Are the instructions for installing codecs from Packman correct?

I hope I can get some help getting multimedia playback to work on Tumbleweed. I’m following the instructions at SDB:Installing codecs from Packman repositories - openSUSE Wiki

This is what I’ve done:

# zypper ar -cfp 999 https://ftp.fau.de/packman/suse/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/Essentials packman-essentials
Adding repository 'packman-essentials' .............................................................[done]
Repository 'packman-essentials' successfully added

URI         : https://ftp.fau.de/packman/suse/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/Essentials
Enabled     : Yes
GPG Check   : Yes
Autorefresh : Yes
Priority    : 999 (lowered priority)

Repository priorities in effect:                                          (See 'zypper lr -P' for details)
      99 (default priority) :  4 repositories
     999 (lowered priority) :  1 repository
     
# zypper refresh
Repository 'Main Repository (NON-OSS)' is up to date.                                                                                                 
Repository 'Main Repository (OSS)' is up to date.                                                                                                     
Repository 'Main Update Repository' is up to date.                                                                                                    
Retrieving repository 'packman-essentials' metadata ................................................[done]
Building repository 'packman-essentials' cache .....................................................[done]
Repository 'Open H.264 Codec (openSUSE Tumbleweed)' is up to date.                                                                                    
All repositories have been refreshed.

# zypper dist-upgrade --allow-vendor-change
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Warning: You are about to do a distribution upgrade with all enabled repositories. Make sure these 
repositories are compatible before you continue. See 'man zypper' for more information about this command.
Computing distribution upgrade...
Nothing to do.

# zypper install --from packman-essentials ffmpeg gstreamer-plugins-{good,bad,ugly,libav} libavcodec-full
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
'ffmpeg' not found in package names. Trying capabilities.
'ffmpeg-6' providing 'ffmpeg' is already installed.
'gstreamer-plugins-bad' not found in package names. Trying capabilities.
'gstreamer-plugins-bad' is already installed.
'gstreamer-plugins-good' not found in package names. Trying capabilities.
'gstreamer-plugins-good' is already installed.
'gstreamer-plugins-ugly' not found in package names. Trying capabilities.
'gstreamer-plugins-ugly' is already installed.
'gstreamer-plugins-libav' not found in package names. Trying capabilities.
'gstreamer-plugins-libav' is already installed.
'libavcodec-full' not found in package names. Trying capabilities.
Resolving package dependencies...

The following 3 NEW packages are going to be installed:
  libavcodec57 libavutil55 libswresample2

3 new packages to install.
Overall download size: 4.6 MiB. Already cached: 0 B. After the operation, additional 11.5 MiB will be used.
Continue? [y/n/v/...? shows all options] (y): y
Retrieving: libavutil55-3.4.12-1699.1.pm.16.x86_64 (packman-essentials)                   (1/3), 232.7 KiB    
Retrieving: libavutil55-3.4.12-1699.1.pm.16.x86_64.rpm ...............................[done (176.0 KiB/s)]
Retrieving: libswresample2-3.4.12-1699.1.pm.16.x86_64 (packman-essentials)                (2/3),  61.7 KiB    
Retrieving: libswresample2-3.4.12-1699.1.pm.16.x86_64.rpm .............................[done (32.0 KiB/s)]
Retrieving: libavcodec57-3.4.12-1699.1.pm.16.x86_64 (packman-essentials)                  (3/3),   4.3 MiB    
Retrieving: libavcodec57-3.4.12-1699.1.pm.16.x86_64.rpm ..............................[done (730.7 KiB/s)]

Checking for file conflicts: .......................................................................[done]
(1/3) Installing: libavutil55-3.4.12-1699.1.pm.16.x86_64 ...........................................[done]
(2/3) Installing: libswresample2-3.4.12-1699.1.pm.16.x86_64 ........................................[done]
(3/3) Installing: libavcodec57-3.4.12-1699.1.pm.16.x86_64 ..........................................[done]

Is the output of the zypper install command as expected? What I had expected was that packages such as gstreamer-plugins-ugly would be installed from the Packman repo. However, it’s still installed from the Main repo:

# zypper search -s gstreamer-plugins-ugly
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S | Name                                          | Type       | Version            | Arch   | Repository
--+-----------------------------------------------+------------+--------------------+--------+----------------------
i | gstreamer-plugins-ugly                        | package    | 1.22.4-1.1         | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-32bit                  | package    | 1.22.4-1.1         | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs                 | package    | 1.22.4-1699.1.pm.1 | x86_64 | packman-essentials
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs                 | package    | 1.22.0-1599.1.pm.1 | x86_64 | packman-essentials
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs                 | package    | 1.22.4-1699.1.pm.1 | i586   | packman-essentials
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs                 | srcpackage | 1.22.4-1699.1.pm.1 | noarch | packman-essentials
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs                 | srcpackage | 1.22.0-1599.1.pm.1 | noarch | packman-essentials
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs-32bit           | package    | 1.22.4-1699.1.pm.1 | x86_64 | packman-essentials
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs-32bit-debuginfo | package    | 1.22.4-1699.1.pm.1 | x86_64 | packman-essentials
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs-debuginfo       | package    | 1.22.4-1699.1.pm.1 | x86_64 | packman-essentials
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs-debuginfo       | package    | 1.22.0-1599.1.pm.1 | x86_64 | packman-essentials
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs-debuginfo       | package    | 1.22.4-1699.1.pm.1 | i586   | packman-essentials
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs-debugsource     | package    | 1.22.4-1699.1.pm.1 | x86_64 | packman-essentials
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs-debugsource     | package    | 1.22.0-1599.1.pm.1 | x86_64 | packman-essentials
  | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs-debugsource     | package    | 1.22.4-1699.1.pm.1 | i586   | packman-essentials
i | gstreamer-plugins-ugly-lang                   | package    | 1.22.4-1.1         | noarch | Main Repository (OSS)

There is a gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs package in Packman, so maybe I should install the *-codecs packages? And are there any other things I need to do to get multimedia playback to work?

No, someone with no clue vandalized the page. I reverted the changes so the instructions are correct again.
Unfortunately there is no protection against this vandals…

1 Like

I found several pages which where vandalized by this guy. I reverted the wrong informations back to correct states…

1 Like

Thanks for that. I see that “999” gave the packman-essentials a lower priority and that the new commands point to “packman” rather than “packman-essentials”.

I removed the packman-essentials repo and then ran the new commands. That seems to have worked, though it didn’t install gstreamer-plugins-ugly-codecs.

The vandalism is… annoying. Anyway, thanks again for your help.

Yep, this value is not even a valid one as 200 is the lowest possible priority.
Additionally this low priority on packman would have caused lots of trouble later on…packman repository needs higher priority as the version of packages differ from the OSS/NON-OSS ones…

This is all nicely explained in the official documentation (don’t be confused that the doc is from SLE 15.5 as it also applys to openSUSE Tumbleweed/Leap):

One change there I think it’s actually good. For codecs, prefer Packman Essentials to the full Packman.