mplayer stopped working after intrepid update

Posted by bikethetam Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:24:00 GMT

This morning I started mplayer on a mp3 file but got nothing out of it. It hanged and eventually timed out with this error: 
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pulse.c:272:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Timeout
[AO_ALSA] Playback open error: Connection refused
Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.
Audio: no sound
Video: no video
Exiting... (End of file)
This comes after the latest Intrepid updates (1/4/2009) that includes new pulse audio libs.

The fix is simple:
  1. Find the pulseaudio process id (ps -eaf | grep pulseaudio)
  2. kill it (-9 is necessary, it won't die with a softer kill)
  3. start mplayer again and all will be well.

Got to assume the intrepid update put pulseaudio in an unstable state. It probably did not stop the pulseaudio daemon before replacing the old libs by the new ones...

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