Re: Sound on multi-user system
On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 10:44:14PM +0100, Yann Dirson wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 09:58:29PM +0100, Yann Dirson wrote:
> > > I don't know if they somehow share access to audio, but I guess they
> > > should. We really need to talk to the pulseaudio guys to get this right,
> > > and I'm pretty confident that it's doable. (I'm not familiar with
> > > consumer desktops)
> >
> > The very fact that pulseaudio has a system mode makes me confident as
> > well. Maybe there would just need some more integration to be done on
> > Debian side - if any app does not see how to access the pulseaudio
> > server, it seems it will currently happily try to access alsa directly.
>
> In fact, the system does not look like it done for that use, and
> pulseaudio claims it works correctly with consolekit.
>
> So it looks like I'd just have to battle with pulse configuration (for
> some reason, it doesn't work out of the box...)
OK, I could make it to work. The fact I have multiple sound cards
made things a bit tricky.
There is still one annoying problem: the pavucontrol utility, which is
very useful to control each channel's volume (as well as selecting the
default sound card) counts as a user for the pulse daemon. So even if
users hit "stop" in their player, the device won't be available to
others unless they also close the pavucontrol.
Looks like users have to be educated not to keep such tools open. Or
maybe it could be extended to autoclose connection after a timeout.
I'll try to see with the pulse team if I find things to be improved.
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