i downloaded and installed the rpm for synaesthesia visual plugin for xmms (i had to install libvga.s0.1 and libSDL first) and crashed my machine pretty quickly once i tried to enable it from the visual plugins menu. i can still run xmms as root, but as user it doesn't even bring up any windows before quitting. does anybody have any suggestions?

What Linux Distribution with version are you using? Also, list the kernel version number if possible. You can do this by typing on the command prompt:

uname -a

One reason that you can only root xmms as root is probably the file permission to you binary file for xmms is not set properly. Also, include what version of xmms you have. opps, probably missed it in the original post. This is the command I used with also shows the currently working directory of where the xmms binary is located.

$ pwd
/usr/bin
$ ls -l xmms*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1079145 Sep 2 2002 xmms
$

To read and change about file permissions, type the following.

$man chmod

In my case, the file permission setting is set to the following:

$chmod 755 xmms

This way, any user, not just root, can execute the file.

I'm inclined to guess that the plugin starts when you start xmms, so you need to rid yourself of that setting. in your home directory will be a directory called .xmms . Use the console or a file browser to remove that directory (back it up if you're keen) and start xmms again. You can do all of this as a standard login, since these are files you have access to (if you can't remove it as root, and start xmms again as a standard user)

Also might try deleting the configuration file for the affected user/users in their home directories

rm -rf /home/$username/.xmms

This has helped me a bunch in the past...

./GoodLuck

i removed the plugins files and everythings back to normal, thanks. of course i still have no idea what the problem/incompatibility was....
i'm using kde with mandrake 9.1, kernel 2.4.21-0.13 in case that could help single it out...i'm a sucker for eye candy so i thought synaesthesia would be cool