no sound on headless server unless logged in physically

[meeotch]

I've got a headless media server that's connected to my AV system. I control it via VNC, with the following xstartup file:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
unset SESSION_MANAGER
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
dbus-launch --exit-with-session startxfce4

Inside this session, I run Banshee to play music. I've found that I get no sound unless I'm also logged in to the primary X session - that is, physically, at the machine. (Banshee will run, but if I play a track, the play head doesn't move and there's no sound.) At the moment, I have auto-login configured, so that if the power goes out or whatever, I don't have to go into the closet, connect a keyboard and monitor, and log myself in. This is not secure, but it works.

On the one hand, I guess this makes sense as a default behavior... But is there some way to get it working without having the machine logged in? (I should note that my audio output is through a USB audio dongle, as my server doesn't have have audio output on the motherboard.) Aside from the security issue, it's a bit of a pain for other reasons (starting gui programs at login results in an extra copy, can't switch to a different tty at the physical machine without disabling audio, etc.)

[niowluka]

I don't know VNC, but the problem probably is down to pulseaudio not running when you're not logged in physically.

Try running 'pulseaudio --start' from within the session.

[jimallyn]

This might help:

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Softwar ... r/Network/

[meeotch]

I should probably also mention that audio output stops if I switch the physical vt to something other than #8 (the X session). So, for instance if I ctrl-alt-F7 at the machine itself to get the startup console, or F1-F6 for one of the other tty's, or run chvt from a shell, sound will stop. In this state, ps shows that pulseaudio is still running. Switching back to tty8 resumes audio. I've looked for a pulse log in /var/log, but didn't see one. I checked dmesg and the syslog for a message that might indicate how/why the audio was being suspended when the vt changed, but there was nothing.