The mplayer install seems to be working. One noticable problem so far. When launched from cli, or trying to use mencoder, it complains about libtheora.
mplayer: /usr/lib/libtheora.so.0: no version information available (required bymplayer)

mplayer: /usr/lib/libtheora.so.0: no version information available (required by/usr/lib/libavcodec.so.51)

This codecs.conf is too old and incompatible with this MPlayer release! at line6

Usr lib has /usr/lib/libtheora.so.0 /usr/lib/libtheora.so.0.0.0
Apt says installed version is 1.0alpha3-0.0

Any ideas what should be done to solve this?

Hi

Since this is a dependency of libavcodec, you might try reinstalling libavcodec with the newest version to include all of the newest codecs. Had a similar problem in a different distro, and that is what worked for me.

Hope this helps,

Bob

Thanks Bob. That seems reasonable.
Unfortunately I have managed to kill the xserver in the meantime. I have met a very bad system administrator, and he is me.