[MPlayer-users] vo_sdl crash with latest svn

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 11:06:48PM +0200, Walter Alejandro Iglesias wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 08:50:33PM +0200, Reimar Döffinger wrote:
> > It should be fixed in latest SVN.
> 
> It doesn't crash now, but it seems to fail to get the screen size correctly.

What do you mean by that?

> I've tried adding -geometry parameter but it didn't help.

Maybe you meant to use -screenw/-screenh?
It shouldn't be necessary though, as long as the SDL version
is at least 1.2.10.
However that will only be the initial size on startup,
it won't update when going fullscreen and possibly switching
resolutions.
But looking at the code it is so full of bugs when it comes
to the details it's fairly amazing it is working at all.

> > I'm kind of curious why you are using SDL output.
> > It kind of works really badly, even when it doesn't crash.
> > And in my opinion it also crashes a lot, even disregarding this
> > specific bug.
> 
> I used to run mplayer with -vo sdl in old machines with CRT monitors.  I do not
> recall having problems.  To find out why it crashes now is just curiosity, I
> mean if you're busy with more important issues don't waste your time with it.

That's fine, it's just that for actual use it is basically never the best
vo.

> > I can't imagine any other reason than pure chance.
> 
> Well then debian developers are very, very, very lucky guys :).

Well, I said "chance", not "luck" because I expect it to silently
overwrite parts of the memory. Since you can't really know what that
will do, you could also consider it "lucky" if it rather crashes
instead, before it does any damage.

> > The solution to this is to just start gdb + mplayer from one of the text VTs.
> 
> This is what I couldn't do.  I've searched on google to find out how to do that
> without luck.  What I've found on man pages is the -display option, perhaps I
> didn't used it correctly.

I just do an
export DISPLAY=:0
(or whatever syntax your shell uses), that should work for any program really.