Problem with mplayer/ftp hangs

Sep 28, 2013 7 Replies

I have got my Pi running raspbian playing net radio using mplayer. Works fine.



We have a Topfiled 5800 PVR fronted with an Asus NSLU2, AKA slug, running custom firmware. One can access the PVR from the LAN by ftping to the Asus. Works fine.



On my laptop using mplayer I can issue the following:



mplayer ftp://foo:bar@slug/DataFiles/some_recording.rec



and mplayer plays the video.



From the Pi I can ftp to the slug and browse the PVR's directories no problem. But if I try the above mplayer command it hangs. Killing mplayer and ftping *from any box on the lan*, including the Pi, works as far as logging in but then as soon as you issue *any* command it hangs. The only "cure" is to power cycle the PVR.



pi@raspbpi-radio:~$ mplayer ftp://foo:bar@slug/DataFiles/Click_20130928.rec MPlayer svn r34540 (Debian), built with gcc-4.6 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team mplayer: could not connect to socket mplayer: No such file or directory Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.



Playing ftp://foo:bar@slug/DataFiles/Click_20130928.rec. Resolving slug for AF_INET... Connecting to server slug[192.168.0.106]: 21...



Streams need a type! libavformat version 53.21.1 (external) Mismatching header version 53.19.0 [ftp] read timed out [ftp] Server didn't abort correctly: Seek failed [ftp] read timed out [ftp] read timed out [ftp] read timed out


MPlayer interrupted by signal 2 in module: demux_open [ftp] read timed out


MPlayer interrupted by signal 2 in module: demux_open pi@raspbpi-radio:~$



After this the tty is screwed up needing a "stty sane" :-)



So there is *something* about mplayer on the Pi in ftp mode. Any ideas where to look next? Google has turned nothing up.



TIA


Regards Dave Saville

one shot in the dark is to try ftp natively - outside of the actual program - from a command line. FTP uses a reverse connection on a different socket sometimes and that can get firewalled if you have a firewall on the PI.

It also looks like you have some misaligned library releases too.

Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc?-ra-cy) ? a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

I can FTP in and list directories *before* running mplayer. Afterwards I can only FTP in - from anywhere. No firewalls involved. Just rebooted and tried a FTP bin get and it works fine. Mplayer will play the resulting file but badly. Suspect it can't get the data off the SD card quick enough.

And you say that because?

Regards Dave Saville

Well apt-get update only lists *rasbian.org and *raspberrypi.org. I have done an apt-get upgrade. I have done nothing to get anything from elsewhere that I am aware of.

Regards Dave Saville

Yup have the same setup here... not tried accessing it from the pi previously though...

There are a couple of things to watch with FTP from the slug in this setup. The first being that its only single threaded and can't cope with any form of multiple session. So once you have an FTP session in progress, you can't start another one from elsewhere.

[snip]

What happens if you ftp the file to local storage and then play it?

Have you tried with omxplayer on the pi?

Cheers, John. /=================================================================\ | Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk | |-----------------------------------------------------------------| | John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk | \=================================================================/

Thanks to the Toppy forum I now have a USB reset TAP so no more power cycles.

Yup -know about that.

Works.

No. But I can only talk to the Pi over SSH as I do not have a USB keyboard so any GUI tool is out. At least I assume omxplayer is.

FWIW I just installed mplayer on my Ubuntu laptop and it does

*exactly* the same thing. Mplayer on my OS/2 laptop plays files over ftp from the Toppy just fine. And I have dim recollection from some time back when I could not get mplayer to work at all on Ubuntu that VLC would also play files via ftp from the Toppy.
Regards Dave Saville

Yup some hand stuff to be had there.

No its command line only. Its also optimised to use the GPU for playback.

Yup I use VLC on windows for that...

Cheers, John. /=================================================================\ | Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk | |-----------------------------------------------------------------| | John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk | \=================================================================/

But will it play from an FTP URL? I quick look at the docs suggests not.

As Ubuntu got an upgrade since I tried mplayer I installed mplayer again yesterday - and it now plays video.

Pointing it at the Toppy fails in exactly the same way as on the Pi. But works perfectly from my OS/2 Warp box.

Regards Dave Saville

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