildroot
Server Name: pulseaudio
Server Version: 9.0
Default Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Default Sink: alsa_output.platform-fc048000.classd.analog-stereo
Default Source: alsa_output.platform-fc048000.classd.analog-stereo.monitor
Cookie: 6ae9:b402
# pacmd info
Daemon not responding.

Best Answer

Finally seems that it was a profile issue.

I just changed the umask line from umask 077 to umask 007 in /etc/init.d/S50pulseaudio so members of group pulse can access files.

Content of /etc/init.d/S50pulseaudio

#!/bin/sh
#
# Starts pulseaudio.
#


start() {
        printf "Starting pulseaudio: "
        #umask 077
        umask 007
        /usr/bin/pulseaudio --system --daemonize --disallow-exit --disallow-module-loading -vvv
        echo "OK"
}
stop() {
        printf "Stopping pulseaudio: "
        killall pulseaudio
        echo "OK"
}
restart() {
        stop
        start
}

case "$1" in
  start)
        start
        ;;
  stop)
        stop
        ;;
  restart|reload)
        restart
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
        exit 1
esac

exit $?

Regarding pacmd it's normal I can't access it as I'm running pulseaudio system-wide.

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