Warning: immensely long and follows what I did. Swear words included. I am not sure this will be of any help to anyone, but maybe it will.. many things said due to intense frustration and may not reflect my thoughts when I have a cooler head. Some of this may already be answered by threads here.. I will do more checking here later..

Diary of a man trying to watch a DVD on linux:

Downloaded Mandrake 9.1-- Playing a DVD is important.. surely they have made strides towards normal people being able to do it, right? Conquer the desktop and all that? I'll have no problems..

Click on Multimedia package selection.. that will work be all I need, right?
Installed..
Fire up Mandrake.. checked Multimedia tab.. just Xine.. hmm.. ok.. they must have perfected Xine, right.. so they didn't bother with the rest of them..
Fire up Xine. Crap it's one of those crap-tastic user interfaces that decides it has to look "new-age" and hide functions behind tiny little arbitrarily shaped buttons. Can't I just get a normal menu bar across the top??? Uh-oh.. I see little areas for DVB, CD, and VCD.. but no DVD.. crap.. put the DVD in the drive anyway, what the hell, right? Nope.. nothing. Wander through what menus I can find.. nothing useful. Are there any more menus? Who knows!? How can I tell which little craptastic gui thing is a button, and what isn't?! I'm probably missing something important..

I'm stuck.. time to get help from the web.

Google-- xine how to play dvd
Find-- Get your Linux box to Play DVD's
Looks promising.. oops 2002.. maybe it's still good.. he recommends Mplayer, but most of his instructions are about Xine. Xine is already installed.. I'll stick with it.. Mandrake chose it for a reason, right?

Following his directions.. cvs isn't installed on my computer? Hmm... lots of instructions involve CVSing stuff.. seems like core function. Install it through rpmdrake... uh-oh.. they've changed rpmdrake. It's easy enough to search for stuff to install, but tougher to search for stuff that's already on your computer.. :/
CVS installed.. still can't login to the cvs server for libcss.. something wrong with the server? Maybe there's an rpm for it.. mixing tar.gz and RPM seems to be something to avoid if possible.. Off to rpmfind.net!
Hmm.. they have something, but it's for PLD Linux.. I thought there were lots of mdk packages for everything last time I checked.. hmm.. times have changed?
Linux.com links are dead from the article.. go through their website to find linuxguru.net and the "Linux and DVD how-to!" Hmm... 2002 also.. anyway.. he's got a link for libdvdcss tarball there.. download install.. what? no gcc on my computer? Another core piece of software my package selection missed.. :/ rpmdraked gcc on.. installed libdvdcss..
rpmdraked libdvdread, dvdnav in as well (prefer to use rpm when I can)
ok.. he says I should be good to go..
Xine just stares at me when I put in the DVD and click on the DVD tab. What the hell am I doing wrong? Where's the menu to figure out what to do next? Is there some hidden button somewhere I'm supposed to press?!? WTF?!?!

Go back to more looking on the net..
Google-- xine how to play dvd mandrake
find "DVD playback problem on Xine (using Mandrake)"
hey! someone in my same boat.. uhoh.. advice is--
"Helpful hint -- to actaully play the DVD, you have to choose the right
crypto codec from a series of buttons on xine's GUI. Open the selector
menu and you'll see a list of garbled entries. Click the buttons on the
right (D5D, D4D, etc) until the entries change, then add all and play."
Crap!!!!!!!! What the hell is the "selector menu".. I can't find anything labeled selector menu..
hmm.. but there is a link that can help me! www.videolan.org/libdvdcss/
Their stuff is much newer.. I'll make uninstall the old stuff and make install the newer stuff. Newer is better, right?
Ok.. done.. launch Xine again.. hmm.. well.. Ok.. I hit DVD, and hit play.. instead of staring at me, I start getting green and multicolored gobbledy gook. ??? After a while of cursing, part of the screen resolves into something I recognize as parts of the menu. Hey!!! It's playing!!!!!!! Sorta.. It's playing like crap.

WTF! WTF! WTF! WTF! WTF! I bought this damn DVD player years ago and still can't do a damn thing with it!!!!! Why is Microsoft scared again? Why is this so hard?

