owntone-server/README_PULSE.md

forked-daapd and Pulseaudio

Credit: Rob Pope

Step 1: Setting up Pulseaudio in system mode with Bluetooth support

If you see a "Connection refused" error when starting forked-daapd, then you will probably need to setup Pulseaudio to run in system mode [1]. This means that the Pulseaudio daemon will be started during boot and be available to all users.

How to start Pulseaudio depends on your distribution, but in many cases you will need to add a pulseaudio.service file to /etc/systemd/system with the following content:

# systemd service file for Pulseaudio running in system mode
[Unit]
Description=Pulseaudio sound server
Before=sound.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/pulseaudio --system --disallow-exit

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

If you want Bluetooth support, you must also configure Pulseaudio to load the Bluetooth module. Do this by adding the following to /etc/pulse/system.pa:

### Enable Bluetooth
.ifexists module-bluetooth-discover.so
load-module module-bluetooth-discover
.endif

Now you can:

• (re)start Pulseaudio with systemctl restart pulseaudio
• enable system mode on boot with systemctl enable pulseaudio
• check that the Bluetooth module is loaded with pactl list modules short

Step 2: Setting up forked-daapd

Add the user forked-daapd is running as (typically "daapd") to the "pulse-access" group:

adduser daapd pulse-access

Now (re)start forked-daapd.

Step 3: Adding a Bluetooth device

To connect with the device, run bluetoothctl and then:

power on
agent on
scan on
**Note MAC address of BT Speaker**
pair [MAC address]
**Type Pin if prompted**
trust [MAC address]
connect [MAC address]

Now the speaker should appear in forked-daapd. You can also verify that Pulseaudio has detected the speaker with pactl list sinks short.

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[1] Note that Pulseaudio will warn against system mode. However, in this use case it is actually the solution recommended by the Pulseaudio folks themselves.