Pulseaudio service startup fails, system won't play audio

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1

Hello,
I am running almalinux 8.10 on a dell optiplex 9200, and I find that videos I try to play on my firefox 128.7 Oesr browser have no sound. They had no video either until I enabled audio & video permissions by default in the “privacy & security session”. Many Google references say “pulseaudio” may be at fault, and sure enough I see that it is not running on my system:

[root@op92a ~]# systemctl status user@1000.service.pulseaudio.service
● user@1000.service.pulseaudio.service - User Manager for UID 1000.service.puls>
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/user@.service; static; vendor preset>
   Active: inactive (dead)
lines 1-3/3 (END)

I’m far from a systemd expert, but apparently the pulseaudio service is a “staticlly dependent” service o service “user@1000.service”. systemctl doesn’t find plain old “pulseaudio.service”.

Just starting it up fails:

[root@op92a ~]# systemctl start user@1000.service.pulseaudio.service
A dependency job for user@1000.service.pulseaudio.service failed. See 'journalctl -xe' for details.
[root@op92a ~]#
[root@op92a ~]# systemctl status user@1000.service.pulseaudio.service
● user@1000.service.pulseaudio.service - User Manager for UID 1000.service.pulseaudio
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/user@.service; static; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)

Mar 07 14:34:27 op92a systemd[1]: Dependency failed for User Manager for UID 1000.service.pulseaudio.
Mar 07 14:34:27 op92a systemd[1]: user@1000.service.pulseaudio.service: Job user@1000.service.pulseau>
Mar 07 14:41:50 op92a systemd[1]: Dependency failed for User Manager for UID 1000.service.pulseaudio.
Mar 07 14:41:50 op92a systemd[1]: user@1000.service.pulseaudio.service: Job user@1000.service.pulseau>
[root@op92a ~]#

The journal lines from the “status” output say that some dependency of pulseaudio did not start up, and journalctl says that the failing dependency is “user-runtime-dir@1000.service.pulseaudio.service”, and it fails because there is “No such user “1000.service.pulseaudio””:

[root@op92a ~]# journalctl -ex | grep pulse | tail -25
-- Subject: Unit user-1000.service.pulseaudio.slice has finished shutting down
-- Unit user-1000.service.pulseaudio.slice has finished shutting down.
Mar 07 14:55:53 op92a systemd[1]: Accepting user/group name '1000.service.pulseaudio', which does not match strict user/group name rules.
Mar 07 14:56:09 op92a systemd[1]: Accepting user/group name '1000.service.pulseaudio', which does not match strict user/group name rules.
Mar 07 14:56:09 op92a systemd[1]: Created slice User Slice of UID 1000.service.pulseaudio.
-- Subject: Unit user-1000.service.pulseaudio.slice has finished start-up
-- Unit user-1000.service.pulseaudio.slice has finished starting up.
Mar 07 14:56:09 op92a systemd[1]: Starting User runtime directory /run/user/1000.service.pulseaudio...
-- Subject: Unit user-runtime-dir@1000.service.pulseaudio.service has begun start-up
-- Unit user-runtime-dir@1000.service.pulseaudio.service has begun starting up.
Mar 07 14:56:09 op92a systemd-user-runtime-dir[8066]: No such user "1000.service.pulseaudio"
Mar 07 14:56:09 op92a systemd[1]: user-runtime-dir@1000.service.pulseaudio.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Mar 07 14:56:09 op92a systemd[1]: user-runtime-dir@1000.service.pulseaudio.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
-- The unit user-runtime-dir@1000.service.pulseaudio.service has entered the 'failed' state with result 'exit-code'.
Mar 07 14:56:09 op92a systemd[1]: Failed to start User runtime directory /run/user/1000.service.pulseaudio.
-- Subject: Unit user-runtime-dir@1000.service.pulseaudio.service has failed
-- Unit user-runtime-dir@1000.service.pulseaudio.service has failed.
Mar 07 14:56:09 op92a systemd[1]: Dependency failed for User Manager for UID 1000.service.pulseaudio.
-- Subject: Unit user@1000.service.pulseaudio.service has failed
-- Unit user@1000.service.pulseaudio.service has failed.
Mar 07 14:56:09 op92a systemd[1]: user@1000.service.pulseaudio.service: Job user@1000.service.pulseaudio.service/start failed with result 'dependency'.
Mar 07 14:56:09 op92a systemd[1]: Removed slice User Slice of UID 1000.service.pulseaudio.
-- Subject: Unit user-1000.service.pulseaudio.slice has finished shutting down
-- Unit user-1000.service.pulseaudio.slice has finished shutting down.
Mar 07 14:56:19 op92a systemd[1]: Accepting user/group name '1000.service.pulseaudio', which does not match strict user/group name rules.
[root@op92a ~]#

So far Google hasn’t told me how to create such a user and make this “user-runtime-dir@1000.service.pulseaudio.service” happy enough to start up. Does anybody know how to do that, or otherwise know how to solve this issue?

2

SOLVED!

I’ve been dealing with systemd linux systems for, like, 5-6 years now, but today is the first time I fiound out that systemd and specifically systemctl is not just for root!

I saw a reference to an unrelated problem that had the poster running “systemctl --user …”, and I thought “what’s the worst that can happen?”. So, after exiting root:

[kurt@op92a ~]$ systemctl --user start pulseaudio
[kurt@op92a ~]$

No error messages!

[kurt@op92a ~]$ systemctl --user status pulseaudio
● pulseaudio.service - Sound Service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2025-03-07 14:31:32 EST; 1h 24min ago
 Main PID: 4102 (pulseaudio)
   CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/pulseaudio.service
           └─4102 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no --log-target=journal

Mar 07 14:31:32 op92a systemd[4084]: Starting Sound Service...
Mar 07 14:31:32 op92a pulseaudio[4102]: bind(): Address already in use
Mar 07 14:31:32 op92a pulseaudio[4102]: Failed to load module "module-esound-protocol-unix" (argument: ""): initialization failed.
Mar 07 14:31:32 op92a systemd[4084]: Started Sound Service.
[kurt@op92a ~]$

There are some error messages in the initial journal entries, but now my videos (or at least, the vimeo video I was trying to play) play with sound!

I hope this helps somebody besides me.