I use Clementine and it started yesterday to refuse to play anything and display an "access denied" alert box. Same with Rhythmbox. After a while, I realized that my sound indication is also greyed and there is no sound card visible in the sound settings.

I think that Pulseaudio is the culprit but no certitude there (see the output below). I am on 13.04 and something went wrong but I don't see how to restart it with a clean config or if I need to change anything.

lionel@prime:~$ pulseaudio -vvvv

I: [pulseaudio] main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operation not permitted

I: [pulseaudio] main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_RTPRIO, (9, 9)) failed: Operation not permitted

D: [pulseaudio] core-rtclock.c: Timer slack is set to 50 us.

D: [pulseaudio] core-util.c: RealtimeKit worked.

I: [pulseaudio] core-util.c: Successfully gained nice level -11.

I: [pulseaudio] main.c: This is PulseAudio 3.0

D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Compilation host: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Compilation CFLAGS: -g -O2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wall -W -Wextra -pipe -Wno-long-long -Wno-overlength-strings -Wunsafe-loop-optimizations -Wundef -Wformat=2 -Wlogical-op -Wsign-compare -Wformat-security -Wmissing-include-dirs -Wformat-nonliteral -Wpointer-arith -Winit-self -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wfloat-equal -Wmissing-prototypes -Wredundant-decls -Wmissing-declarations -Wmissing-noreturn -Wshadow -Wendif-labels -Wcast-align -Wstrict-aliasing -Wwrite-strings -Wno-unused-parameter -ffast-math -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fno-common -fdiagnostics-show-option

D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running on host: Linux x86_64 3.8.0-29-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Tue Aug 13 19:40:39 UTC 2013

D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Found 8 CPUs.

I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Page size is 4096 bytes

D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Compiled with Valgrind support: no

D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in valgrind mode: no

D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in VM: no

D: [pulseaudio] main.c: Optimized build: yes

D: [pulseaudio] main.c: FASTPATH defined, only fast path asserts disabled.

I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Machine ID is 77bf4823eb9fbd64b69d605100000002.

I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Using runtime directory /run/user/lionel/pulse.

E: [pulseaudio] core-util.c: Home directory not accessible: Permission denied

The ouput of ls -l /run/user/lionel/ and pulseaudio --dump-conf

lionel@prime:~$ ls -l /run/user/lionel/

total 0

drwx------ 2 lionel lionel  60 août  28 15:15 dconf

dr-x------ 2 lionel lionel   0 août  28 12:30 gvfs

drwx------ 2 lionel lionel  40 août  28 12:30 gvfs-burn

drwx------ 2 lionel lionel 120 août  28 12:30 keyring-iiUWPh

drwx------ 2 lionel lionel  40 août  28 15:11 pulse

lionel@prime:~$ pulseaudio --dump-conf

### Read from configuration file: /etc/pulse/daemon.conf ###

daemonize = no

fail = yes

high-priority = yes

nice-level = -11

realtime-scheduling = yes

realtime-priority = 5

allow-module-loading = yes

allow-exit = yes

use-pid-file = yes

system-instance = no

local-server-type = user

cpu-limit = no

enable-shm = yes

flat-volumes = no

lock-memory = no

exit-idle-time = 20

scache-idle-time = 20

dl-search-path = /usr/lib/pulse-3.0/modules

default-script-file = /etc/pulse/default.pa

load-default-script-file = yes

log-target = auto

log-level = notice

resample-method = speex-float-1

enable-remixing = yes

enable-lfe-remixing = no

default-sample-format = s16le

default-sample-rate = 44100

alternate-sample-rate = 48000

default-sample-channels = 2

default-channel-map = front-left,front-right

default-fragments = 8

default-fragment-size-msec = 10

enable-deferred-volume = yes

deferred-volume-safety-margin-usec = 1

deferred-volume-extra-delay-usec = 0

shm-size-bytes = 0

log-meta = no

log-time = no

log-backtrace = 0

rlimit-fsize = -1

rlimit-data = -1

rlimit-stack = -1

rlimit-core = -1

rlimit-rss = -1

rlimit-as = -1

rlimit-nproc = -1

rlimit-nofile = 256

rlimit-memlock = -1

rlimit-locks = -1

rlimit-sigpending = -1

rlimit-msgqueue = -1

rlimit-nice = 31

rlimit-rtprio = 9

rlimit-rttime = 1000000