Re: About realplayer

[Carl Johnson <carlj@peak.org>]

James Dietrich <jdietrch@southern.edu> writes:

> I've followed this discussion on RealPlayer with interest, as RealPlayer
> doesn't work on my system either--but it gives a different error.
> 
> A couple weeks ago I did a fresh install of Hamm (including RealPlayer)
> and everything worked just fine.  However, after upgrading to Slink,
> RealPlayer stopped working.  When I try to run the welcome.rm provided
> there are a few frames of video and then it says this:
> 
> General error. An error occurred.
> 
> For more information, please see Error 1 at:
> 	http://www.realaudio.com/help/errors
> 
> and goes no further.  The same thing happens when I click on a link in
> Netscape--I get perhaps 1/3 second of video/sound and then the above error.
> 
> Yes, I'm using the Debian package, and yes, I have purged and reinstalled
> it (several times) to no effect.
> 
> Anybody got any ideas?  Any more information about my system I'll be glad
> to provide.

I just went through this, but with different symptoms, so I can give
some ideas where to look.  First, try running rvplayer from the
command line, and see if it gives any error message.  In my case I was
getting an error like:

     ****audio: write error: -1 bytes errno: 5

Also try checking the log files in /var/log.  I found messages (all
the same) in messages, syslog, and kern.log.  In my case I had DMA
errors, but it worked when I disabled 16-bit audio in the preferences
menu.  I do have a 16-bit card, but obviously I don't have the 16-bit
parts configured properly.  I don't think you have the same problem,
since mine wasn't playing at all before I switched the preferences.

-- 
Carl Johnson		carlj@peak.org