man/pulse-daemon.conf.5.xml.in

@@ -326,7 +326,8 @@ License along with PulseAudio; if not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
       session, then any positive value will be reset to 0 so that PulseAudio
       will terminate immediately on logout. A positive value therefore has
       effect only in environments where there's no support for login session
-      tracking. A negative value can still be used to disable any automatic
+      tracking (or if the user is logged in without a session spawned, a.k.a.
+      lingering). A negative value can still be used to disable any automatic
       exit.</p>
 
       <p>When PulseAudio runs in the system mode, automatic exit is always

man/pulseaudio.1.xml.in

@@ -212,8 +212,9 @@ License along with PulseAudio; if not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
         session, then any positive value will be reset to 0 so that PulseAudio
         will terminate immediately on logout. A positive value therefore has
         effect only in environments where there's no support for login session
-        tracking. A negative value can still be used to disable any automatic
-        exit.</p>
+        tracking (or if the user is logged in without a session spawned,
+        a.k.a. lingering). A negative value can still be used to disable any
+        automatic exit.</p>
 
         <p>When PulseAudio runs in the system mode, automatic exit is always
         disabled, so this option does nothing.</p>

src/daemon/main.c

@@ -1067,6 +1067,10 @@ int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
     c->server_type = conf->local_server_type;
 #endif
 
+    pa_core_check_idle(c);
+
+    c->state = PA_CORE_RUNNING;
+
     pa_cpu_init(&c->cpu_info);
 
     pa_assert_se(pa_signal_init(pa_mainloop_get_api(mainloop)) == 0);

src/pulsecore/core.c

@@ -159,10 +159,6 @@ pa_core* pa_core_new(pa_mainloop_api *m, bool shared, bool enable_memfd, size_t
     pa_check_signal_is_blocked(SIGPIPE);
 #endif
 
-    pa_core_check_idle(c);
-
-    c->state = PA_CORE_RUNNING;
-
     return c;
 }