Bug 75298

Summary:	Documentation: section on module-native-protocol-unix should explain how cookie file is found
Product:	PulseAudio	Reporter:	jonasthiem
Component:	misc	Assignee:	pulseaudio-bugs
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	pulseaudio-bugs
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium	CC:	lennart
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description jonasthiem 2014-02-21 05:43:19 UTC

There is a docs section for the module-native-protocol-unix module:

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/Modules/#index22h3

It documents an auth cookie process which is apparently a file based authentication (it doesn't mention really what a cookie is for pulseaudio: it is some file with randomly generated stuff serving as a temporary login key file thing I suppose? It may be obvious to some, but to newcomers it could be helpful adding a line or two of explanation for that).

It says the default location is ~/.pulse-cookie and there is an auth-cookie option to specify another location. Now, my default.pa doesn't use that option, so I naturally assumed it was in ~/.pulse-cookie. However, there is no such file.

What happened? Apparently (I got this from some guy on IRC), pulseaudio uses some environment vars to determine it ends up in /run/user/1000 or something?

I'm not really objecting to that process itself, but it would be really helpful if this was actually documented in the section I linked. If it is already documented elsewhere, please add a helpful reference to the section I linked so people can find out where their auth cookie file is actually located, and why.

Comment 1 jonasthiem 2014-02-21 05:52:09 UTC

If that should be relevant, the environment variable in question is XDG_RUNTIME_DIR. However, I have no idea what that means or why pulseaudio cares about it for cookie placement. - which is probably my own fault for not knowing it very well, I suppose I should read up on the X11 integration modules which are probably related?

But still, please consider clearing this up a bit more at http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/Modules/#index22h3 and e.g. linking to the relevant X11 integration sections for altered cookie auth file default placement, if that is actually what is going on here.

Comment 2 Tanu Kaskinen 2014-03-07 11:34:17 UTC

(In reply to comment #0)
> There is a docs section for the module-native-protocol-unix module:
> 
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/
> Modules/#index22h3
> 
> It documents an auth cookie process which is apparently a file based
> authentication (it doesn't mention really what a cookie is for pulseaudio:
> it is some file with randomly generated stuff serving as a temporary login
> key file thing I suppose? It may be obvious to some, but to newcomers it
> could be helpful adding a line or two of explanation for that).

Thanks for the suggestion, I now added a short explanation of the cookie file. I'll close this bug, please reopen if you think the explanation should be more elaborate.

> It says the default location is ~/.pulse-cookie and there is an auth-cookie
> option to specify another location. Now, my default.pa doesn't use that
> option, so I naturally assumed it was in ~/.pulse-cookie. However, there is
> no such file.
> 
> What happened? Apparently (I got this from some guy on IRC), pulseaudio uses
> some environment vars to determine it ends up in /run/user/1000 or something?

It doesn't end up in the runtime directory (/run/user/1000), it ends up in the configuration directory (~/.config/pulse) and the default file name is now "cookie".

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