Mpd and pulse problem - Connection refused [SOLVED]

Question

I'm having problems getting mpd to play nice with pulse-audio.  Pulse is installed and works with vlc, mplayer, flash, etc. just fine.  When I try to play through mpd the song in the gui simply shows a status of "paused" and the following gets written to the mpd.log. 
Advice is appreciated.
# tail -f /var/log/mpd/mpd.log
Oct 08 11:12 : output: Failed to enable "pulse audio" [pulse]: pa_context_connect() has failed: Connection refused
Oct 08 11:12 : output: Failed to enable "pulse audio" [pulse]: pa_context_connect() has failed: Connection refused
Oct 08 11:12 : output: Failed to enable "pulse audio" [pulse]: pa_context_connect() has failed: Connection refused
Oct 08 11:12 : player_thread: problems opening audio device while playing "Not_So_Hard_Stuff/Disturbed-The Sickness-2000/01_Voices.flac"
Here is my mpd.conf
$ sed '/#/d' /etc/mpd.conf
music_directory "/media/data/all_genres"
playlist_directory "/var/lib/mpd/playlists"
db_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpd.db"
log_file "/var/log/mpd/mpd.log"
pid_file "/var/run/mpd/mpd.pid"
state_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpdstate"
user "mpd"
gapless_mp3_playback "yes"
zeroconf_enabled "yes"
zeroconf_name "Music Player"
input {
plugin "curl"
audio_output {
type "pulse"
name "pulse audio"
mixer_type "software"
audio_buffer_size "35000"
buffer_before_play "5%"
The pulseaudio wiki suggests that a 'pulse' group and 'pulse-access' and even 'pulse-rt' groups may be required?  I have used mpd for a year now with no such groups on my system.
EDIT: solved in post #13
Last edited by graysky (2011-10-16 13:42:46)

Answer 1

graysky wrote:
I too modified my /etc/mpd.conf to use alsa even though I don't have alsa-utils installed at all.
$ sed '/#/d' /etc/mpd.conf
music_directory "/media/data/all_genres"
playlist_directory "/var/lib/mpd/playlists"
db_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpd.db"
log_file "/var/log/mpd/mpd.log"
pid_file "/var/run/mpd/mpd.pid"
state_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpdstate"
user "mpd"
gapless_mp3_playback "yes"
zeroconf_enabled "yes"
zeroconf_name "Music Player"
input {
plugin "curl"
audio_output {
type "alsa"
name "My ALSA Device"
mixer_type "software"
audio_buffer_size "35000"
buffer_before_play "5%"
Doesn't work for me I get this error when I try to play something with your configuration:
ALSA lib pulse.c:229:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection refused
Oct 16 18:23 : output: Failed to open "My ALSA Device" [alsa]: Failed to open ALSA device "default": Connection refused