It seems that when you remove the option "--disable-gnome-vfs" from the configure line of the debian/rules file, this solves the bug. I do a simple : apt-get source beep-media-player cd beep-media-player-0.9.7.1+cvs20050803/ sed -e 's/--disable-gnome-vfs//g' debian/rules fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage -b But I really don't know why this option blocks its starting.