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mplayer command-line error

Hello,

I have some very strange errors with mplayer.
I use SuSE 9.3 and I have installed mplayer from the packman installation source.
I use MPlayer-1.0pre7-pm.2

So here is the thing: when I try to launch an .avi file using the file manager (konqueror), I right-click on the movie, choose "open with -> mplayer". The movie opens and plays fine.

But when I try to launch it from the terminal, I get this error:

Code:

[19:28:33] movies> mplayer mymovie.avi &

[1] 11854

[19:38:07] movies> MPlayer 1.0pre7-SUSE-9.3-i686-Packman-3.3.5 (C) 2000-2005 MPlayer Team

CPU: Intel Pentium 4/Xeon/Celeron Foster (Family: 8, Stepping: 9)

Detected cache-line size is 64 bytes

CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1

Compiled with runtime CPU detection - WARNING - this is not optimal!

To get best performance, recompile MPlayer with --disable-runtime-cpudetection.





Failed to open /dev/rtc: Permission denied (it should be readable by the user.)

Opening joystick device /dev/input/js0

Can't open joystick device /dev/input/js0 : No such device

Can't init input joystick

Setting up LIRC support...

mplayer: could not connect to socket

mplayer: Permission denied

Failed to open LIRC support.

You will not be able to use your remote control.

I have tried to change the permissions on /dev/rtc, but then I got this error:

Code:

Linux RTC init error in ioctl (rtc_irqp_set 1024): Permission denied

Try adding "echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq" to your system startup scripts.

(and the same error as above about the joystick)

So then I tried to do the echo 1024 thing, and I still get the error about the joystick and all the errors that come afterwards (see first "code section" here above). And mplayer will not start. It is very strange. Does anyone have a good suggestion? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Benjamin

PS: by the way, I do not have a joystick.

These are more like warnings, instead of errors. They won´t prevent you form watching video.
Basically, your user can´t open the real time clock (rtc) driver. Mplayer uses it for smooth video. I had a similar issue in debian using my tv card, which asked for the exact same setup. Also, the need for setting tvtime as setuid root is for using the rtc device.

Nevermind the joystick thing. If you don´t have one, this warning will always appear.

If this yields 64, you have to edit the startup scripts, as suse says, and change it to 1024:
cat /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq

Just changing for this session won´t work, as it is reset after reboot.

What I did was insert the 'echo 1024 > /proc/etc etc...' thing into my start up scripts.

I guess setuid root mplayer will work as well, but has security issues.

Hello Bruno,

Thank you for your answer. As I said in my first post, I have changed the max-user-freq allready.
The warning about the joystick still appears (Which I don't mind if you say it's ok).
But the thing that I really do mind is that mplayer does not start. And that's really bad.

Besides that, I could add that when I try to start the movie using the command "gmplayer", the gui of mplayer appears, but if freezes immediately and the movie does not start. It is strange beacause it seems like gmplayer is just a link to mplayer, as shown in the code below. Am I wrong?

Code:

[09:06:46] ~> which gmplayer

/usr/bin/gmplayer

[09:06:53] ~> ls -l /usr/bin/gmplayer

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 7 2005-07-20 19:02 /usr/bin/gmplayer -> mplayer

[09:07:01] ~> which mplayer

/usr/bin/mplayer

How comes executing the commands gmplayer and mplayer do give different results. Any idea?

Thank you.
Benjamin

Hmmm... that´s interesting... Is gmplayer a mplayer frontend for gnome? I have mplayer and kplayer, as I use kde, but I never tried to figure what happens benhind the scenes. When I get home later I´ll try to find this out, ok? I´m on a win computer right now.

BY the way: when I installed mplayer, there were several diff versions, mplayer-586, mplayer-686, mplayer-k7, mplayer-nogui... I tried all of them, and the one that worked the best was mplayer-nogui. Others had fullscreen issues, or optimization issues. I was using it without frontend, until the other week, when I installed kplayer. But I seem to be kinda lazy to change that habit...

Anyway, can you still launch the movie through konqueror? Do you need to launch the movie through the cli for some reason, or are you trying to figure out something?

Thank you again for your answer.

I am really clueless about what gmplayer is. It seems to be just a link to mplayer, but the two commands have different behaviour.

I would like to run mplayer through the command line because I would like to use the argument -sub or -vobsub. I am trying to run a movie with subtitles that are in vobsub format. I have tried to open the subtitles using the gui of mplayer, but they just did not show up. Subtitles in text format (.srt or .sub) work fine, but sometimes, you get them in vobsub format and running it through an OCR is very time-consuming and not very reliable. Xine seems not to support vobsub subtitles. But I will give a try to kplayer (thank you for the hint).

Regards,

Benjamin

Well, kplayer works fine, but it does not support vobsub subtitles... :(