To clarify at first: It's 2019 and I am running Arch Linux with systemd... ... but I had exactly the same problem. My goal was simply to switch to another user (by Ctrl-Alt-Fx or by means of the display manager) and to keep my sound running.
I finally got it to work without having to play with system mode (dangerous, unsupported) or PolicyKit (don't know anything about that). Steps: 1. Add the $USER whose PulseAudio should keep playing to the "audio" group (usermod -aG audio $USER). 2. Enable lingering for the user, so that PulseAudio starts without being logged in (loginctl enable-linger $USER). Should this work you can optionally share this user's PA to other users on the net by adding something to ~/.config/pulse/default.pa. For example: load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-ip-acl=127.0.0.1;192.168.0.0/24 For the "client users" just add to ~/.config/pulse/client.conf: default-server = 127.0.0.1 Maybe this works with Ubuntu, too? -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to pulseaudio in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/213149 Title: pulseaudio breaks on switching from tty7 to tty [1-6] (in and out of Gnome) Status in pulseaudio package in Ubuntu: Won't Fix Bug description: Binary package hint: pulseaudio lsb_release -rd Description: Ubuntu hardy (development branch) Release: 8.04 $ apt-cache policy pulseaudio pulseaudio: Installed: 0.9.9-1ubuntu4 Candidate: 0.9.9-1ubuntu4 Version table: *** 0.9.9-1ubuntu4 0 500 http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status On switching for example to tty1 from X on tty7, sound drops out when using pulseaudio ( for example in mplayer ). Using alsa as default does not produce this issue. Changing the audio output to alsa produces the expected behaviour: namely, that sound is not muted or interrupted on vt change. This bug occurs when switching in and out of X with ctrl+alt+F7, ctrl+alt+F[1-6] If sound is played from the prompt in a Vt and a switch is made to another Vt it appears not to happen. For instance, starting playback mplayer (using pulse) sound is muted on change to tty1, and returns on switching back to X on tty7. The same issue occurs with Totem and the Firefox Totem plugin. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/213149/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
