DVD Playing STILL not working in Linux!

macdude425 · 10-26-2005, 08:44 PM

As you may or may not know, some time ago I was having problems getting DVDs to play in Debian. Just when I thought I had the problem solved, I had to reformat (long story), and now I can't figure it out again. /etc/fstab is correctly configured with the format type, I have libdvdread and libdvdcss installed, but I cannot for the life of me get a DVD to play, in ANY player.

All suggestions are very welcome. TIA.

GameGURU · 10-26-2005, 09:59 PM

Does it even recognize a disc in the drive?

horndude · 10-26-2005, 10:02 PM

have you made a symlink from /dev/hdx to dvd? Sometimes thats needed, quick and dirty way to check, mplayer dvd://1 (which shouldnt work), then do this:mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/hdx where x=your drive-----that should work provided the drive is working, use hdparm to check drive status

macdude425 · 10-26-2005, 10:24 PM

Yes, it does recognize the disc. I'll try what you suggested, horndude.

GameGURU · 10-26-2005, 10:47 PM

I hear doing what hordude mentioned was a necessity to get it to work.

Nitestick · 10-26-2005, 11:09 PM

i've been having trouble with all multimedia under FC4 lol. i use the mini-distro puppy for watching dvd's.

macdude425 · 10-28-2005, 06:14 PM

mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/hdx reads the disc for me but...

...X crashes as it tries to load the picture. Sometimes I get an error message that DRI is not present, sometimes I don't get one at all. But I show that DRI is installed...any ideas?

horndude · 10-28-2005, 06:41 PM

lsmod and dmesg | more, check to make sure DRI is loaded, and its optional actually, some video setups do fine without it, it is needed for 3D openGL acceleration though. If lsmod and dmesg dont shed any light check xorg.0.log in /var/log and see what it shows. Also open up xorg.conf and check to see if glx and/or dri are uncommented so they get loaded when X is started. What video card are you using, and what kernel?

ya, if the -dvd-device option is working, just make a symlink to dvd like:
ln -s /dev/hdx dvd

sidenote: some motherboards still dont have proper northbridge and southbridge drivers like the via based ones used in the itx mobo's and some socket A's--------I have one of these. Which means the agpgart driver wont load without lots of work to the system compiling and installing some open source third party kernel modules. It also means no DRI or GLX support w/o doing some more compiling and installing including having a built X tree to compile against(aaaaaaaaaaarrrghhh).

As far as whats needed to play dvd's: mplayer, mpeg libraries, libdvdcss,libdvdread------I think thats it, it will even work using the svga library in console mode with 99% of the video cards out there.

methinks we can fix your issues, just might take some trial and error and some more digging for info that helps figure out whats up

horndude · 10-28-2005, 06:47 PM

Oh ya, you can put that symlink just about anywhere, in /dev would be fine I guess, I didnt have to make one when I changed to slackware current recently on one of my machines, kinda weird, Ive always had to make one before. Dont worry, its just a software shortcut or redirect, its easily removed, they are all over the filesystem in most linux distros. It is a nice hack to know though, comes in handy.

macdude425 · 10-29-2005, 03:28 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by horndude
Also open up xorg.conf and check to see if glx and/or dri are uncommented so they get loaded when X is started. What video card are you using, and what kernel?

Yep, the DRI section in XF86Config is commented. I'll try uncommenting it and seeing if it works.

I have an ATI Rage Pro 128 and am using 2.6.8-powerpc-smp

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