[Discuss] Help with Ubuntu audio (newcomer)

[me at mattgillen.net (Matthew Gillen)]

On 12/18/2011 09:53 PM, Daniel Barrett wrote:
>  Right now I have no sound at all. I posted full details in the
> Ubuntu forums:
>
>    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10438294
>
> but never got any responses.  Sometimes I can get sound by deleting
> ~/.pulse and ~/.pulse-cookie, logging out, and logging back in. But the
> solution doesn't last. Other times I run Amarok and, lo and behold, sound
> starts working everywhere. Temporarily.

I feel your pain.

Also, typically the ordering I use is:
  logout from graphical desktop
  log into console (either root or normal user)
  make sure all processes from normalUser's desktop session are dead 
(gconf-related, etc)
  delete ~normaluser/.pulse-cookie|.pulse
  log in to normalUser w/ desktop sesson (and cross fingers)

When it starts working temporarily, what does the system log say?

You might try this sequence:
  log in as normaluser to desktop
  make sure pulseaudio is dead
  open a terminal and start pulseaudio WITHOUT "--start" (we don't want 
it to detach from the terminal because we want to see the output)
  try to watch a video w/ mplayer or something.

Watch to see what happens to pulseaudio.  Does it crash?  Is it spewing 
errors?

Hope that helps,
Matt