problems playing DVDs in xine
 

When I hit the dvd button i get the following:

libdvdnav: Using dvdnav version 1-beta12 from http://xine.sf.net
libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.7 for DVD access
libdvdread: Could not open /dev/dvd with libdvdcss.
libdvdread: Can't open /dev/dvd for reading
libdvdnav: vm: faild to open/read the DVD

I've installed dvdnav, dvdread, and dvdcss alright...
But I'm unclear (at best) on the whole symbolic link thing... I tried to make one, but could someone maybe explain to me what it actually does?

Thanks! :newbie:

Sure! Assuming your DVD is /dev/hdc you'd symlink like so:
ln -sf /dev/hdc /dev/dvd
This must be done as root. Be careful when doing this, you don't wanna overwrite any existing REAL device. To find out what device your DVD is (assuming it opens with an 'eject /dev/cdrom') you can:
ls -l /dev/cdrom
And see where it's pointing to (as /dev/cdrom is also simply a symlink to the actual device). Then use that in place of hdc in my above example.

Cool

Re: problems playing DVDs in xine
 

There's heated discussions on exactly how symlinks work and what reads what, and when removing something what happens... but here's a generalized explaination:

A symlink is a shortcut to the actual file (all things in linux are files. Devices, directories, these are all files..). That's it. It tells whatever is looking at the symlink where the actual file is. It's easy to generically point to /dev/cdrom and write an application to do so, then it's up to the distro (or user) to correctly setup /dev/cdrom to the correct device. It's an excellent idea and works very well for such things as DVD playing where the system figures out which device is the DVD and all the application has to worry about is pointing to the /dev/dvd and playing it.

:)

Cool

okay, i thik i got it now... trying to eject /dev/dvd.... please standby...
YEAH!!!!!!!!!!! MASTERC IS GOD!!!!!!
all i think i missed is the "f" from -sf...
ahhh, its been a good linux day for me...
irst i succesfully mount my second harddrive (had trouble with getting the filesystem... then i mount my cdrom, then burn my first cdrom... now i'm watching my gladiator dvd!!!
one more thing... i used to have gxine installed, buti didn't like it and switched over to xine-ui... when i do run command "xine" it opens up gxine, but when i type xone in the console it opens up xine-ui... i tried typing xine-ui in the run command, but it doesn't do anything... any suggestions?

Sorry, not from me anyway. I use mplayer. But you might look at your menu entries, or possibly what you have associated in your Control Center (File Assocations) with movie files, that might (probably not) have something to do with it.

Glad I could help :)

Cool