Playing sound remotely?

[r0bis]

I'd like to ask if I can log on as user remotely and play a sound on the machine to attract the remote machine user's attention? I tried to find info via google but without much success.
The idea is I am in my room, doing something and listening to rhythmbox etc; my brother logs in via ssh/bash and executes a script which plays a sound that I should be able to hear. So I want to set up an easy way for my brother to do this.

I am running FC12 with pulseaudio. SE Linux policies are as out of the box.

I've done some experiments:

1) When I log in remotely as myself I can $ play ./TwistedNerve.wav - levels show on console; I can hear the sound
2) When I log in remotely as another I can $ play ./TwistedNerve.wav - levels show on console; I CAN'T hear the sound

So I suppose the question is - can I provide access to sound devices in my session to the remote user?

Could anyone help, please?

[Gödel]

It should work. Can you play sounds as the other user when logged in locally? How are you connecting via ssh? If x-forwarding is enabled it will cause issues with the pulseaudio connection, so make sure that's disabled.

Try setting up a plain test user and see if that works (as root):

adduser test
passwd test

then from the remote machine do something like:

ssh ip.of.your.machine -l test
play /usr/share/sounds/purple/login.wav

[r0bis]

Thanks,

It is quite interesting:

1) When I log on remotely (from another computer going via no-ip) using my account - the sound plays even I am playing rhythmbox at the time.
2) When I log on remotely using test account - the sound does play - but only if rhythmbox is paused. I can even start playing sound on console, then pause rhythmbox and after a short while the sound would come through

Here is what happens in /var/log/messages
a) when I try to play rhythmbox when the remote test user has already started playing a sound:
pulseaudio[3672]: alsa-sink.c: Error opening PCM device front:0: Device or resource busy
shortly after the sound is finished rhythmbox resumes playing
b) when I try to play a sound as a remote user when rhythmbox is playing
pulseaudio[4003]: main.c: Unable to contact D-Bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: /bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the following error: Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.
if I pause rhythmbox some 8 seconds later the sound played by the remote user comes through speakers

In other cases there are no errors:
- when I play sound over rhythmbox logged in remotely as myself
- when playback starts for the remote test user - if rhythmbox is not playing

And as one would expect same as for rhythmbox goes also for totem.

I'd appreciate any ideas how the other user account could play sound when the logged on user is using rhythmbox.

[Gödel]

I've tested this and found problems in a new Fedora 12 install (it worked ok in F12 upgraded from F11).

I get a bluetooth error when I try it (!)

ssh 10.0.0.7 -l test
aplay /usr/share/sounds/purple/login.wav

No audio, and in /var/log/messages I see this:

Dec 7 08:46:04 localhost dbus-daemon: Rejected send message, 2 matched rules; type="method_call", sender=":1.92" (uid=501 pid=2876 comm="/usr/bin/pulseaudio) interface="org.bluez.Manager" member="ListAdapters" error name="(unset)" requested_reply=0 destination="org.bluez" (uid=0 pid=1551 comm="/usr/sbin/bluetoothd))
Dec 7 08:46:04 localhost pulseaudio[2876]: bluetooth-util.c: Error from ListAdapters reply: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied

If I disable bluetooth (from the gnome panel icon), the error goes away and I then get the same dbus error as you, If I use 'ssh -X', the dbus error goes away but I get no sound when I play the file.

This was tested from a livecd F12 session to a fully installed F12 session. I can't even get the delayed audio you report.

There seems to be some bugs here, but I'm not sure which would be the best one to report.

---------- Post added at 09:52 AM CST ---------- Previous post was at 09:20 AM CST ----------

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=545001