We disallow autospawning for root, but when using systemd socket activation to start pulseaudio, that replaces the autospawning mechanism, and there was no similar "root protection" in socket activation. This patch disables the socket activation for root. Thanks to Felipe Sateler for coming up with the idea of using ConditionPathIsReadWrite=!/run. --- src/daemon/systemd/user/pulseaudio.socket | 7 +++++++ 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+) diff --git a/src/daemon/systemd/user/pulseaudio.socket b/src/daemon/systemd/user/pulseaudio.socket index 332ece893..05459edc0 100644 --- a/src/daemon/systemd/user/pulseaudio.socket +++ b/src/daemon/systemd/user/pulseaudio.socket @@ -1,6 +1,13 @@ [Unit] Description=Sound System +# We don't want to enable socket activation for root, because alsa device +# handover doesn't work between root and normal users. /run should be writable +# only by root, so we use that to detect whether the current user is root. +# A request has been submitted for a more straightforward way to detect the +# current user: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5187 +ConditionPathIsReadWrite=!/run + [Socket] Priority=6 Backlog=5 -- 2.11.0