Multiuser pulseaudio in Mint Nadia (and maybe Ubuntu Quantal too)

I upgraded my several home computers to Mint Nadia recently and the audio stopped working the way I wanted.

I run chrome as several different users (a reasonably secure user, an insecure user and myself) and if (in the insecure or reasonably secure browser) a page had audio, I'd have to copy the URL, and paste it into firefox running as myself to hear the audio.

It turns out, Ubuntu Quantal (I'm guessing it's their fault) had changed how to do system mode in pulseaudio. To begin with, we don't even configure pulseaudio in /etc/default/pulseaudio anymore, now it's /etc/init/pulseaudio.conf.

The new way to enable system mode is:

  1. sudo vi /etc/init/pulseaudio.conf
  2. find the "#start on rulevel [2345]" line
  3. uncomment it (remove the #).
  4. restart pulseaudio.