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Re: gstreamer1.0-libav - necessary for browsers to play videos?



On Sun 18 Jun 2017 at 00:27:29 -0400, Jape Person wrote:

> Apropos of nothing but wishing to supply an explanation to anyone else who
> might run into the same issue.
> 
> It is my habit to perform apt update followed by apt full-upgrade every day
> on my testing systems. I get the impression that this may not be a common
> practice, but I've been doing this (apt full-upgrade or, earlier on, apt-get
> dist-upgrade) on a daily basis for years with only rare resulting problems,
> all of which have been fixed easily.
> 
> I also routinely run apt --purge autoremove and debfoster to clear out
> packages that are no longer needed.

All sensible procedures.

> The recent firefox-esr upgrade resulted in the following output in
> /var/log/apt/history.log:
> 
> Start-Date: 2017-06-16  10:15:49
> Commandline: apt full-upgrade
> Install: libjsoncpp1:amd64 (1.7.4-3, automatic)
> Upgrade: firefox-esr:amd64 (45.9.0esr-1, 52.2.0esr-1~deb9u1)
> End-Date: 2017-06-16  10:15:54
> 
> I ran debfoster, and it asked me if I wanted to keep gstreamer1.0-libav. I
> ran aptitude why gstreamer1.0-libav and got this result:
> 
> # aptitude why gstreamer1.0-libav
> i   task-xfce-desktop Recommends libreoffice
> i A libreoffice       Suggests   gstreamer1.0-libav
> 
> Hmmm. Looks like there's no reason to keep gstreamer1.0-libav, so I let
> debfoster remove it.

debfoster (which I do not use) queries whether you should keep a package
which firefox-esr recommends? deborphan doesn't do this.

> Following this, no browser on the three testing systems I have (firefox,
> epiphany, or qupzilla) would play any kind of video at youtube.com or at any
> other location.

My main Jessie machine does not install recommended packages; it plays
youtube clips within firefox-esr.

> Following re-installation of gstreamer1.0-libav all browsers were once again
> able to play videos.
> 
> I would have thought that aptitude why might have given me a hint about the
> browsers requiring this package. I've looked to be sure the browsers do,
> indeed, have all of their depends and recommends installed, and they do. (I
> do not install suggests as a rule, and I don't use any kind of proprietary
> codecs or player software. So I am dependent upon the DFSG-compliant
> software available in the Debian repositories to play any video or audio I'm
> going to use on these systems.)
> 
> This is, obviously, not a very serious problem, but it's an interesting one
> that might bite others as unwary as I. Maybe it's implicated somehow in some
> of the odd reports we see from time-to-time of someone who can't get a
> browser to play videos.
> 
> Worthy of a bug report?

-- 
Brian.


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