Issue resolved. This isn't a bug with pulseaudio, the issue stemmed from the FQDN not being set properly which messed up the idmapping for NFS for the home disk. Wrong user ids (nobody) = permission problems for pulseaudio.
** Changed in: pulseaudio (Ubuntu) Status: New => Invalid -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1158712 Title: Pulse audio startup failure To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/1158712/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs