MPlayer problems

[Paul Higgins (U of M)]

Here's the results of further troubleshooting.  The initial thing that was 
suggested was to try starting it from the command line:
$ gmplayer
MPlayer 1.0pre6-3.3.3 (C) 2000-2004 MPlayer Team
Illegal instruction

Then I tried:
$ whereis mplayer
mplayer: /usr/bin/mplayer /etc/mplayer /usr/lib/mplayer /usr/share/mplayer /usr/share/man/man1/mplayer.1.gz

I haven't tried "# find / -name "mpl*" -print > findmplayer" yet.  I did check 
on yum updates, and I have the latest version.

I guess I'll uninstall MPlayer using yum and then get xine (and maybe 
eventually also compile MPlayer from source).  So is something wrong with 
yum, then?  Because when I was installing MPlayer using yum, everything 
appeared to go smoothly.  I never got any error messages. 

On Thursday 19 January 2006 07:29, Derick Centeno wrote:
> Hi Paul:
> When something like this happens with any program, uninstalling it with
> yum might be a good idea.  But before you uninstall why not find where
> it is now first?
>
> You can do this with the more common commands, using the find command
> to find anything with mplayer might be a good idea.
> # find / -name "mpl*" -print > findmplayer
> Trick: initiate this command not just as superuser but from your root
> directory.
> The above tells find to search for anything with mpl and any listing
> following the l and print it into a file called findmplayer.  It is
> unlikely that unrelated files could be picked up this way but that is
> possible with this method; the neat side is that this method will pick
> up smaller files that mplayer may use and signify as mpl.
>
> You could also use something mindbogglingly simple, like whereis.
> $ whereis mplayer
> This just lists where the executable is, but it is a start.
>
> It is always a good idea to learn where a program you installed is
> placed first, before you decide to get rid of it.  Otherwise, you will
> never be sure you are rid of it.
> Regarding whatever went wrong with yum, remember that it is just a
> program like any other.  Meaning that just because something appears to
> work doesn't mean it does what the designer or user wants it to do.
> There is always the distinct interpretation of what the computer thinks
> the designer intended or must really mean instead!  Of course, really
> solid programming avoids the computer from making choices of
> interpretation for itself but programmers also are human.  Although
> some people think that is just hearsay.
>
> If you go to mplayers site and get the source for it's most stable
> version.  You should be able to compile that with no problem.  That's
> what used to be the most reliable thing to do before yum or apt or
> apt-get and such came along.  So back to basics.  You could drop a note
> to the yum team and make them aware there may be a problem or you could
> insure that you have the most current version of yum.
>
> By the way did you do:
> #  yum update yum
>
> ???? How about doing that first before you search and remove mplayer
> ... just to insure that yum is at it's supposed best.  Two responses
> are possible.  You have the latest version already.  In which case you
> write to the yum team that something is awry.  Or you get a message
> that demonstrates something is happening and the update proceeds.
> Try installing mplayer with that newer version of yum.  It might
> actually work this time.
>
> After all that you possibly may consider actually using xine (as I
> previously recommended) and as Norberto did.  You just may discover
> that it can do whatever mplayer does, just better.
>
> Best wishes....