Ubuntu 18.04 - Pulseaudio started & loaded twice - 2 PIDs accessing sound card - Need help to troubleshoot pls

Question

I hope someone can help me troubleshoot why and from where Pulseaudio is started and loaded twice.

This creates issues when plugging headphones and sometimes there are small pauses in sound.

Here is some info:

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Release:        18.04
Codename:       bionic

pulseaudio --version

pulseaudio 11.1

fuser -v /dev/snd/*

                     USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
/dev/snd/controlC0:  horatiu    2328 F.... pulseaudio
                     horatiu    5872 F.... pulseaudio
/dev/snd/controlC1:  horatiu    2328 F.... pulseaudio
                     horatiu    5872 F.... pulseaudio

/var/log/syslog |grep pulseaudio (last boot)

Dec  4 22:10:00 hdl dbus-daemon[1603]: [system] Activating via systemd:         service name='org.freedesktop.RealtimeKit1' unit='rtkit-daemon.service'     requested by ':1.25' (uid=1000 pid=2328 comm="/usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog " label="unconfined")
Dec  4 22:10:02 hdl pulseaudio[2328]: [pulseaudio] server-lookup.c: Unable to contact D-Bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NotSupported: Unable to autolaunch a dbus-daemon without a $DISPLAY for X11
Dec  4 22:10:02 hdl pulseaudio[2328]: [pulseaudio] main.c: Unable to contact D-Bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NotSupported: Unable to autolaunch a dbus-daemon without a $DISPLAY for X11
Dec  4 22:10:02 hdl pulseaudio[2328]: [pulseaudio] bluez5-util.c: GetManagedObjects() failed: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied: Rejected send message, 2 matched rules; type="method_call", sender=":1.40" (uid=1000 pid=2328 comm="/usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog " label="unconfined") interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.ObjectManager" member="GetManagedObjects" error name="(unset)" requested_reply="0" destination="org.bluez" (uid=0 pid=1487 comm="/usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd " label="unconfined")
Dec  4 22:10:24 hdl pulseaudio[5872]: [pulseaudio] module.c: Module "module-switch-on-connect" should be loaded once at most. Refusing to load.
Dec  4 22:10:24 hdl pulseaudio[5872]: [pulseaudio] module-gconf.c: pa_module_load() failed

The sound still works... I believe that the errors are created by the second process loading.

Answer 1

Solved.

Got the process who started the first instance of pulseaudio by running systemctl status on the pulseaudio pid.

systemctl status 2328

It turned out that the process was getting started by the mpd daemon. I don't use mpd so I didn't bother trying to set it up in a way that it doesn't spawn a pulseaudio process at boot. I just removed mpd.

This effectively got rid of the first instance of pulseaudio and solved the issues with the sound.