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Why does PulseAudio's behavior vary over SSH?

jp flag

I have a server running Xorg. I have a user in the audio group who has an active X11 session. When this session starts, the user's startup script runs pulseaudio --start. There are no PULSE_SERVER or similar environment variables exported. At this point, audio works when applications are started from local login shells, but not when applications are started via SSH; PA connections are refused.

I can kill PulseAudio and then run pulseaudio --start via SSH. After doing this, applications started both locally and via SSH have working audio. This continues to work even in new SSH sessions. Still, no PULSE_SERVER or similar is exported.

Why does this workaround fix the problem?

Edit: I checked with pax11publish to see which cookies are attached to Xorg. The cookies are not set in either case, and setting them does not appear to change behavior.

user10489 avatar
nc flag
You can't export an environment variable to a shell that has already started.
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