On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 9:38 AM, Colin Guthrie <gmane at colin.guthr.ie> wrote: > 'Twas brillig, and Markus Rechberger at 09/02/10 02:16 did gyre and gimble: >> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 3:01 AM, ?<olin.pulse.7ia at shivers.mail0.org> wrote: >>> Bill Cox: >>>> While the "right" way is not system-wide mode, in practice, I find >>>> system-wide mode to be very stable and usable on Ubuntu systems that >>>> have multiple users trying to send sound to the speakers. >>> >>> So, I'm still wondering: what *is* the "right way" for this use case? Is it >>> the case that PulseAudio just doesn't address it? >> >> There is no right way pulseaudio was not designed to support multiple >> users at the same time (without the depreciated exception of running >> it as system wide daemon). > > Indeed. PA is principally meant to be run per-user. Each user logged in > will have their own PA process running and each will monitor a system > service called "ConsoleKit" which tracks which user is active. We adhere > to whatever ConsoleKit tells us with regards to which user is currently > "active" (see ck-list-sessions) and only the active user has access to > the sound hardware. > > Think about how switching users works (on Linux and on Windows/OSX). > Only the user whose desktop is currently presented will be allowed to > use sound, the other user's sound is "corked" until they become active > again. Bad example as usual, on OSX everyone (who's permitted to use the audio unit) can just log in and use the audio unit. Markus
