Pulseaudio Daemon Startup Failed

Question

When running startx on Arch Linux, the error:

E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup failed.

is returned.

Is there any way to fix this error?

Answer 1

Running

pulseaudio -v

in a terminal (run pulseaudio -k first if it complains about already being started, but since you say it doesn't work, it most probably is not running. Prefix sudo if it complains about permissions) should get you more detailed output on why PulseAudio won't start, which will enable you to find more specific info in your case.

If the error message is not clear enough, just keep adding v:s, e.g.

pulseaudio -vvvv

Answer 2

So a fix for this issue for me just now on a Debian Linux system was

sudo pulseaudio -v

pulseaudio says that it is not intended to be run as root, but when I did this it all started working.. sound in browser started working.