Hi: I have this file:
-rwxrwxrwx 1 semoi users 36M 2011-10-10 00:09 /hdaal/.../01.\ Kyrie\ -\ Gloria.flac*

This file is succesfully played by mplayer and play (sox) from semoi's text console (VTn, n = 1,2,...). If now semoi runs startx from some text console and, from the DE invokes Audacious and tells him to play the file, Audacious outputs this message:

Unable to play files.

The following files could not be played. Please check that:
1. they are accessible.
2. you have enabled the media plugins required.

It's true that originally the owners were root (user) and root (group) and I unmounted /hdaal, and modified its corresponding line from blank space in the fourth field (fs_mntops) to the following fourth field:

defaults, uid=1000, gid=100,

which are the numbers appearing in /etc/passwd for semoi:users. And then remounted: same result. I cp the file to ~/ (permissions and owners remained as shown in ls output above) and reran Audacious: same result.

The last test was to run the play command, from the GUI, on the file. The result was success.

QUESTION: PLUGINS.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If I only new what the necessary plugins are, it would be a first step aahead. I regret to say I do not.

What can possibly be the reason why Audacious dislikes the file or rather, what is that which Audacious dislikes, other than the plugins thing?

EDIT
Test #5: Audacious is succesfully playing MP3 files. However, I very well know he is able to play FLAC files, simply because I tested this capability in the past.


Kernel 2.6.21.5, Slackware 12.0
Window manager: don't know how to get the name.
Desktop environment: Xfce 4.4.1
Audacious 1.3.2

Start Audacious from the terminal (in GUI) and see which error messages you get there when trying to open that file. Sometimes this is very helpful when trouble-shooting, because you may get clearer error messages.

Edit: Don't know for Slackware 12.0, but on 13.37 there is a package named audacious-plugins in the repositories, make sure you have it installed if available for your version.

I was, indeed, starting it from the GUI, by means of the DE main menu.

Where are the Slackware repositories, could you tell me. In their page, only whole distributions are available, not packages.

I meant that you open a terminal in the GUI and then launch Audacious from there to see the output in the terminal.

Just browse to your favorite mirror (like http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/slackware/) and have a look in the directory for your version. On that example mirror the link to the audacious-plugins package is http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/slackwa...3.5-i486-1.tgz.
You also can use pkgtool to see if you have it already installed.

I'm taking careful notice of your words, and intend to use your teachings or advices. Now, let me be frank with you. I'm trying to find out who is the performer of a certain musical composition contained in a FLAC file. There is at present only one tool I can use to accomplish that end: Audacious. MPlayer and play (sox) do not connect to the web to look for info related to the recording, at least not by default. And the only other program that understands FLAC that I have is Audacious and this does do that additinal job.

All this may be useless because how can I trust I'm getting the right information? Only if the info were recorded into the FLAC file itself. And it is not ... well, this is a lengthy subject. But seeing some info in the Audacious window, would be a first step.

So, I have not the least interest in Audacious as a media player. Only to take me out of this situation with the missing performer's name. For I'm a hundred per cent sure I saw audacious play a flac file in my system. And that this was after my last slack 12.0 instalation. As a matter of fact, it is refusing to play CDs in /dev/cdrom, a link to /dev/hdc in my system, the 1st optical drive (IDE2, master) or bus/lun/target 1001,0,0 in my system.

When all is said and done, maybe there is a much more expeditive method to do this kind of job. But one thing is for sure. The CD lacking the info, I will be doing no more than handling probabilities. Only that if that probability is high enough, I will be "almost glad" (sorry for my English). Thanks for your disinterested advice.

Seems a little odd as the default slackware audacious comes with a plugin for flac playback. Certainly if you go to the trouble of recompiling the plugins I would be surprised if you could not then play your flac and see the meta information in the manner that you wish. First have a look at the currently available plugins, I attach my own where you can see the flac plugin and also a useful ffmpeg plugin.

If you are keen it would be a good time to think about building audacious 3.1.2, a new release that simply requires a small tinker with PV's script and a newer libmowgli. I have done so on 13.37 and it is well worth the effort.

Attached Thumbnails

 

If all you want is to obtain information from the FLAC file and not listen to it, then you can install ffmpeg.
FFMPEG will read and display the FLAC header, like in this example:
And an upgrade to a newer version of Slackware will most certainly give you an Audacious player that plays FLAC files. I just tried on Slackware 13.37 and it works fine there.

Eric

Thank you very much, Alien Bob. I have ffmpeg-20071003-i486-1_SBo.tgz and will proceed to its installation.