Tor-Browser Linux: no audio playback (pulseaudio) on CentOS 6
Symptoms: Audio (via pulseaudio) not working. Starting tor-browser in verbose mode gives the following output when Tor-Browser tries to start playing audio:
[Child 25922, MediaPlayback #1] WARNING: 7f711d9bf880 OpenCubeb() failed to init cubeb: file /var/tmp/build/firefox-7393f1ffd512/dom/media/AudioStream.cpp, line 375
[Child 25922, MediaPlayback #1] WARNING: Decoder=7f711d9b4600 [OnMediaSinkAudioError]: file /var/tmp/build/firefox-7393f1ffd512/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp, line 3385
[Child 25922, MediaPlayback #1] WARNING: Decoder=7f711d9b4600 Decode error: NS_ERROR_DOM_MEDIA_MEDIASINK_ERR (0x806e000b) - OnMediaSinkAudioError: file /var/tmp/build/firefox-7393f1ffd512/dom/media/MediaDecoderStateMachine.cpp, line 3118What I have figured out so far:
- Tor-Browser maintains its own HOME directory, which is set in .../Browser/start-tor-browser and points to .../Browser/
- When accessing (or trying to) pulseaudio, Tor-Browser uses the pulseaudio files (.pulse/ and .pulse-cookie) as well as the .esd_auth from this fake HOME.
In my case, Tor-Browser was not able talk with the already running pulseaudio daemon - very likely due to a mismatch in the auth cookie (did not verify this). After manually removing these files and directory and copying them from the real users HOME, audio playback did work again.
My temporary fix is to remove and copy above mentioned files before starting tor-browser:
# fix up pulseaudio stuff...
rm ${INSTALLDIR}/Browser/.esd_auth
rm ${INSTALLDIR}/Browser/.pulse-cookie
rm ${INSTALLDIR}/Browser/.pulse/*
rmdir ${INSTALLDIR}/Browser/.pulse
cp -p $HOME/.esd_auth ${INSTALLDIR}/Browser/.esd_auth
cp -p $HOME/.pulse-cookie ${INSTALLDIR}/Browser/.pulse-cookie
cp -pr $HOME/.pulse ${INSTALLDIR}/Browser/If there is no specific reason (privacy, information leak, ...) not to do so, tor-browser startup should make sure that those files in the fake HOME contain correct data to allow communication with pulseaudio.
Trac:
Username: tries