Hmm.. should I try to tune and tweak Xine on the theory that that will let me actually _view_ the movie?? or install Mplayer, which was recommended by the first guy talking about watching DVD's on Linux.. If I remember correctly, lots of guys on Slashdot gush about Mplayer.. what the hell, I'll give it a try.. see if I have more success out of the box, as it were.

Now.. do I build from source, or try the mandrake packages to start from?

Hmm... I feel like a sucker for doing this, since Xine seems screwed up as it came from the Mandrake packages.. but what the hell.. I can always uninstall them, right? Why doesn't RPMdrake ever request disk 3 straight away? It always asks for one or two first, but doesn't actually seem to want anything from them.. :/
Ok RPMDrake failed.. WTF?!?!?! There was an error??
There was an ERROR?!?!? Goddamit? What error? It's your packages.. this is a pristine fucking system, except for the dvdcss stuff I just put in.. ok.. what the fuck.. let's make uninstall everything I've done so far.

Ok.. that was quick.. this is a new system.

Now RPMdrake says it's already installed.. Fucking great.. There was an error! Oh nevermind it's there. Nothing like starting out with a mysterious quirky setup.

Run MPlayer.. it starts up ok.. OH CRAP ON A STICK! Another craptastic "I'm a media player! I can't have a usable user interface-- Fuck NO!" user interface. This one doesn't even have mouseover help, it seems.. 8|
Hey!!!! Right clicking on the window gives me something resembling a sensible menu!!!!! YAHOOO!!!

Click play DVD Open.. getting a weird error.. "demux: file doesn't contain selected audio or video stream" Hmm.. I bet that means I need some CSS stuff. :/ I tried to go directly to a chapter.. and the thing seemed to lock up. :/ Been spinning my DVD rom for a while now. Xkilled it, but DVD still spinning.

Read the FAQ on Mplayerhq.hu and see something mentioned libmpdvdkit2, so I looked on my system for it.. can't find it.. :/ Did Mandrake give me a crippled version of Mplayer? That sucks.. go to software removal which is still open (it seems to be the only way to see if it's already installed, I guess..) search for mplayer.. not there.. hmm.. have to stop it and reinstall it. Crap.. it returns 3 packages. I think Rpmdrake installed 13 when I put it in.. are those cluttering packages going to screw with me installing Mplayer from source?

Hmm.. installing MPlayer from source.. instructions kinda cryptic.. when do I install the codecs? Before or after configure.. hmm.. it only mentions checking about a gui before compiling, so maybe codecs are after? Try a ./configure --enable-gui
No libpng?! How come Mandrake didn't give me libpng? Hmm.. maybe it's just the development version that is missing. I'll RPMdrake it.. Just ASK for Disk 3 if you want Disk 3!! I'm fucked.. It's saying all sorts of packages (about 15) that were already installed, and that caused an error. RPMDrake didn't say anything about what extra dependencies it would need.. why'd it try to install 15 extra packages.. usually it says, "I need to install these others too, ok?" or something like that. Fuck me. My Mandrake 9.1 installation is about 3 hours old and is already headed to the shitter.

Anyway, the ./configure command seems to be checking for codecs, so I'll look to installing them. Untarred some qt codecs I downloaded by following one of Mplayer's links.. how do I install these? There's nothing about it on the page with all the codecs... Ah! A README! Great, a zero byte file... cheeky bastards.

Untar another codec tarball.. no readme there either.. :/

I'll try FFmpeg.. it seems to have a ./configure script.. Check the README.. it says check the doc folder. Check the doc folder.. the faq and the doc files both seem to be about running it not installing it. go back and run ./configure.. great.. it is spewing all sorts of crap at me.. no altivec.h, parse error before "p", Imlib2.h is missing.. SDL.h is missing.. what the hell? Is this a screwed up tarball? Did Mandrake leave out something I wanted? Lots of "undeclared identifier" and similar crap coming out of that ./configure script.. that's too bad.. I hear great things about ffmpeg from the Slashdot postings. :/ Why do you have to get a fucking PhD in 15 different programs to get to watch a goddamn DVD on linux?! I used to think.. when I last tried DVD playback in Linux, it was a real pain in the ass, and I couldn't get it to work.. but these other Slashdot yahoos say it's easy.. maybe things have gotten better?? Apparently not.. What a fucking mess. Call me an idiot.. tell me I haven't read the docs well enough! But goddamit meet me half way! Playing a damn DVD in Linux is an obvious objective here.. why can't I find directions that tell me the cookbook steps of how to do this? Or at least, why can't I find any of those directions that WORK!?!?!?!?

