Baslinux mailing list

[Ron Clarke <ariadne AT earthlink.com.au>]

Hi Folks,

On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:09:57 -0800
"David Moberg" <davidjmoberg AT gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

   No, looks like a good performer so far.  I am using it primarily in BL21.
It runs just fine in X (as user), but no sound for movies when run from 
console.

   Under BL3x it is not a problem, because I haven't bothered with users 
there.

> 
> > 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.

   It uses svga when run from console.
Is it possible that the svga library is blocking the mplayer suid when run as 
user ?

   And the answer is:    YES !

   So, I edited user's profile to add "alias mplayer=mplayer -vo vesa"  and 
voila !  (or as the Frech say "there ya go !")   I have sound AND vision.

NOTE: editing the /user/.mplayer/config to include vo=vesa meant that trying 
to run that configuration under X resulted in a blank screen and complete 
keyboard lock-up that required a hard re-boot, so don't try this at home, 
folks.

   And my video card (Diamond Stealth 2 MB) is vesa 1.2 compliant.
 
> 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.

   I don't use frame buffer.

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

    What is that going to do to video ?
 
> > 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.

   Yes, that is so.   /dev/dsp  is  crw-rw-r--
and                   /dev/dsp1 is  crw-rw-rw-   for what it's worth. 

> 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?

   I play MP3s from the commandline using your mplayer.
It wasn't the sound part at all that was blocking the sound.

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

    That also failed until after I changes vo to vesa, and then it operated 
the same as vo=oss.

   But, your new mplayer is a winner !

Regards,
        Ron

-- 
Ron Clarke 
AUSREG Consultancy      http://www.ausreg.com
Tadpole Tunes           http://tadpole.mytunebook.de/
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