# Configuring pulseaudio startup

**URL:** <https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/configuring-pulseaudio-startup/8461>\
**Category:** Rocky Linux Help & Support\
**Created:** [January 7, 2023, 12:11am UTC](https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/configuring-pulseaudio-startup/8461 "2023-01-07T00:11:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rbtnichols](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@rbtnichols](https://forums.rockylinux.org/u/rbtnichols)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2023, 12:11am UTC](https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/configuring-pulseaudio-startup/8461/1 "2023-01-07T00:11:50Z")

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On one of my systems (Rocky 8.7, running on bare iron), pulseaudio seems to be starting as a system daemon, since pacmd complains, “No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as a session daemon.” There is a pulseaudio process running, (/usr/bin/oulseaudio --daemonize=no --log-target=journal) though apparently not as a systemd service, as there is no service by that name. In order to make sound work, I have to set it up from the Sound GUI each time I log in. On a Rocky 8.7 VM, I don’t have these problems.

I suspect that the bare iron machine’s problem stem from the motherboard’s built-in sound (Alder Lake-S) not being supported by the kernel, so I have to use a separate sound card. What file do I need to edit to set up the sound configuration?

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**Author:** ![GZU](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forums.rockylinux.org/gzu/32/981_2.png) [@GZU](https://forums.rockylinux.org/u/GZU)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2023, 4:07am UTC](https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/configuring-pulseaudio-startup/8461/2 "2023-01-07T04:07:11Z")

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Should be running as a systemd “user” service, try the following

systemctl --user status pulseaudio

The problem I had was that the mixer settings were not being saved and I had to use  
alsactl store  
to make them persistent.

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**Author:** ![rbtnichols](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@rbtnichols](https://forums.rockylinux.org/u/rbtnichols)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2023, 3:25pm UTC](https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/configuring-pulseaudio-startup/8461/3 "2023-01-07T15:25:15Z")

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Thanks – much appreciated. What I didn’t know about was running systemctl with “–user” and doing that **as** the logged-in user. Trying to run “systemctl status pulseaudio” as “root” just results in “Unit pulseaudio.service could not be found.”

I’ve got things working now. Thanks again.

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**Author:** ![brian](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forums.rockylinux.org/brian/32/5777_2.png) [@brian](https://forums.rockylinux.org/u/brian)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2023, 3:28am UTC](https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/configuring-pulseaudio-startup/8461/4 "2023-08-25T03:28:57Z")

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