Ugh.

fuck ffmpeg..
no wait... let's go to ffmpeg's site again.. see if I missed anything.
Nope.. it says version 0.4.6 is obsolete.. use the CVS snapshot.. I've got that. It's crap. Check the faq.. nothing in there that I see is pertinent. Yep.. I'm up a creek with ffmpeg.. no! Wait.. maybe there's a mdk rpm.. rpmfind! Hmm.. well, there's something from FreshRPMs that looks promising.. but it's not Mandrake.. Well.. I'm not particularly picky right now and I just want _something_ to go right.. I'll try it. Go with the .src.rpm. Ok.. now I need to RPMdrake rpm-build, spec-helper, and libtool, according to a website I checked. Great.. got another error on rpm-build.. stuff was already installed... WTF?! Hmm maybe rpmdrake doesn't recognize packages it just put in.. that's crazy.. I'll close it and reopen it from now on. Annoying. Hmm.. libtool not found.. wonder if it already was installed as a dependency earlier.. I'll try software removal to check. It's there.. good..

Now to: rpm --rebuild ffmpeg*.src.rpm
/usr/lib/rpm/rpmb: No such file or directory
WTF?!?!??!?!?!? .............. .................. ................... .................. ......................
I can't fucking believe this.. Why can't I do an rpm --rebuild?!?!?! Why can't I do a single GODDAM THING?!?!?!?! I try following the fucking directions on the fucking websites I find that seem pertinent! BUT NO!!! Everything is fucking missing, screwed up, unexplained, unfinished, not found, dead link---- GYAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Fucking A.. I love the idea of an operating system that's open source.. fighting the good fight against Microsoft.. giving me an alternative.. but .... seriously.. is it soooo sooo sooooo strange to want to watch a goddamn DVD in Linux?! Nobody else tries this? What am I doing wrong??? Why do I have all these problems? Holy crap this is an agonizing experience.. How can this be the state of our works?! I have contributed in small ways to a few small open source projects. In the past I have influenced my employer to buy open source software packages.. but can I continue to do so? How can I advocate their continued use when I have repeated experiences like this?

ugh.. ok.. let's google that error message and see if I get a lucky hit.. It seems that every piece of software I have touched has either been not installed, or fucked up, or what.. I don't know.. google.. help me out..

Ok.. found a link to linuxquestions.org--
"GT I.N.C
When trying to use RPM re-build i get this error..
Do you think i need a new version of rpm rebuild, or maybe i'm missing some libs?
Garry

markus1982
If you want to rebuild RPM's you need to have the rpm-build RPM-Package installed ... I assumed that and double checked it using
So install the rpm-build rpm-package and you are ready to go

GT I.N.C
Cool, thanks, it works fine, the thing is i thought i had it installed and it didn't appear in Mandrakes sotware manager as NOT installed, well i downloaded it and installed it from there...thanks again

markus1982
Never trust a software manager
"
WHAT?!?!??!!?!??!?!??!??!??!?!?!??!???!!??!?!??!?!??!???!?!?
WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? You have got to be kidding me.. Oh crap.. Gentoo help me.. please tell me this shit doesn't happen with Gentoo or Sourceror or whatever.. Hmm.. maybe last time I got errors, RPMdrake didn't finish installing. The other time it had errors, but it had installed it anyway.. How the fuck am I supposed to know the difference?

ok.. rpm-rebuild worked.. well it failed on dependencies, but it worked.. I need imlib2, SDL-devel, freetype-devel.. crap.. crap.. crap... crap... That's about 10 more programs I now need to get a PhD in before I can get back to square -58 in my progress towards playing a fucking DVD on my linux box.

