Tech Blog

So here I am again, second time today, writing another article about how Intrepid was freezing up on me. It was rather annoying, I fixed the clocksource issue, but the system still stops responding about every ten minutes. Another problem I was experiencing was I was unable to watch videos with Totem, Xine, Mplayer or VLC. They simply crashed. I ran them from the terminal to get some error or someting. Googling revealed that the error was actually coming from xorg, and only happens when compiz is enabled. Here is where I come in with two pieces of good news though, I have found the fix for these issues, at least, if you're an ATI user who's video card supports FGLRX ;] I mean, hey, what good is a cutting edge linux desktop if you can't show your friends how it's 3D effects PWN Window's?

The error that I was getting from Totem, VLC, Xine, and Mplayer was the following (shortened to the most important part):

The error was 'BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)'.

So how do we fix this new problem of not being able to watch a video, and the system freezing? Simple, we install the FGLRX driver. This isn't actually so simple, as I had noticed when I followed a guide for how to install the FGLRX driver.

In order to install the driver, I advise using the Restricted Drivers Manager. This awesome little application included with Ubuntu will take care of all the nasties for us. To install the complete application (it's lacking a bit by default) run the following:

sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-generic restricted-manager
sudo apt-get install jockey-gtk jockey-common fglrx-modaliases

After the install completes, navigate to [menu] -> System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers
In here, you should have the option to enable "ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver".
We want to enable it. After the Hardware Drivers has done it's job, restart your machine, and you should now enjoy the fruits of having 3D acceleration.

Now that takes care of my system hanging, hopefully yours as well, but it doesn't totally fix the video problem. Yeah, now I can watch them without Xorg crashing the video application, buuuuuuut, now the videos flicker. How do we fix that you may be wondering. Well, it's simple also, just run the following command:

gstreamer-properties

Go to the video tab, and select "X Window System (No Xv) for the plugin under "Default Output" hit the Close button, and now you're done.


Again, Ladies and Gents,
Happy Hacking
PiklesOnFire