Arch Linux

davef

Member

Registered: 2008-08-24

Posts: 6

A few problems for a beginner

First of all i'm new here so good day to you all!:D

I installed Arch a few days ago and have been trying to get it into a working system that can replace Ubuntu, I am overall quite new to Linux having only first started using it around a month ago and so far im very taken with it. I have just a few issues that I am unable to iron out by myself that I was hoping someone could help me with.

First problem: I need to be able to play AVIs on arch from a share on my NAS device, this is a strange once since I can play the same AVI files if it is located on a Vista machine share and I can also play MP3s from the same share on the NAS but for some reason just not AVIs.  I am using Totem in all cases here aswell.  Ubuntu does not seem to suffer from this problem at all, hopefully someone can shed some light on this for me.

Second problem: Network browsing,  while logged in as root I am able to use nautilus to browse through my local network and see all the devices, shares etc.  When I log in as a normal user I am unable to browse the network in the same fashion.  I am able however to provide an smb address to go directly to the share for eg. smb://device/share but not navigate through nautilus.  My Ubuntu build does suffer from this issue as well.

And finally:  Another strange one, when loading into my Gnome desktop after giving my user name and password I get the Gnome loading flash screen and the solid colour background that it brings along with it, however when my desktop and bars load the solid colour does not always disappear to reveal Icons and the desktop background.  The way I have be getting around this so far is to ctrl+alt+backspace to reload X and that solves the issue for that session.  Anyone have any ideas for a more solid solution?

I know that is a lot to ask in one post but I would be grateful for any help on the above problems.

Cheers
Dave

brando56894

Member

From: New Jersey, USA

Registered: 2008-08-03

Posts: 566

Website

Re: A few problems for a beginner

problems one and two seem to be permission problems. for the first problem see if you can play the avi files when youre logged in as root, if you can then its a permission problem. if you have these shares defined in you fstab try adding "users" or "uid=[your user id, most likely 1000]".

jdhore

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2007-08-01

Posts: 156

Re: A few problems for a beginner

First of all i'm new here so good day to you all!:D

I installed Arch a few days ago and have been trying to get it into a working system that can replace Ubuntu, I am overall quite new to Linux having only first started using it around a month ago and so far im very taken with it. I have just a few issues that I am unable to iron out by myself that I was hoping someone could help me with.

First problem: I need to be able to play AVIs on arch from a share on my NAS device, this is a strange once since I can play the same AVI files if it is located on a Vista machine share and I can also play MP3s from the same share on the NAS but for some reason just not AVIs.  I am using Totem in all cases here aswell.  Ubuntu does not seem to suffer from this problem at all, hopefully someone can shed some light on this for me.

Second problem: Network browsing,  while logged in as root I am able to use nautilus to browse through my local network and see all the devices, shares etc.  When I log in as a normal user I am unable to browse the network in the same fashion.  I am able however to provide an smb address to go directly to the share for eg. smb://device/share but not navigate through nautilus.  My Ubuntu build does suffer from this issue as well.

And finally:  Another strange one, when loading into my Gnome desktop after giving my user name and password I get the Gnome loading flash screen and the solid colour background that it brings along with it, however when my desktop and bars load the solid colour does not always disappear to reveal Icons and the desktop background.  The way I have be getting around this so far is to ctrl+alt+backspace to reload X and that solves the issue for that session.  Anyone have any ideas for a more solid solution?

I know that is a lot to ask in one post but I would be grateful for any help on the above problems.

Cheers
Dave

I experience your final issue. I've never noticed a fix for it, and it usually is fixed after logging out and logging back in, but it is quite annoying. Also, it only seems to happen with GNOME...Not with KDEMod 3.5.9 or 4.1.0

davef

Member

Registered: 2008-08-24

Posts: 6

Re: A few problems for a beginner

problems one and two seem to be permission problems. for the first problem see if you can play the avi files when youre logged in as root, if you can then its a permission problem. if you have these shares defined in you fstab try adding "users" or "uid=[your user id, most likely 1000]".

thanks for the replies.  I have looked into this before and I do not think it is a permissions issue, the files are still unplayable in root, I have also tried creating a new share on the NAS that does not require any permissions to access ie Guest.  Also as I said there are MP3 files in the same share that can be accessed without any issue, for some reason it also seems to be linked to AVI files only, I have recoded one of the files into a .VOB and that plays fine from the same location aswell.

Ive heard good things about KDEMod so what I might do is rebuild from scratch and use that gui see if that helps.  Perhaps I have made a mistake somewhere along the line.

Last edited by davef (2008-08-24 17:43:11)

Onwards

Member

From: Pakistan

Registered: 2007-04-18

Posts: 108

Re: A few problems for a beginner

Arch is always bleading edge (keeping up with the upstream releases, hence new features and hence possible regressions/bugs...). While you said that Ubuntu worked well (as it uses an older well-tested version of totem may be...).

I would suggest that you install vlc and see if does the trick.

Acecero

Member

Registered: 2008-06-21

Posts: 1,373

Re: A few problems for a beginner

You can also try installing mplayer along with installing codecs to see if that can help you with your AVI problem.

# pacman -S mplayer codecs

davef

Member

Registered: 2008-08-24

Posts: 6

Re: A few problems for a beginner

I still have no idea on what would be stopping the AVIs, I have tried the players you have suggested and yet still they wont play.  What seems to be happening is that the players are unable to recognize the files as a playable type over an SMB share but I cannot even begin to think of a solution to that.  As the the browsing the network issue I have made a little progress. I placed another router on the inside of my network and moved a few computers into it.  I allowed the vista machine to be the first to boot.  Presto! I started to be able to see other network drives, I moved my linux machine back outside the router and all stops.  The two NAS devices that I have in my network are both linux based and what concerns me is that perhaps when one of them takes over as Master browser my linux machine becomes unable to browse,  This is just a theory but does anyone else know if this might be a possibility?

Cheers
Dave