I'm an idiot, but let's check RPMdrake for imlib2, etc. Ok.. it's got it.. Damn.. I really need to copy these cd's onto the hard drive so I don't have to keep swapping fucking cd's every two seconds. Imlib2 done.. now for SDL-devel.. crap.. no SDL-devel.. I hope libSDL-devel is ok. Seems to be.. got Freetype installed.. now it comes to Lame-devel... it's not in RPMdrakes database.. :/ skip it for now.. libogg-devel? Ok.. libvorbis-devel? Ok. faad2-devel? Nope.. nothing faad.. :/ skipping.. a52dev-devel? seems good..
Now I just need lame-devel and faad2-devel.. shall I hit rpm-find again and see what new cascade of dependencies I don't have?

Found faad2.. another Freshrpms source rpm.. lather rinse repeat! Excellent.. more failed dependencies.. libsndfile-devel, xmms-devel, and id3lib-devel. I wonder how many of them rpmdrake won't have. Another chain of diving deeper and deeper into dependencies.. I've backed about 130 steps back from my goal of watching a DVD. I'm now working to install some anonymous dependency of a dependency, id3lib... obvious that I would need such a thing for watching a DVD in Mplayer. :/

Ok.. got libsndfile-devel.. got xmms-devel.. got id3lib-devel.. good to go right? WRONG!! I installed id3lib-devel, (well libid3lib3.8_2-devel-3.8.2-2mdk anyway).. but
rpm -rebuild ./faad2-1.1-fr2.20030409.src.rpm
still tells me:
id3lib-devel is needed by faad2-1.1-fr2.20030409
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hmm.. time to punt on Mplayer..

Linuxquestions.org seems to say ogle is the easiest to setup for mandrake.. here goes nothing.. rpmdrake ogle.. Nothing... muthafugga! holy crap.. here we go again.. gotta love going through this and seeing quotes like "Easiest to setup and just 'work' probably Ogle." and "I perfer MPlayer myself, it was a breeze to setup and I had no problems getting it to work"

Browsing around Linuxquestions.org I find mention of the Penguin Liberation Front... I remember these guys.. their stuff was pretty cool.. Hey.. I'll see if I can get things done with them! Maybe it can be easy after all! :|

I'll try mplayer again.. everyone loves that.. followed their urpmi instructions to get access to the PLF stuff. Will it "just work" now? I doubt it.. Still I hold great hope for the PLF.. the eternal hope that someone, somewhere has things straightened out.

Ahh.. crap.. rpmdrake reported tons of problems.. this isn't looking good.. let's see if it's there. Nope.. no mplayer in the multimedia tab.. check command line? Nope.. not there either.. X<

Well.. there seemed to be conflicts between plf files and mdk files.. try rpmdrake again making sure not to select excess mdk files.. this may yet work..
That must be the delirium talking.

Heheh... still doesn't work.. says there is conflict with another mplayer installation. Software removal says there's nothing.

Damn it all to hell.

I feel your pain, but I think that was one of the funniest rants I've ever read.

LOL, that sounds like me a few days ago. I stuck with Xine though on RH 9.

Pretty funny. There are 2 reasons why i use mandrake. The PLF rpm's and urpmi. That's about it.

plf always trumps mdk when you are installing- something to remember. And if you aren't seeing your packages, do a updatedb/slocate -u as root.

Here's a hint. Install css1/2. Install anything from plf source that says mplayer. You are done.

And this isn't a technical issue. It's a legal one, so that's why the hoops are there and not documented. CSS is legal limbo now. Which is the crux of what you are trying to occomplish whether you realize it or not.

After you apply this, go to http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/documentation.html#gui. Don't forget to download a skin. Also you want to take a look at: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/cd-dvd.html
I think region free DVD drives maybe easier to setup than DVD drives that have to set the region. Finding region free DVD drives are very hard to get these days.

You may want to try Kpackage. You can remove the package without effecting other packages. Also you can install a package with out checking for dependencies.

Like any CD discs, make sure they are clean before putting them in the drive.

BTW, you should be a comedian.

I use xine on Slackware no problems with DVD support

I'm glad you guys could appreciate my diatribe in good humor. I hoped it would be received thusly. The diary continues..

