I have a multi-user gentoo linux Toshiba Satellite P-200 laptop, installed with skype, alsa and pulseaudio (among other stuff). For the first user I have set up immediately after the installation, skype works as expected, and the audio setup shows a host of sound devices, among which "pulse (pulse)" and different instances or views of the built-in Intel HDA sound card. Test calls work in both directions. For all additional users I have set up, only "PulseAudio server (local)" is shown as audio device, and sound works in neither direction. This audio device is not shown in the audio setup of the first user, for which the sound works. All users are member of groups "pulse-access" and "pulse", and I have even tried to assign one of the users to exactly the same groups as the first user for which skype sound works flawlessly (among them "wheel"). This did not help either, and now I am at my wits' end, because I also failed to find any useful information that's even close to my problem on the internet. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: see description Actual Results: see description Expected Results: see description
Portage 2.1.9.25 (default/linux/x86/10.0/desktop/kde, gcc-4.4.5, glibc-2.11.2-r3, 2.6.36-gentoo-r5-02 i686) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.36-gentoo-r5-02-i686-Intel-R-_Core-TM-2_Duo_CPU_T7100_@_1.80GHz-with-gentoo-1.12.14 Timestamp of tree: Sat, 26 Feb 2011 15:15:01 +0000 app-shells/bash: 4.1_p9 dev-lang/python: 2.6.6-r2, 3.1.3-r1 dev-util/cmake: 2.8.1-r2 sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.14-r1 sys-apps/sandbox: 2.4 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.65-r1 sys-devel/automake: 1.9.6-r3, 1.11.1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.20.1-r1 sys-devel/gcc: 4.4.5 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1 sys-devel/libtool: 2.2.10 sys-devel/make: 3.81-r2 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.36.1 (sys-kernel/linux-headers) ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O3 -march=prescott -pipe -ggdb" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo" CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=prescott -pipe -ggdb" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-logs distlocks fixlafiles fixpackages news parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms splitdebug strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/gentoo/ ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/gentoo/" LANG="en_US.utf8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.de.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X a52 aac acl acpi alsa berkdb bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cdr cli consolekit cracklib crypt cups cxx dbus directfb djvu dri dts dvd dvdr ebook emboss encode exif fam fbcon firefox flac fontconfig fontforge fonts foomaticdb fortran gdbm gdu gif gpm gtk gzip hal iconv ipv6 jpeg kde kerberos kipi lcms ldap libnotify lm_sensors lzma mad mdnsresponder-compat mikmod mmx mng modules mozilla mp3 mp4 mpeg mudflap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly ogg openexr opengl openmp pam pango pcre pdf perl png policykit ppds pppd pulseaudio python qt3support qt4 readline rss samba sdl sensord session spell sse sse2 ssl ssse3 startup-notification svg sysfs tcpd tiff truetype udev unicode usb utempter vnc vorbis x264 x86 xcb xcomposite xml xorg xulrunner xv xvid zeroconf zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cgi cgid dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CAMERAS="ptp2" COLLECTD_PLUGINS="df interface irq load memory rrdtool swap syslog" ELIBC="glibc" GPSD_PROTOCOLS="ashtech aivdm earthmate evermore fv18 garmin garmintxt gpsclock itrax mtk3301 nmea ntrip navcom oceanserver oldstyle oncore rtcm104v2 rtcm104v3 sirf superstar2 timing tsip tripmate tnt ubx" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev synaptics vmmouse" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" PHP_TARGETS="php5-3" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="radeon vmware" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS, PORTAGE_BUNZIP2_COMMAND, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
You must have missed several dozen of mails on pulseaudio-devel, resurfacing over and over again. The thing is that while pulseaudio can be run in "system mode", it's highly discouraged by upstream. The preferred way is using "fast user switching" (or whatever that's called) feature of your display/session manager.
I don't know how you infer my setup to be a "system mode" setup. I used the Gentoo Pulseaudio wiki and the "PulseAudio Perfect Guide" to set up pulseaudio, and there is not even a /etc/init.d/pulse* script around. Also, flash and vlc play flawlessly for all users. The problem is just Skype. I am running Skype 2.1.0.81
Binary-only package -> Upstream problem -> Reopen if you have a solution.
