Slackware 9.1 came with a video player called Xine. I tried to run that, and it was complaining about permission rights, and had an error with reguards to "is the dvd in the drive" I tried again, this time under a root access,and same problem with permissions.

I did a web search and found video player called Mplayer, however they dont have a slackware package to install it.

Any ideas whats going on with Xine, or should I just ditch it, and try to get Mplayer installed.

Slackware 9.1 will not play dvd's out of the box. There is a list of other packages you need to get and install first in order to get a dvd to work in any media player on linux. I used Ogle and it worked after I installed a bunch of other stuff but so did Xine after i installed the other stuff for Ogle. I'm at work...but there is at least 3 or 4 other packages you need to install and i don't know exactly what they are right now.

I think.........

libdvd read
libdvdcvs (or something)
dvdnav

there's a couple more..... O and a package from the Mplayer website. The Windows lib. You need that too.

Edit** Go into /dev/ and look for a file (it's not a file, but a device) " sg0 ".

Right click that and change the permissions. There are command lines you can use....like " chmod 666 /dev/sg0 " . That might do it for the permissions.
It might not be "sg0" so, right click the dvd link in /dev/ and see where it points, and then just edit the chmod command to suit your needs. But even after that, i think you still need a couple more packages to get it to work.

Hi,

i've recently installed slackware 9.1 to a friend. He reported me the same problems described in this post with xine.

I was surprised as I had tested my installation with a dvd (but have never watched one since then) & it had worked.

So i tried again on my pc & got the same problems too. But when I run the dvd i tried the first time (Casino - Scorsese - Universal -zone 2) it's ok , i can watch it !!

I 've downloaded Ogle but i'm curious to know why xine runs this single dvd & not the others?

thanks for your suggestions.

Go to the xine website and get the appropriate applications:
libdvdread, libdvdnav, libdvdcss (this last is not on the xine site but you can find it in the links). You can also get the win32 codecs if you want to use xine for more than DVDs. Install the various libs (read the READMEs). Win32 codec usually goes in /usr/lib and once it is installed, start xine, go to configuration (or preferences, I don't remember) and under the "Codecs" tab make sure the path to the win32 codecs is there and correct.

Next, go to the terminal /command line. If you just have a DVD it is probably /dev/hdc, if you have a DVD player and a CD writer then usually the DVD is /dev/hdd and the CD writer is /dev/hdc. To check this do a "ls -l /dev/dvd"; this will give you some permissions data and probably a link to the actual drive. If this is to /dev/hdd (or /dev/hdc) then make sure that the permissions are a+rw on the device (hdd) and the link (dvd). It may well be to /dev/sr0 or /dev/sg0. Assuming you don't have a SCSI DVD this is pointing to the wrong drive. As root, do a "rm /dev/dvd" (don't worry this is only the linkage) and then a "ln -s /dev/dvd /dev/hdd" (or hdc depending). This makes a new link from the actual drive to the device "DVD". Again, make sure permissions are a+rw (everyone can read and write to the device) and you should be good to go.

Good Luck
Alan

or just install mplayer which has no external dependencies

hi,

thanks for your answers.

I installed the xine needed librairies, give the dev access rights and it works !

I tried mplayer too...but it's not very user-friendly!