[clue] Help with PulseAudio crashing [Tech]

[Lorin Ricker]

Not being one to "fix it if it ain't broke", I was impelled over this 
past weekend to finally upgrade my Ubuntu Studio box from 9.10 (Karmic, 
which is now unsupported) to 10.4 (Lucid/LTS).  Things actually went 
pretty smoothly, with only a couple of issues after the upgrade reboot.

1. Upon initial login, my Gnome UI's windows were missing the title-bar 
decoration, which meant that I couldn't move or resize windows(!). 
After a bit of puzzling about this, I right-clicked on the desktop 
background to bring up "Change Desktop Background", went to the "Visual 
Effects" tab, changed the setting from "None" (somehow [re]set by the 
upgrade) to "Normal", clicked Close -- and windows were a-ok again.

2. More vexing than the above:  I now see that my (sound) Volume Control 
app (pavucontrol) dies repeatedly after "some long use" with a 
"Connection failed: Connection refused" error box.  This is repeatable, 
but I cannot find the cause yet.  Attempts to click on the menu-bar icon 
to restart the app just give me another "Connection refused" box,
until...

I can get things restarted with the following com-line:

   $ pulseaudio & pavucontrol

This gives yet another "Connection refused" error box, but after 
dismissing this, the menu-bar icon works again.  For awhile...

Anyone got any experience with this problem?  And a good, permanent fix?

I've checked my resources, esp. Ubuntu Forums (Studio threads, etc.), 
but all I'm getting there is a lot of noise and conjecture, not much 
authoritative help.

TIA for any wisdom, experience and/or helpful advice...
best regards,
   -- Lorin