Day the second of a man who wants to watch a DVD on Mandrake 9.1.
Decided to start clean.. fresh re-install.. no corruption from before.. tabula rosa.

Let's start with something ultra, ULTRA simple. Let's play a CD.
Put CD in the drive and wait for something to happen... nothing happens. Click the CD-ROM item on the desktop.. Konqueror pops up and informs me "could not enter /mnt/cdrom".. hmm.. no autodetect? Or did I not notice the autodetect. I guess I spend too much time with Windows at work. I've got 2 coworkers interested in Linux since they played the free game "Clanbomber" on one of the linux boxes I had set up for a certain task. I have not mentioned to them my recent experiences with Linux's user friendliness. When they ask me whether Linux is a worthy operating system, I make non-commital noises.

Ok.. go to the Multimedia thingy in KDE's start menu.. Sound.. KsCD.. seems right.. Press play.. nothing... no sound. Now dagnabbit, in the summary screen during setup, I sure as hell saw that it knew I had a sound card and seemed to know what to do with it! Just played a CD the other day in windows-- the hardware works.. hmm... Never have sound problems in Live for Speed on windows (monstrously good driving game, with a hideously bad licensing scheme).

Hmm.. time to go to what? configuration? Configuration|KDE|Audio CD's.. nothing seems appropriate there. KDE|Sound system? Hmm.. aRts soundserver on KDE startup.. well? Hit Test Sound. Nothing. :/ Hmm.. just did Mandrake first time.. maybe KDE startup was futzed up by doing that? Changed the message level to debug. Try logging out and back in..

Hmm.. got:
Sound server warning message:
Can't set real-time scheduling priority.
You need to run artswrapper as root or
setuid root. This means that you will
likely not be able to produce acceptable
sound (i.e. without clicks and breaks).

Grrreeaaatt... this is the way Mandrake sets up the computer? The great thing about a tabula rosa system freshly installed is that you can't really be blamed for anything that doesn't make sense... Bring up KsCD again, and still nothing. 8|

Wow.. I haven't even gotten to step 0 in my quest to watch a DVD on Mandrake 9.1 and already I'm screwed. I'm in the lovely fucking position of googling or linuxquestioning for "sound problem mandrake 9.1".. real nice and specific, right? I'll quickly be able to find pertinent information, yup, yup. Hmm.. not bad, Google found me a link right away to linux questions that says I need to turn up the volume in Kmix first thing... sure.. great way to set up default sound for the newbie-friendly distribution.. Hey!! I screwed around with the Kmix and now that "Test Sound" button works.. but the CD still doesn't make noise.. I wonder if I have to have that cable attached to the sound card.. :/ I hate having that cable always in the way of the component I need to get to. Hmm.. now I have static on my speakers that seems somehow in synch when I type or move or highlight something with the mouse... :/ some sort of patch for vision impaired? Ahh.. had unmuted the microphone while screwing with Kmix.. fixed it, I think.

I wonder how I can make my CD play music via the data cable instead of that annoying sound cable.. Hmm.. according to this http://www.jennings.homelinux.net/audio_cd.html I SOL with KsCD without that damn cable running from the top front of my box to the bottom back.. WTF? I must be a cretin to take the slight performance hit of going through my motherboard just so I don't have a "HAHA! In your way AGAIN!!!" cable to alway futz with whenever I open the box.. Hmm... which of my two CDROM drives do I attach to the sound card??? Highly polished. Screw it.. I can't find the deep dark hole I threw those cables down. It says XMMS will work.. let's see.. hmm.. starting the "install from your mandrake disks" routine, eh? I played the feed me this, that, and the other disk all day yesterday.. I'm going to put them on the harddrive (I've got the space right now), and then do the URPMI changes to make it work.. at the same time, I'll hit up Penguin Liberation Front's Easy URPMI and do those too at the same time. I think I'm so clever. It's all just setting myself up for a great fall later. You might wonder what Humpty Dumpty was doing up on the wall.. I think he was trying to read DVD's in Mandrake.

