realplayer gyrations and krazy konqueror
I am using a plain vanilla all-stock, up-to-date sarge installation
with gnome desktop. After installing realplayer the mozilla plugin
and standalone player ("realplay") video worked, but no sound.
I found the following tip in a web search: "export AUDIO=/dev/dsp"
This fixed realplayer sound when run from a command line, but not when
run from the mozilla "opening" dialog box (which asks "what should
mozilla do with this file?") or the realplayer plugin. Even when run
from a command line, the volume slider on realplayer didn't work (but
did work on the ALSA mixer PCM volume slider). I even tried adding
"export AUDIO=/dev/dsp" to my .bashrc and .bash_profile files, to no
effect.
I then added the "export AUDIO=/dev/dsp" to the mozilla startup script,
/etc/algernatives/mozilla, and the volume started working with the
both the mozilla plugin and dialog box, but the replayer volume slider
still didn't work in either case, and a much stranger problem cropped up:
when I tried to play from videos chosen at random on real's web site,
some of the links which started with the "opening" dialog box (not the
plugin) would "launch" multiple instances of Konqueror! (Even with
javascipt enabled, how is this possible? flash and java are disabled.)
Here is one example of such a link, if anyone wants to try it:
http://click.real.com/?clipid=159742&pageid=hotstuff.defaultPage&pageregion=hotstuff.fashion
One of the pages open as a result in Konqueror is this one:
http://www.ifilm.com/media/getplaylist?pinfo=adbt:|flash:false|plf:r1ctx|adsn:IFILM.com|r1mem:false|cr:1|bw:MULTI|mft:metafile|admt:ro|adid:2460485|mt:ro|fid:2668168|refsite:2761|stage:playlist|ipt:viral
Note the last word of this URL is "viral." It seems a bit ominous in
this context. Anyway, I always thought this kind of unexpected and
uncontrollable app behavior was par for the course for Windoze, not
Debian apps. I resisted using a fancy desktop for 10 years, and only
recently started to become comfortable with one. Now I am wondering if
I should strip out gnome and KDE and go back to blackbox!
I don't even know where to start debugging these problems, much less to
whom to send any bug reports. Any help or comments are appreciated.
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