PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused

May 4, 2009 | By Fabio Milano In Fedora,Linux,Tutorial |

Scenario / Question:

Sound stops working and I get the error PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused

Solution / Answer:

Find out if anything is blocking sound, kill the processes and restart pulseaudio

Blocking Sound:

Run the command to see what processes are using sound:

# fuser -v /dev/snd/* /dev/dsp*
                     USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
/dev/snd/controlC0:  admin      3686 F.... mixer_applet2
/dev/snd/pcmC0D0p:   admin      4677 F...m npviewer.bin

Kill the processes listed:

# kill 3686
# kill 4677

Restart Pulse Audio:

To restart pulse audio run the following command:

# pulseaudio -k ; pulseaudio -D --log-target=syslog
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Fabio Milano has written 79 articles for us. Fabio Milano is a certified RHCE, MCP, and CFOI. He runs an IT consulting and services company called RDS Support inc. Website:http://www.rdssupport.com

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    2 Comments so far

    1. Alexander on December 7th, 2010

      The above solution appeared just OK. Thanks!
      The only difference is as follows:

      [root@lan108 ~]# pulseaudio -k
      E: main.c: Failed to kill daemon: No such process
      [root@lan108 ~]# ps -e|grep pulse
      3003 ? 00:00:09 pulseaudio
      [root@lan108 ~]# kill -15 3003
      [alex@lan108 ~]$ pulseaudio -D –log-target=syslog
      [alex@lan108 ~]$ gmixer
      (here unmute and ajust volume)
      [alex@lan108 ~]$ aplay /root/build/installed/xfce-4.6.1/orage-4.6.1/sounds/Wall_c.wav

    2. Mitchell on April 19th, 2011

      Thank you Fabio!
      Cannot understand how I lost sound, OpenSuse 11.2.
      It worked after I added asound.conf and started Pulsaudio.

      Mitchell

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