I just upgraded PulseAudio from 0.9.22 to 1.1. Didn’t understand why audio is gone after reboot at first:

% pulseaudio --start
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup failed.

The cause revealed without daemonization:

% pulseaudio
E: [pulseaudio] module-console-kit.c: GetSessionsForUnixUser() call failed: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit was not provided by any .service files
E: [pulseaudio] module.c: Failed to load module "module-console-kit" (argument: ""): initialization failed.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Module load failed.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Failed to initialize daemon.

I haven’t had ConsoleKit on my system since Fri Oct 22 05:52:59 2010 and USE flag of PulseAudio has not mentioned anything about ConsoleKit, I assume that the module is built no matter what system environment is. After checked the configuration file:

% grep -n2 console /etc/pulse/*
/etc/pulse/default.pa-111-### If autoexit on idle is enabled we want to make sure we only quit
/etc/pulse/default.pa-112-### when no local session needs us anymore.
/etc/pulse/default.pa:113:.ifexists module-console-kit.so
/etc/pulse/default.pa:114:load-module module-console-kit
/etc/pulse/default.pa-115-.endif
/etc/pulse/default.pa-116-

% locate module-console-kit.so
/usr/lib64/debug/usr/lib64/pulse-1.1/modules/module-console-kit.so.debug
/usr/lib64/pulse-1.1/modules/module-console-kit.so

I know PulseAudio will fail anyway. So I commented out the three lines. Problem is gone.

If you don’t squeeze your system, most likely you system will have ConsoleKit installed, you wouldn’t have the problem. Actually, I shouldn’t have, either, if I don’t need to record the system output sound, I don’t need PulseAudio but only ALSA is enough.