i have roughly the same problem as this thread with none of the chewy-caramel-resolution at the end...

situation: i can play dvd's with xine just fine (as mythtv, NOT root) from an xterm, but i receive the annoyingly frustrating "no such plugin" message if i attempt to play from within mythtv. i've restarted mythtv a few times as i adjusted certain aspects (changing permissions, etc), but have not logged out and back in as mythtv has been a member of the cdrom group since before i started digging into this stuff. here's the following pertinent data...




originally above, my /dev/cdrom and /dev/dvd linked to /dev/hdc (my dvd drive), but after reading umpteen posts i decided to try linking them to /dev/scd0 before posting, just to be certain that that wasn't the problem...

any ideas on where to go from here? as i said, i've run it successfully from the command line (as user mythtv), but it refuses with the 'input plugin' error as above when i try to run it from within mythtv. i have double-checked and triple-checked that i have the same command in myth as i used in the command line, but no joy!

hmmm... interesting. i just added the keyboard and went back to verify that i most certainly was user mythtv when i ran 'xine -pfhq dvd://' from an xterm, and now it doesn't work, even as root after changing /dev/dvd and /dev/cdrom to point to /dev/scd0... after pointing everything back to /dev/hdc, things are again working just as i described, xine plays perfectly fine (as root or mythtv), only erroring out when i try to play from within MythTV. also, to be exhaustive, i've added my newly changed symlink data, as well as my xine-check results...




is there anything left to try or should i accept my fate of never having a complete system and always having to play dvds for my wife?

Could you post the actual error messages you're getting? Also check out: /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log and: /home/mythtv/.xsession-errors

well, i would have posted the actual error if it were easy to read, but since it's in a window that pops up and disappears in about a quarter of a second, it makes reading it rather hard. it's something along the lines of



the relative portions of .xsession-errors:


the relative portions of mythbackend.log:

date was run just prior in order to point out that i seem to be getting no messages logged about the DVD errors in the mythbackend.log... (i finished watching a movie (video file, not DVD) about 45 minutes ago and have since been playing with the dvd... nothing has really been logged).

So you're fairly certain that it's an xine produced error rather than an mythtv error?

Try this variation as your command xine instead just to see if it makes any difference:

The next step is to use xine options that bump up the logging level. I kind of suspect you've got an environment problem but that means we have to figure out what is different between when you run it from the command line and when MtythTV runs it for you.

well. i knew there was a reason i dropped the --auto-scan... when i use it, xine comes up with the window (full-screen) that says xine, however, the dvd never actually plays. it just sits there with the xine logo, and works fine if you pull up the gui ('g') and manually choose 'dvd' and 'play', but won't actually start the dvd, which is kinda pointless for a headless, keyboard/mouseless computer on my TV...

anyhow, whilst i was doing this, i decided to double-check my myth settings and see exactly what command i had set, among other variables. if it weren't for the fact that this post might save someone else hours of searching and embarassing questions, i'd simply let the thread die and pretend i was never so dense.

the exact command that i had set was 'xine -pfhq dvd'. not 'dvd://' as it should have been. this now makes sense with the error stating that it couldn't find a plugin to handle the file type 'dvd'. adding the colon-slash-slash did the trick.

now for a final dvd-related question before i go tell the wife that she can use the computer to play dvds now... how do i get my dvd back? for some reason /dev/cdrom will not umount, even as root.

nevermind, i've found the 'eject' command works fine (i was thinking of doing it through cdrdao or cdrecord if i had to...), i'll just have to find a way to map that to a key on my remote...

thanks for your help, tjc, even though it was one of those PEBCAK things...

I gotta ask... PEBCAK? I have to know... (P.S. I loved the "chewy caramel" bit.)

_________________
Do you code to live, or live to code?
Search LinHES forum through Google

Google is your friend even for acronyms.

"PEBCAK is an acronym for Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard."

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

It's like an ID 10 T problem... As in calling your favorite sysadmin back and saying "Never mind, I'm just an ID 10 T..."

i found this site to be a quite humorous definition and story of 'PEBCAK'...

hm. I do not have a /dev/dvd at all (after replacing my CDRW with a DVDROM device). The /dev/cdrom shows all data of the DVDs. But xine won´t play them. I get the can´t handle-msg, too. the command lines suggested don´t work, too. I tried, new, old, selfmade and selfburned DVDs.

Any suggestions?

I, too, had the "there is no input plugin available" problem. I fixed it by replacing my IDE cable.

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R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

Did you jumper the new drive the same as the old? What does reveal? And what command are you using to try to play the DVDs?

If your command is pointing to /dev/dvd and there is no such device you will need to link to an existing one (eg. ln -s /dev/hdX /dev/dvd, where X will probably be the same device that /dev/cdrom is linked to)

oookay. The solution: Cable with a slack joint.

tnx to every helping hand,

Red