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grigoryvp
Asked: 2012-08-01 01:15:21 +0800 CST

How to continue play music on Ubuntu while switching users?

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I have ubuntu 12.04 installed. If i start playing music via built-in rhythmbox music player and switch user - music stops until i switch back :(. Is it possible to continue play music while switching to another user?

sound

3 Answers

  1. There is a launchpad bug concerning this issue. The suggested remedy is to change the 0 to a 1 for the "SYSTEM_START"-option in /etc/default/pulseaudio:

    # Start the PulseAudio sound server in system mode.
# (enables the pulseaudio init script)
# System mode is not the recommended way to run PulseAudio as it has some
# limitations (such as no shared memory access) and could potentially allow
# users to disconnect or redirect each others audio streams. The
# recommend way to run PulseAudio is as a per-session daemon. For GNOME
# sessions you can install pulseaudio-esound-compat and GNOME will
# automatically start PulseAudio on login (if ESD is enabled in
# System->Preferences->Sound). For other sessions, you can simply start
# PulseAudio with "pulseaudio --daemonize".
# 0 = don't start, 1 = start
    PULSEAUDIO_SYSTEM_START=1

    It is actually not a bug though, but a feature. For most people this is expected behavior. They don't want to have other users sound playing over their own. Additionally it is standard conformant.

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  2. Best Answer

    I don't believe this is possible.

    By the very nature of what you are doing "switching user" you are effectively logging out to transition from an environment with differing permissions and values of the other

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  3. You could open a screen-session (by using the "screen"-command, the "screen"-package may be installed by default, but I'm not sure) Then, you could use something like mplayer (without a gui) from the command line. As the screen-session isn't terminated when logging out, mplayer will go on playing. This should work for every commandline-app, btw.

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