On 5/8/2014 7:57 AM, Jerry Geis wrote: > I am running pulseaudio on centOS 6.5 > audio works fine as the user. > running the command > aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav > works fine. > > when I login as root and run the command > su user -c "aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav" > it does not work. > > I thought su actually runs as that user... > is there some "magic" to su I don't know about? > How might I get that to work ? > > > Thanks, > > jerry If the program works normally from that user's account then you need that user's environment and to get that you use the - (dash) switch. So your command would look like: su - user -c "aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav" This is why when we switch user to root we use: su - ...to ensure we get root's environment. See the man page for su. -- steve