[gentoo-user] mplayer directfb permissions?

[gentoo-user] mplayer directfb permissions?

[Indi]

Greetings,

My old thinkpad is showing its age lately, especially when using 
mplayer to play avi or mkv files. Fooling around with various options 
and config arguments has revealed that using the directfb for vo gives 
sterling results, with the worst files playing happily in sync just like 
I always dreamed -- but only as root! 

Obviously there's a permissions issue somewhere...

My user is a member of all the appropriate groups (unless I've missed 
something?):

[idd@gh~] $ id
uid=501(indulekha) gid=501(indulekha) groups=501(indulekha),5(tty),
10(wheel),16(cron),17(console),18(audio),19(cdrom),27(video),35(games),
104(crontab),994(vboxusers),998(plugdev)

I've googled quite a bit about it and found a few users with the same problem 
but nowhere have I seen an answer. Is there a solution for this, or should I 
simply resign to watching videos as root?

TIA!

-- 
 /\       /\ 
   <\   />    
      ^      caveat utilitor 
    'v-v'            

Re: [gentoo-user] mplayer directfb permissions?

[Mick]

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On Monday 25 April 2011 23:38:04 Indi wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 05:50:01PM +0200, Indi wrote:
> > ...using the directfb for vo gives
> > sterling results, with the worst files playing happily in sync just like
> > I always dreamed -- but only as root!
> > 
> > Obviously there's a permissions issue somewhere...
> 
> Oh jeepers, I've made a silly error -- the reason videos were playing so
> well as root is that root had no .mplayer/config, :)
> Apparently I just needed to clean up my config file and now it works
> just fine again with x11 driver. Didn't realize defining a couple of audio
> and video filters would impact performance that much but apparently it
> really does, at least with avi and mkv files. Sorry for the noise!
> 
> For other reasons though it might still be nice to know how to give a
> user directfb permission.
> 
> :)

Just an idea.

Not sure if it uses svgalib - in which case setuid it to root before you fire 
it up as a plain user.

Alternatively, run strace as a plain user and see at what point it fails to 
access the files it needs.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] mplayer directfb permissions?

[Indi]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 05:50:01PM +0200, Indi wrote:
> 
> ...using the directfb for vo gives 
> sterling results, with the worst files playing happily in sync just like 
> I always dreamed -- but only as root! 
> 
> Obviously there's a permissions issue somewhere...

Oh jeepers, I've made a silly error -- the reason videos were playing so
well as root is that root had no .mplayer/config, :)
Apparently I just needed to clean up my config file and now it works
just fine again with x11 driver. Didn't realize defining a couple of audio
and video filters would impact performance that much but apparently it 
really does, at least with avi and mkv files. Sorry for the noise!

For other reasons though it might still be nice to know how to give a
user directfb permission.
:)

-- 
 /\       /\ 
   <\   />    
      ^      caveat utilitor 
    'v-v'            

Re: [gentoo-user] mplayer directfb permissions?

[Indi]

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 12:30:02AM +0200, Mick wrote:
> On Monday 25 April 2011 23:38:04 Indi wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 05:50:01PM +0200, Indi wrote:
> > > ...using the directfb for vo gives
> > > sterling results, with the worst files playing happily in sync just like
> > > I always dreamed -- but only as root!
> > > 
> > > Obviously there's a permissions issue somewhere...
> > 
> > Oh jeepers, I've made a silly error -- the reason videos were playing so
> > well as root is that root had no .mplayer/config, :)
> > Apparently I just needed to clean up my config file and now it works
> > just fine again with x11 driver. Didn't realize defining a couple of audio
> > and video filters would impact performance that much but apparently it
> > really does, at least with avi and mkv files. Sorry for the noise!
> > 
> > For other reasons though it might still be nice to know how to give a
> > user directfb permission.
> > 
> > :)
> 
> Just an idea.
> 
> Not sure if it uses svgalib - in which case setuid it to root before you fire 
> it up as a plain user.
> 
> Alternatively, run strace as a plain user and see at what point it fails to 
> access the files it needs.
> -- 
> Regards,
> Mick


Thanks for the suggestions.
Was going to look into that just now but after updating the system 
(and runing revdep-rebuild and python updater and --depclean) the 
directfb driver doesn't display properly anymore for some reason.
Everything else seems fine, and videos are playing in sync with the x11
driver and all that. I have a feeling from what Ive read STFW that this 
is going to come down to my ATI Mobility 9600 chipset's incomplete kernel 
support and may not be practically solvable to the point of being worth 
pursuing.

I may pursue it anyway at some point in the future but for right 
now it's been moved to the back burner for a bit.

-- 
 /\       /\ 
   <\   />    
      ^      caveat utilitor 
    'v-v'            

Re: [gentoo-user] mplayer directfb permissions?

[Mick]

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On Tuesday 26 April 2011 14:34:05 Indi wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 12:30:02AM +0200, Mick wrote:
> > On Monday 25 April 2011 23:38:04 Indi wrote:
> > > On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 05:50:01PM +0200, Indi wrote:
> > > > ...using the directfb for vo gives
> > > > sterling results, with the worst files playing happily in sync just
> > > > like I always dreamed -- but only as root!
> > > > 
> > > > Obviously there's a permissions issue somewhere...
> > > 
> > > Oh jeepers, I've made a silly error -- the reason videos were playing
> > > so well as root is that root had no .mplayer/config, :)
> > > Apparently I just needed to clean up my config file and now it works
> > > just fine again with x11 driver. Didn't realize defining a couple of
> > > audio and video filters would impact performance that much but
> > > apparently it really does, at least with avi and mkv files. Sorry for
> > > the noise!
> > > 
> > > For other reasons though it might still be nice to know how to give a
> > > user directfb permission.
> > > 
> > > :)
> > 
> > Just an idea.
> > 
> > Not sure if it uses svgalib - in which case setuid it to root before you
> > fire it up as a plain user.
> > 
> > Alternatively, run strace as a plain user and see at what point it fails
> > to access the files it needs.
> 
> Thanks for the suggestions.
> Was going to look into that just now but after updating the system
> (and runing revdep-rebuild and python updater and --depclean) the
> directfb driver doesn't display properly anymore for some reason.
> Everything else seems fine, and videos are playing in sync with the x11
> driver and all that. I have a feeling from what Ive read STFW that this
> is going to come down to my ATI Mobility 9600 chipset's incomplete kernel
> support and may not be practically solvable to the point of being worth
> pursuing.
> 
> I may pursue it anyway at some point in the future but for right
> now it's been moved to the back burner for a bit.

Are you running KMS in the kernel and have you emerged x11-drivers/radeon-
ucode (not sure if your card needs it) as per:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] mplayer directfb permissions?

[Indi]

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 09:10:02PM +0200, Mick wrote:
> 
> Are you running KMS in the kernel and have you emerged x11-drivers/radeon-
> ucode (not sure if your card needs it) as per:
> 
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml
>

No. I have a pretty straight kernel, and my video card specified in 
make.conf and all that jazz. Do not want binary blobs if I can live
without them.   

-- 
If only my interface to the time-space continuum could be unix-like... With vim keybindings, cron, and everything!