mjhjmtu

Long story short, I'm trying to setup PulseAudio to act as a loopback interface for a local music stream. However, I'm hitting a breaking point in getting it setup.

As I understand it, you cannot start pulseaudio in "non-system mode" without having an X server running, but seeing as the server is is headless this is not an option. So I began writing a cobbled together systemd script to start the daemon as a system-wide instance. This however fails for some inexplicable reason.

If I run the command that in in the systemd script, the system-wide pulse starts up just fine! However, if I run it from within the start script (eg. with systemctl start pulseaudio), it fails with Failed to create '/var/run/pulse': Permission denied. I can't for the life of me figure out how it would work for the same user in to different ways. I also tried replacing the start script with a ls /var/run/pulse. When the script is setup to run as "pulse", it prints nothing in the journal. However, if I wrap the whole call in a sudo -u pulse, it prints the contents of /var/run/pulse. When I wrap the pulse startup command in a sudo -u root, it just crashes with the same error.

I'm totally lost on this one. If anyone could point me in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated.

[root@ian-primary ian]# ls -al /var/run/pulse
total 4
drwx------. 3 pulse pulse 80 Nov 5 23:10 .
drwxr-xr-x. 29 root root 840 Nov 5 23:03 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 3 pulse pulse 60 Nov 5 23:04 .config
-rw-------. 1 pulse pulse 16 Nov 5 23:04 .esd_auth

[root@ian-primary ian]# sudo -u pulse ls -al /var/run/pulse
total 4
drwx------. 3 pulse pulse 80 Nov 5 23:10 .
drwxr-xr-x. 29 root root 840 Nov 5 23:03 ..
drwxr-xr-x. 3 pulse pulse 60 Nov 5 23:04 .config
-rw-------. 1 pulse pulse 16 Nov 5 23:04 .esd_auth

Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary systemd[1]: Starting PulseAudio system server...
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary pulseaudio[23251]: W: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode, but --disallow-exit not set.
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary pulseaudio[23251]: W: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode, but --disallow-module-loading not set.
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary pulseaudio[23251]: N: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode, forcibly disabling SHM mode.
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary pulseaudio[23251]: N: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode, forcibly disabling exit idle time.
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary pulseaudio[23253]: Timer slack is set to 50 us.
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary pulseaudio[23253]: setpriority() worked.
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary pulseaudio[23253]: Successfully gained nice level -11.
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary pulseaudio[23253]: Found user 'pulse' (UID 171) and group 'pulse' (GID 171).
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary pulseaudio[23253]: Home directory of user 'pulse' is not '/var/run/pulse', ignoring.
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary pulseaudio[23251]: E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup failed.
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary pulseaudio[23253]: Failed to create '/var/run/pulse': Permission denied
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary systemd[1]: pulseaudio.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary systemd[1]: Failed to start PulseAudio system server.
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary systemd[1]: Unit pulseaudio.service entered failed state.
Nov 06 13:56:02 ian-primary systemd[1]: pulseaudio.service failed.

[root@ian-primary ian]# /bin/pulseaudio -vvv --daemonize --system --realtime
W: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode, but --disallow-exit not set.
W: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode, but --disallow-module-loading not set.
N: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode, forcibly disabling SHM mode.
N: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode, forcibly disabling exit idle time.
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup successful.

[root@ian-primary ian]# cat /etc/systemd/system/pulseaudio.service
[Unit]
Description=PulseAudio system server

[Service]
Type=notify
Environment=PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH=/run/pulse

# ExecStart=/bin/printenv
# export PULSE_RUNTIME_PATH="/run/pulse"
ExecStart=/bin/pulseaudio -vvv --daemonize --system --realtime

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target