I installed the codecs and tools to play restricted format content on my system and it worked for about a day. However, now every time I try to play a DVD I get an error from VLC and if I try to access the drive I get this message:
An error occurred while accessing ‘whatever the movie title may be’ the system responded: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.PermissionDenidByPolicy:org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-removable no
I’m assuming this is the reason VLC can’t access it and I searched on the subject and saw that this has to do with how permissions are setup. I tried searching for a howto on setting the permission for my user though and couldn’t find it. I just need to know where to go to find that information.
I may have to just start a different thread here. I figured out that this issue is related to another one I’m having. My system is not always booting to the desktop for my user. It goes to a text based screen instead (I think this is verbose). Usually if I ctrl alt del a couple times it will finally boot up properly, straight to the desktop for my user, and when it does I have all the necessary permissions but if in verbose I put in my username and password and then do a startx it doesn’t have them. I can go into the terminal and do an su - and get it to actually play video but there’s no audio and there’s just a lot of other issues. When I can get it to boot straight to the user everything is working properly.
I was told by to caf4926 to post my menu.lst on this subject. That is:
VGA=0x317
I don’t know if that is correct of not. It does look like there is a space after the 7 though.
I’m sure you have inadvertently been running as root and installing apps from there. At least that’s the impression I got from your earlier thread: ATI Drivers - openSUSE Forums
the vga= is just a small part of the menu which relates to your graphics display.
When your machine goes to verbose mode, you should be more interested in looking at the text and seeing if errors give you clues to any underlying issues, rather than giving the traditional 3 fingered windows salute.
About your first post, it may be related to what group your drive belongs, usually group ‘disk’.
Check if your user belongs to the same group. Adding yourself to group ‘disk’ may lead to some (improbable) security issues - mainly that as a regular user you may be able to write to some restricted directories if you try hard enough. I never had this problem, YMMV.
If you wish you may rule out permissions issues by running the player as root (use su, do not log as root as a number of evil things may happen to you, like getting fired, your cat dying, etc. :)). If you can play the DVD, then it’s a permissions problem, probably as described above.
Also make sure you’re not mixing videolan and packman libraries, as they have problems together. See Oldcpu’s stickies on multimedia for more info, basically you should use videolan only for decss and packman for everything else.
I’m sure you have inadvertently been running as root and installing apps from there. At least that’s the impression I got from your earlier thread:
I did enter a 3 at the boot menu and enter there to configure the display but I didn’t do anything else from the root as user because I didn’t know how to start the desktop. It only after installing and configuring the ATI drivers started going to verbose. Always before it went straight to the desktop as the only user that I setup.
I will try to look for any errors. I didn’t really see any initially though it just shows me my hardware configuration and asks for a login. The main reason that I’ve been ctrl alt del it is that it works. Eventually the system boots correctly when I do that.
brunomcl,
Everything does work fine when the system boots straight to the the user but for some reason when I have to boot through verbose it doesn’t. I mistakenly thought that something had changed but the only thing that had changed was the way I booted into the desktop.
I rebooted again to check and I was right no errors show up. It goes through loading different hardware and services and they all have a nice green “done” next to them. There are a few that could possibly be errors.
One reads “No configuration found for eth1” and then says “unused” on the right.
The othe one says “Not starting NFS client services - no NFS found in /etc/fstab:” unused.
the other reads “Master Resource Control: runlevel 5 has been reached” and then “sys reached” next to it.
The last one reads “skipped services in runlevel 5:” and then in yellow next to it “nfs”
Multi-media and Restricted Format Installation Guide - openSUSE Forums
I already did that and it worked great. It’s just that it only works when the sysem boots properly.
I think maybe your problem is not about multimedia, but how you’re booting.
To enter verbose mode at the boot progress screen you only need to press esc to see scrolling text instead of the nice but uninformative green screen. BUT you’ll boot to the exact same user/config as normal. However, if you type something else it may end in the boot options line, with unexpected results.
