VLC and remote control through HTTP

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1

Hi all,
I’m not sure if I should report it here or upstream.
I am trying to use an android application to remotely control VLC on my computer.
I followed all setup instructions, but remote control does not work.
Initially I reported the problem to the android app developer, but he told me to verify if it worked with VLC on Windows, and it actually worked.

So I did a check: I used Firefox to connect to the http interface put up by VLC. On Windows, a nice web interface is shown. On openSUSE, i get an error:

Error loading /

lua/intf/http.lua:80: attempt to call a nil value (global ‘loadstring’)
VideoLAN
Lua 5.1 Reference Manual

I did not try if it works on other Linux distros. My VLC comes from the packman repo:

cris@PolariSuse:~> zypper se -s vlc|grep "i |"
i | libvlc5                            | package    | 2.2.1-127.3        | x86_64 | Packman Repository
i | libvlccore8                        | package    | 2.2.1-127.3        | x86_64 | Packman Repository
i | vlc                                | package    | 2.2.1-127.3        | x86_64 | Packman Repository
i | vlc-codecs                         | package    | 2.2.1-127.3        | x86_64 | Packman Repository
i | vlc-noX                            | package    | 2.2.1-127.3        | x86_64 | Packman Repository
i | vlc-noX-lang                       | package    | 2.2.1-127.3        | noarch | Packman Repository
i | vlc-qt                             | package    | 2.2.1-127.3        | x86_64 | Packman Repository

Does anybody have my problem, too?

Thank you in advance.
Cris

2

OK, maybe I should add some more context.

The android app is “VLC Mobile Remote” (here).
However, you don’t need the app to test if your VLC has the problem.
Simply set up VLC for http remote control by following these steps:

  • start VLC
  • click on “Tools” and then “Preferences”
  • change from “Simple” settings to “All” (bottom left of the preferences window)
  • in the left part of the window, expand the tree under “Interface” and then expand the subtree “Main interfaces”
  • click on “Main interfaces” (left) and then check the “Web” option in the “Extra interface modules” option group (right)
  • click on “Lua” in the subtree under “Main interfaces” on the left
  • on the right, under “Lua HTTP” enter a password of your choice (do not touch anything else)
  • click on “Save”
  • close VLC and restart it
  • open you preferred web browser and go to http://127.0.0.1:8080/
  • you will be presented with a login dialog
  • leave the “user” field blank, and enter the password you previously choose in the “password” field
  • you should now see a web page with a nice remote control interface, but you will probably see a page with an error instead (see my message above)

Thank you in advance
Cris

3

I’ve just checked on a PC running openSUSE 13.1 and the remote control interface comes up just fine in the web browser.

I’m using the following packages:

grb@frodo:~> zypper se -s vlc|grep "i |"
i | libvlc5                         | package    | 2.2.1-299.1            | x86_64 | (System Packages)   
i | libvlccore7                     | package    | 2.1.5-239.2            | x86_64 | (System Packages)   
i | libvlccore8                     | package    | 2.2.1-299.1            | x86_64 | (System Packages)   
i | npapi-vlc                       | package    | 2.2.0-1.1              | x86_64 | packman             
i | vlc                             | package    | 2.2.1-299.1            | x86_64 | (System Packages)   
i | vlc-codecs                      | package    | 2.2.1-299.1            | x86_64 | (System Packages)   
i | vlc-noX                         | package    | 2.2.1-299.1            | x86_64 | (System Packages)   
i | vlc-noX-lang                    | package    | 2.2.1-299.1            | noarch | (System Packages)   
i | vlc-qt                          | package    | 2.2.1-299.1            | x86_64 | (System Packages)

So maybe you should try updating to the current packages. It seems unlikely that its an upstream problem.

4

Something a bit strange with the list of VLC packages in my previous reply. So I had a clean-up and re-installed as below:

grb@frodo:~> zypper se -s vlc|grep "i |"
i | libvlc5                         | package    | 2.2.1-127.11           | x86_64 | packman             
i | libvlccore8                     | package    | 2.2.1-127.11           | x86_64 | packman             
i | npapi-vlc                       | package    | 2.2.0-1.1              | x86_64 | packman             
i | vlc                             | package    | 2.2.1-127.11           | x86_64 | packman             
i | vlc-codecs                      | package    | 2.2.1-127.11           | x86_64 | packman             
i | vlc-noX                         | package    | 2.2.1-127.11           | x86_64 | packman             
i | vlc-noX-lang                    | package    | 2.2.1-127.11           | noarch | packman             
i | vlc-qt                          | package    | 2.2.1-127.11           | x86_64 | packman

Which matches your package list but is slightly more current (apart from npapi-vlc which shouldn’t matter).

And the web interface still comes up as it should.

Hope this helps.

5

Thank you grb01 for your reply and for taking the time to test.
Would you be so kind as to run this command and report back?
The command is

zypper se -s lua|grep "i |"

and here is my output:

i | liblua5_2                     | package    | 5.2.4-3.1                        | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i | liblua5_3                     | package    | 5.3.1-3.2                        | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i | liblua5_3-32bit               | package    | 5.3.1-3.2                        | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i | lua                           | package    | 5.3.1-3.2                        | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)

Thank you in advance.
Cris

6

Here is the info you requested for the PC running openSUSE 13.1:

grb@frodo:~> zypper se -s lua|grep "i |"
i | liblua5_1                    | package    | 5.1.5-5.2.1                     | x86_64 | openSUSE-13.1-Oss   
i | liblua5_2                    | package    | 5.2.2-2.4.1

I have now tested on another PC running Tumbleweed (fully updated) and find the web interface won’t come up; it shows the same error as you reported.

The VLC packages on this second machine are the same version as yours (2.2.1-127.3) whereas those on original machine are
2.2.1-127.11. Not sure if this is significant.

The LUA packages on the machine running Tumbleweed are:

grb@pippin:~> zypper se -s lua|grep "i |"
i | liblua5_1                    | package    | 5.1.5-13.2                       | x86_64 | repo-oss          
i | liblua5_1-32bit              | package    | 5.1.5-13.2                       | x86_64 | repo-oss          
i | liblua5_2                    | package    | 5.2.4-3.1                        | x86_64 | repo-oss          
i | liblua5_3                    | package    | 5.3.1-3.2                        | x86_64 | repo-oss          
i | liblua5_3-32bit              | package    | 5.3.1-3.2                        | x86_64 | repo-oss          
i | libluajit-5_1-2              | package    | 2.0.4-2.1                        | x86_64 | repo-oss          
i | lua                          | package    | 5.3.1-3.2                        | x86_64 | repo-oss

Hope this helps

7

Thank you very much grb01.
I suspect it may be something related to the fact that LUA is version 5.3 on Tumbleweed.
I’ll see if the VLC developers can fix it.

Cris