Debian Sarge and Mplayer
 

I have installed mplayer from the source and with apt. Nothing seems to work. When I click on it from the menu it comes up with the window on the task bar and then nothing. I have run it from the cli and get "Segmentation fault". I have searched high and lo. Nothing. I can't figure it out. I have had mplayer working on this comp fine before. Not sure that the issue is now. The only compile message i saw was something about a pointer. Not sure. But that's weird getting the same error using both methods. What could be the issue? I am at a loss.

So you installed from source? Hmmm, I don't think I could help with that, sounds like a coding error, or a codec with a problem. Also there could be a download error.

There is a repository for mplayer, which will have it all set up properly. remove what you have installed then add

deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ testing main

to your /etc/apt/sources.list, then

apt-get update
apt-get install mplayer-386 ( or 586 ,k6, k7, nogui )

also install the codecs, theirs more info at the site.

not to be rude but if you read I have installed from both and got the same error. the codecs are in the right place.

Well, I compile MPlayer myself too. I don't know if it will solve your problem, but it's worth to try it. Download the MPlayer CVS snapshot (that's the version I use, I usually compile and install it every 2 weeks) and use this line to compile it and create a Debian package (you have to change the directories to those where your codecs are stored):

DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="--disable-runtime-cpudetection --enable-gui --with-win32libdir=/usr/local/lib/codecs --with-reallibdir=/usr/local/lib/codecs --with-extralibdir=/usr/local/lib/codecs" fakeroot debian/rules binary

It will build a Debian package which you can install with dpkg.

Good luck.

any good howtos on building deb packes. So far I am getting the "unsatisfied dependcies" error. Anyone else out there?

Here is a Howto for building an MPlayer Debian package from the MPlayer source. I think you need to install the 'fakeroot' and 'debhelper' packages.

Good luck.