The boot messages you listed wouldn’t cause your problem. Do you have another user configured in the system? Usually there should be only two, the root (usually hidden in the KDM/GDM menu) and the normal user.
Also, ALT-CTRL-DEL will not help. you’ll end up exactly the same as before. Remember, linux is not windows (it’s much, much better :))
I think maybe your problem is not about multimedia, but how you’re booting.
Yes, that’s correct. I entered a poor title to begin with because I didn’t realize that the two items were related. Now that I do it has nothing whatsovever to do with the multi-media end of things.
To enter verbose mode at the boot progress screen you only need to press esc to see scrolling text instead of the nice but uninformative green screen.
That’s the problem that I’m having. It doesn’t always boot properly and I don’t hit anything it just goes straight to verbose or straight to the desktop.
Also, ALT-CTRL-DEL will not help. you’ll end up exactly the same as before. Remember, linux is not windows
ALT CTRL DEL does reboot the system at that point. The issue is that sometimes it boots alright and sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t know why it is booting incorrectly so the only way that I know of to get it to do so is to reboot until it does what it is supposed to.
I put the install disc in and told it to repair the existing installation. It says there is an error in the boot loader config. It tried to fix it but it doesn’t appear to have worked some I’m hving it run a total repair again just to see if that helps. I really don’t want to reinstall.
Well I tried just letting the repair system option take care of it automatically but it tries to and just gets an error. I guess I am going to do a reinstall. I really hate to do that after all I went through to get the drivers loaded and everything but hopefully it will be easier this time around since I have some idea what to do. I also hope the messed up boot config wasn’t caused by the ATI Drivers and is just going to pop up again as soon as I reload those.
Well I did a reinstall and it was a pleasant surprise to find that when it loaded the desktop that just about all my setting were still there. It looks like it uninstalled some software like VLC, the ATI Drivers and the restricted format codecs and flash player but it kept a lot of stuff too. I had some papers that I had typed up for a class that were magically still there, the widgets I had installed on the desktop were still there and Zotero was still installed in firefox.
I ran glxgears and it looked like it was running them fine with the drivers that were installed as a part of the initial configuration. I’m still trying to decide whether I will try the ATI Drivers again. I reinstalled the restricted format codecs and tried playing a DVD and it was really choppy but then I reinstalled VLC and a lot of it seemed to be cleared up by that. I don’t know if it’s just that the codecs that are installed with VLC are just that much better or what. I think it was a little better with the ATI drivers so I may add them again come morning but I did a reboot and it looks like the boot issues have been fixed. Since everything that I had installed before is present except the ATI drivers I guess if I install them and it happens again I know what my culprit was.
I suspect you are using a Mesa driver. Any driver you installed the first time round would go with the re-install.
Personal settings and files will be preserved because your /home partition would not be formatted.
Yes. It will format the root partition seen like this: /
Well, actually, it might not format it by default, but it effectively does that when it writes the OS to it.
/home can be formatted, but by default it wouldn’t be. And as nothing is written to it during install, it will be fine. So long as you use the Same Username! everything will be in place.
Well I reinstalled the ATI Drivers and now it’s not booting properly. I know you said where it’s booting to is verbose but it’s the same place I went to to run the ati config per whych when they said to type 3 to start in runlevel 3. Is run level 3 the same thing as verbose or different and why would entering that cause it to keep booting back there? Also, am I right that the grub boot is the green screen where it give you the option to enter the regular setup, failsafe or floppy?
I thought I would post an update on this. I just started aimlessly poking through things. Since I couldn’t get to the desktop but it would go to the console or verbose or whatever it is I pulled up yast from there. I started messing with the boot loader and it didn’t have any effect. I set everything back the way I found it and then I figured that maybe if I could get the user to just have permission to use everything it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I started messing with the user settings and when I got to the login part I disabled automatic login and required it to ask for the user name and password on boot up. To my surprise this seems to have fixed the issue and it looks like the ATI drivers are working now with it. I don’t know why when I do an auto login it won’t boot but if I have it prompt for a password it does but it’s not that big of a deal to put the password in every time.