Hi, How can I start multiple copies of pulseaudio for the same $USER, but in different contexts? This was working a while back (last year or so - not sure about version numbers).. but doesn't any more? My software starts a virtual X server (xpra, vnc..), dbus and a dedicated pulseaudio server for each "session application" it launches. This allows it to redirect the sound (in and out) to/from remote machines (potentially multiple at once too, some directly, some via gstreamer+vorbis over ssh) - all this together with the display. see (1) Each "application session" gets its own environment and starts pulseaudio with: /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start -vvvv --disable-shm=true --daemonize=false --use-pid-file=false --system=false --exit-idle-time=-1 -n --load=module-suspend-on-idle --load=module-null-sink "--load=module-native-protocol-unix socket=/tmp/pulse-$DISPLAY/native" A single $USER may start dozens of those sessions, each with a different (virtual) $DISPLAY. Now, when I start the second instance I can see that it somehow finds the previous copy (not the one used by my local X11 session) [pid 3044] open("/home/antoine/.pulse/70a1ab2a8c9d6cb7625f17060000000d-runtime/autospawn.lock", O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_NOCTTY|O_NOFOLLOW, 0600) = 5 [pid 3044] fcntl(5, F_SETLKW, {type=F_WRLCK, whence=SEEK_SET, start=0, len=0} >From that point onwards, nothing happens. Can you please advise on how to restore this functionality? Thanks Antoine (1) http://winswitch.org/