Xine-backend doesn't work with PulseAudio

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Nikos Chantziaras at 24/05/10 23:52 did gyre and gimble:
>> http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/KDE
> 
> Thanks for the information.  The output of:
> 
>    pacmd list-sinks | grep device.description
> 
> is what I see in the Phonon settings, so I guess it works as it should.

Nice :)

> The reason the new user sees something else might have something to do 
> with PA taking too long to shutdown once I logout from KDE, and when 
> logging back in with the other user, the PA daemon is still running but 
> with the permissions of the previous user, and I guess this messes 
> things up.

No, this is actually intended behaviour. PulseAudio is designed to work
nicely with console as well as X11 support. When PulseAudio is started,
it will remain resident for a small period of time (e.g. 30 seconds or
so) in case it is needed again. If so, then the startup overhead is avoided.

In X11, a special module is loaded into PA at login that prevents it
from shutting down until the X11 session itself is closed.

When the X11 session is closed the module that keeps PA alive is
unloaded. It will then be subject to the normal timeout and thus it will
remain resident for a period of time and then die.

When logging in as another user (either after logging out or while still
logged in), the other user will get their own PA daemon. The ACLs on the
devices themselves will be rewritten by udev-acl as a callout from
consolekit whose job it is to track user logins and which user is
currently "active".

If two users are logged in and both try to play music, only the user who
is "active" will have rights to use the sound devices. PulseAudio will
talk with consolekit and check the permissions on the audio devices
themselves and automatically "cork" and "uncork" itself as appropriate.
Essentially PA just listens and adheres to what the lower parts of the
system tell it, but in a "nice" way that keeps all the applications
working as expected.


So ultimately, what you observe is expected, but the strange thing is
the fact that the start-pulseaudio-kde script is not being run for the
user who just sees "PulseAudio". You are welcome to run this script
manually and hopefully the same devices will show up for that user.

Unvestigating *why* the script was not run for that user will likely
lead to the overall ultimate solution.

HTHs

> The patches for Phonon-Xine you mentioned are also working fine.

Great :)

Col
-- 

Colin Guthrie
gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

Day Job:
  Tribalogic Limited [http://www.tribalogic.net/]
Open Source:
  Mandriva Linux Contributor [http://www.mandriva.com/]
  PulseAudio Hacker [http://www.pulseaudio.org/]
  Trac Hacker [http://trac.edgewall.org/]