PA is a system that manages access to a hardware resource, in a network
distributed context. Such a system must have mechanism for managing
authentication and privileges -- one that works in a network distributed
context.
X11 is in a very similar position -- except that there's less call for shared
access to the resources it manages (in the sense that, with X11, multiple
humans usually don't want access to the same screen, keyboard or mouse at the
same time). X uses ~/.Xauthority, but, these days, it mostly "lifts" this
base mechanism up to a distributed setting by means of ssh.
OK, so that's X11. I cannot figure out what PA's mechanism for this is. I sort
of get the sense, from this per-user-login server model that PA has the
horrible one-persone/one-computer model of "the person at the console is the
person using the computer," which was inflicted on the world by Microsoft
Windows. If so, this is a real design error, one that doesn't sync up with
Unix, which has always had a multi-user model of the world.
Maybe I'm wrong. I can't figure out *what* the model is, really. When I click
on padevchooser's "Configure Local Sound Server" entry, I get a window whose
"Network Server" tab lets me "enable network access to local sound devices."
Furthermore, I can set or clear a checkbox for "Don't require authentication."
But I can find nowhere any description of what this authentication would be.
The documentation for PulseAudio is pretty weak; it mostly says that "things
work; just try them out." That's not documentation.
So I'm still in the dark.
-Olin