Ok.. so I need to urpmi.addmedia my stuff I just copied.. but do I need to removemedia for the CDROMs to keep it from asking for them.. hmm.. maybe I should do a urpmi.removemedia -a first? Hmm.. can't get my first disk out! Apparently the autoloader isn't unloading.. where the hell am I supposed to find an "eject" command??? C'mon.. nobody is active in those directories! WTF? Ok.. it just let go.. suddenly after me pushing the button once every 5 seconds for a good 20 seconds.. :| Why is Konqueror so slow to show me the /mnt directory, I wonder?

Copying disk 1 to HDD, disk 3 is already done.. let's see if I can urpmi.addmedia disk 3's stuff.. am I smart enough to follow a manpage? _SEEMED_ to work.. Hmm.. disk 1 was easier to eject than disk 3.. wonder what the computer was doing before. While I'm copying disk2, I'll urpmi.addmedia disk1.. this is going well.. TOO well.. hmm.. I'm suspicious. Now to urpmi.addmedia PLF's stuff..

I did not select the "Main" section to be urpmi.addmedia'ed onto my computer, because that's what I just copied to disk, right? Of course I may kick myself later when I need those few gig back and have to take another look at urpmi.addmedia and urpmi.removemedia... but hey.. I went ahead and put in contrib and updates.. but I'm thinking I didn't really want to do contrib either.. hmm.. oh well.. maybe I just screwed myself. We'll see.

Once this is done, I can do the xmms-cdread that the aforementioned page advises.. so I can listen to CD's in linux.. Truth to tell, I don't listen to CD's that often, and usually used Xmms in the past anyway. Ok.. package installed successfully.. time to go to XMMS, enable the plugin, and listen to an audio CD. Crap.. XMMS's "SCREW USABILITY" gui.. where do I find the configuration stuff?? "Options>Preferences>Audio I/O Plugins".. yeah.. where's Options? Oh yeah.. right clicking.. gotta remember that.. HEY!! It actually worked..

Ok.. back to getting DVD's working.. let's check people's suggestions in the thread I put out there yesterday. Install css1 and css2.. hmm... worked.. this is really spooky.. Next he says install anything from plf that says mplayer... I'll avoid anything with mdk.. let the plfs do whatever dependencies they need on their own. mplayer-0.90-12plf.. mplayer-fonts-1.0-3plf.. mplayer-gui-0.90-12plf.. that also checked mplayer-skins-1.3-4mdk.. hmm.. I think that's where trouble might have been before. A whole bevy of other packages were also dependencied in.. hmm.. moment of truth.. to hit the install button.. the anticipation is building.. ok.. I'm going to click it now.. yep.. now... here goes... 8.

Downloading.. I feel a bit like an idiot being wholly dependent on packages.. but building from source mixed with packages so often seems like a huge nightmare.. it makes me have dreams of going to Gentoo.. but then I'm still dealing with someone else's packaging, really.. Building from source.. sounds so.. pure.. so simple.. but it gets so ugly with dependencies over half the time I try it. Discouraging..


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!No problems?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Damn pigs flying all over the place here.. I'm happy so far.. time to eject the CD I've been listening to and put in the DVD.. can I really be so foolish as to think it might "just work" after all my experiences so far?

Uh-oh! I see a picture! no sound yet.. but.. ok.. I've got some crappy voice over.. probably a problem with the audio track it's picking up.. but I see a picture, and it's clear!!!! Hot DAMN! I've got the director's comments instead of the real soundtrack, but it's a damn good start! Found something in the DVD settings.. changed the audio track.. got the subtitles! got the audio track! ROCK ON! Absolutely fabulous..

I am truly ecstatic!!!!

Of course the main thing I take away from this is that the package system is still capable of leading you into major crapsville. Yesterday I tried the same package installation thing as I did last night.. but last night some of the packages I installed and then tried to uninstall (mandrake mplayer packages).. those packages left dependency crap all over my system.. that dependency crap was then screwing me over when I tried to put in some working packages.. I wonder how I should have dealt with them.. for now it's just time to continue watching my DVD...

Many thanks to Linuxquestions.org, to the Penguin Liberation Front, and to Thoreau... My false confidence in my linux skills has been slightly restored.