I am trying to understand PulseAudio, and have some use cases for which
it's not clear to me how best to configure the system.
In my living room at home, I have a pair of stereo speakers, which are
connected to a linux box, which, in turn, has some large disks holding a
large music collection. When you wish to play music in my home, you do
it by running a program of some sort on this computer.
Now, the thing is that this computer has a monitor, keyboard and mouse.
Sometimes someone is logged in to this console, doing things on the
computer. Sometime no one is logged in at all.
Now, as I am typing this very message, I am sitting on my couch in my
living room, using my notebook computer. What I would also like to do,
for example, is ssh into my living room server, run rythmbox, and play
some music. Perhaps my wife is logged in to the console; perhaps she
isn't. Perhaps I am. That's irrelevant. My music server is a multi-user
system; multiple people can be simultaneously logged in to the system,
and all of them should be able to access the audio hardware.
It seems to me that this is the sort of thing for which one wants a
system-wide pulse daemon. Pulse Audio seems to be tuned towards the
idea of having a daemon launched per login session. But I would like
multiple users in my home to be able to remotely connect to my music
system and run programs that send audio to the speakers. This should
be completely independent of who is logged in at the console.
On the other hand, I've read the PulseAudio wiki seeking enlightenment,
and the wiki very clearly disrecommends using PA in system-daemon mode.
It doesn't make a very compelling case of *why* system-daemon mode is
a bad idea, it mostly just explains that PA will restrict functionality
for security reasons if you obstinately insist on doing so.
So, what's the right way to handle the use case I've outlined?
-Olin
