Baslinux mailing list

["David Moberg" <davidjmoberg AT gmail.com>]

Ron Clarke wrote:
>
>    It works OK under X, for avi, mpg, wmv.
>
>    It also works, which is new, from the console, but only when run as root
> - sound and vision.  :)

It looks like there are not any major bugs.

> It did not run from the console when run as user until I changed the mplayer
> binary to set ID on execution,

-vo vesa and -vo svga (I think Sindi said that svga is default if you
don't specify anything) both require root permission - they directly
access the hardware and are unable to do that as an ordinary
user.

If you are in framebuffer mode, you should be able to use -vo fbdev
as user if user has permission to write to /dev/fb0.

Specify -vo caca if you want colour ASCII art display. That shouldn't
require any special permissions since it goes straight to the
terminal.

> I get the error message: cannot open /dev/dsp  permission denied (or words
> to that effect).  Yet it will play mp3s just fine from the commandline as
> user.
>
>    As it happens, I also cannot get the RealPlayer to make sound in X when
> run as user, either, which may indicate a system permission fault.  Any idea
> where that might be ?

It's probably /dev/dsp. You need to be able to write to /dev/dsp in
order to listen to anything. However, your mention of the fact that
mp3s play from the command line as user is interesting. Is your
mp3 player suid or does it perhaps send audio to /dev/audio
instead of /dev/dsp?

Please try '-ao sdl'. It might be a subtle bug in mplayer.

David