Well, this seems very goofy. I reformatted my hard drive on this machine the other day and reinstalled a fresh coating of red hat 8. I installed everything. (no, that's not the goofy part. )

Today I deleted all references to the defaulted mozilla 1.0.1 that comes with RH8. That included deleting everything that came up with 'rpm -qa | grep mozilla' and the '.mozilla' directories and almost everything that had the string 'mozilla' in it, except for a few .png files. Clean as a whistle. I felt so refreshed.

Then I installed mozilla-1.4 with the mozilla-installer. Then I downloaded and installed apt-get and synaptic. Cool, this is looking promising. Then I decided to install mplayer via synaptic. Once I said proceed, I noticed 3 of the 'dependencies' it started downloading and installing included some mozilla-stuffgoeshere-1.0.2-2.8.0 packages. I thought that was strange. When it was all done, my attempt to install mplayer also installed that ancient version of mozilla.

How goofy is that?

(Note: This is my first real foray into apt-get land.)

So, now I install the mplayerplug-in rpm, and where does it install. It installs to mozilla-1.0.2, not 1-4.

I know that I can read up on 4 or 5 documents and search through a bunch of threads and create links and move files around and stand on one leg while balancing my red hat 8 bible on my head to make this all work, but it just seems goofy that mplayer couldn't figure out that I had a newer version of mozilla installed and then stupidly installed that older version.

regards...

I think it's not mplayer that could not see you have a newer Mozilla. It's apt-get and synaptic that not always have the latest stuff out. So probably they installed what was available instead. Perhaps, if you compile mplayer yourself, you could specify that a new mozilla is installed and specify it's path. Although, if this is possible (I'm just guessing) it won't be at their (mplayer) docs, as most of the stuff ain't there

Ok, that may be the problem. I think I'll go back in and delete all occurrences of mozilla and mplayer and then stay away from apt-get, and synaptic, and rpm's. I'll go for the site downloads and tar balls and mud pies.

Thanks...

Dang, how did I get distracted back over here anyway? I was happily working on an LFS project on my slackware box.

Oh, yeah, I was just trying to view a couple of test .avi's I put on my web page. I'll just use the mozilla on my w2k machine. That just works.

hehe I love apt-get and synaptic. I think it's the best thing to do if you want to stick with rpm's. Nothing beats a very well compile program though Slack4ever

If you put this entry in your /etc/apt/sources.list file

rpm http://apt.sw.be redhat/9/en/i386 dag

you will get the very latest

mozilla-1.4-2.dag.rh90

rpm installed

(and a lot of other very hot and fresh rpms).

The problem is not apt-get and synaptic, is the apt repositories that you are telling it that it can use.

Thanks Corin.

That made a difference.

So, how about mplayer? I have a couple of test videos I created with my web cam on my w2k macine. When I try to play them with mplayer, all I get is sound. No visual. The videos play ok with Windows media player from Mozilla on my W2K machine.

I installed mozilla-mplayer and mplayer via synaptic from that apt.sw.be repository. Apparently there is some other codec file or something I need to load from some place else, eh? I'll take a look at that mplayerhq.hu site.

Thanks...

Ok, that was from clicking on a link in a web page.

When I run it from the command line, I get this: (stand back)

[bsl1@localhost download]$ mplayer video7.avi
Using GNU internationalization
Original domain: messages
Original dirname: /usr/share/locale
Current domain: mplayer
Current dirname: /usr/share/locale


MPlayer 0.90rc5-3.2 (C) 2000-2003 Arpad Gereoffy (see DOCS)

CPU: Intel Celeron 2/Pentium III Coppermine,Geyserville (Family: 6, Stepping: 6)
Detected cache-line size is 32 bytes
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0
Reading config file /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf: No such file or directory
Reading config file /home/bsl1/.mplayer/config
Reading /home/bsl1/.mplayer/codecs.conf: can't open '/home/bsl1/.mplayer/codecs.conf': No such file or directory
Reading /etc/mplayer/codecs.conf: 50 audio & 136 video codecs
font: can't open file: /home/bsl1/.mplayer/font/font.desc
Font /usr/share/mplayer/font/font.desc loaded successfully! (206 chars)
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.
Using usleep() timing
Can't open input config file /home/bsl1/.mplayer/input.conf : No such file or directory
Can't open input config file /etc/mplayer/input.conf : No such file or directory
Falling back on default (hardcoded) input config
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: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support.
You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing video7.avi
AVI file format detected.
VIDEO: [IV50] 320x240 24bpp 30.14 fps 741.1 kbps (90.5 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [pcm] Uncompressed PCM audio decoder
AUDIO: 22050 Hz, 1 ch, 8 bit (0x8), ratio: 22050->22050 (176.4 kbit)
Selected audio codec: [pcm] afmcm (Uncompressed PCM)
==========================================================================
open: No such file or directory
vo_mga: Couldn't open /dev/mga_vid
open: No such file or directory
vo_mga: Couldn't open /dev/mga_vid
vo: X11 running at 1152x864 with depth 16 and 16 bpp (":0" => local display)
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [dshow] DirectShow video codecs
Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: ir50_32.dll, /usr/lib/win32/ir50_32.dll, /usr/local/lib/win32/ir50_32.dll
Warning: DS_Filter() could not open DirectShow DLL. (DLL=ir50_32.dll, r=0x140)
Failed to create DirectShow filter
ERROR: Could not open required DirectShow codec ir50_32.dll.
Maybe you forget to upgrade your win32 codecs?? It's time to download the new
package from: ftp://mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/w32codec.tar.bz2!
VDecoder init failed
Opening video decoder: [vfwex] Win32/VfWex video codecs
Loading codec DLL: 'ir50_32.dll'
Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: ir50_32.dll, /usr/lib/win32/ir50_32.dll, /usr/local/lib/win32/ir50_32.dll
Can't open library ir50_32.dll
ICOpen failed! unknown codec / wrong parameters?
VDecoder init failed
*** Try to upgrade /home/bsl1/.mplayer/codecs.conf from etc/codecs.conf
*** If it still does not work, read DOCS/codecs.html!
Cannot find codec matching selected -vo and video format 0x30355649.
==========================================================================
Checking audio filter chain for 22050Hz/1ch/8bit -> 22050Hz/2ch/8bit...
AF_pre: af format: 1 bps, 1 ch, 22050 hz, little endian unsigned int
AF_pre: 22050Hz 1ch Unsigned 8-bit
AO: [oss] 22050Hz 2ch Unsigned 8-bit (1 bps)
Building audio filter chain for 22050Hz/1ch/8bit -> 22050Hz/2ch/8bit...
Video: no video
Starting playback...
A: 4.7 0.1% 0%

Exiting... (End of file)
[bsl1@localhost download]$


Dang, I just wanted to watch a simple avi...
Well, off to find some documentation to figure out how to not worry about remote controls and joysticks and how to get wincodecs and DirectShow stuff... I would think that mplayer would give you at least just the basic capability to view an avi file.

Well, finally.

I looked at the mplayer documentation at the mplayerhq.hu site, and discovered that you need a phD in codec-ology to understand the stuff I found there, I did a mind numbing search here and never found a definite answer to what I needed to do, but did discover that it looked like I needed to move the files in the win32codecs directory, created by the tar command, to a /usr/lib/win32 directory that I had to manually create. That did it.

mplayer installation SUCKS!!!! Can I get an AMEN !?!?