Kaffeine cannot install libdvdcss codec

[Andy Goossens]

I recently upgrade Gutsy to Hardy. I wanted to play a video in Kaffeine. It advised me to install the libdvdcss-i386 codec, which I accepted.

Then opens a Konqueror window with URL "http://kubuntu.org/packages/libdvdcss-i386.deb" and an error message "Object not found!". It looks like Kaffeine wanted to install the DEB package, but could not find it on the kubuntu.org website.

P.S: Report below for amd64 too.

[Andy Goossens (andygoossens)]

I was using Kaffeine 0.8.6-0ubuntu8 in a KDE3 desktop.

Quoting the responsible code in /usr/lib/kaffeine/install-codecs:
libdvdcss_url = 'http://kubuntu.org/packages/libdvdcss-' + distro_arch + '.deb'
os.system('kfmclient exec ' + libdvdcss_url)

I see two solutions:
- or put the package online at that location
- or fix the code and update the Kaffeine package

[Shriramana Sharma (jamadagni)]

Same behaviour here on amd64 architecture. It searches for http://kubuntu.org/packages/libdvdcss-amd64.deb as Andy has shown from the sources code. Please fix this. This really makes Ubuntu look unprofessional, to say the least, with no offence intended to my favourite distro.

[ralf (ralf-laichinger)]

This behavior is independent if libdvdcss is installed or not.

I changed the code in /usr/lib/kaffeine/install-codecs (comment out). Started kaffeine. Playing DVD Stopped kaffeine. Put the code back to original Code. Started kaffeine again. The DVD started to play and after a few second the decoding seems to work ( the first 5 sec of the dvd the screen is scrambled.

[Jayhawk (the-ayuthias)]

It looks like the call for /usr/lib/kaffeine/install-codecs ffmpeg does not get called when libxine1-ffmpeg is not installed. Instead it looks like it does the call for dvdcss instead. Since this is the case, the user thinks that kaffeine is having problems with libdvdcss even though it really has an issue with libxine1-ffmpeg not being installed. If you call /usr/lib/kaffeine/install-codecs ffmpeg, it does the call correctly and installs the missing package.

The other possible issue is that /usr/lib/kaffeine/install-codecs seems to find libdvdcss2-dev (in search_pkg) first and since it is not installed, it says that it needs to install libdvdcss2 even though it really is installed. If the user requests to have libdvdcss installed, would it be possible to add the medibuntu repository, do a repository update, and have adept-batch do the libdvdcss install instead of calling the kubuntu.org? This will allow the package to stay up to date.

[angbermu (angbermu)]

Thanks to Jayhawk, installing libxinel-ffmpeg worked for me.

Thanks,

Angel

[Fred Pilcher (fpilcher)]

Yeah - installing libxine1-ffmpeg worked for me too. :-) Thanks Jayhawk!

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue that you reported is one that should be reproducible with the live environment of the Desktop CD of the development release - Karmic Koala. It would help us greatly if you could test with it so we can work on getting it fixed in the next release of Ubuntu. You can find out more about the development release at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/. Thanks again and we appreciate your help.

[Jayhawk (the-ayuthias)]

I have just installed Karmic on my laptop and installed kaffeine. I left out libdvdcss2 and libdvdread4 and found that it now just segfaults instead of producing a message. Once libdvdcss2 and libdvdread4 are installed, the application works fine.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Thanks jayhawk for testing that for us. Can you tell us the exact versions of kaffeine, libdvdcss2 and libdvdread4 that you are using by doing apt-cache policy PACKAGE. Thank you.

[Jayhawk (the-ayuthias)]

They are as follows:

kaffeine:
  Installed: 1.0~pre2-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1.0~pre2-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 1.0~pre2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

libdvdcss2:
  Installed: 1.2.10-0.3medibuntu1
  Candidate: 1.2.10-0.3medibuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 1.2.10-0.3medibuntu1 0
        500 http://packages.medibuntu.org karmic/free Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

libdvdread4:
  Installed: 4.1.3-5ubuntu2
  Candidate: 4.1.3-5ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 4.1.3-5ubuntu2 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/universe Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[xteejx (xteejx)]

As far as libdvdcss2 goes we can't really support that because of FOSS and legal issues, hence the reason you had to get it from the medibuntu repos, however kaffeine should still correctly prompt to install these without segfaulting.
I have looked up the procedures for reporting Kubuntu bugs, and according to those, the segfault issue needs to be reported with the debugging information. You can find out how to do this at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kubuntu/Bugs/Reporting#Crashes . Unfortunately, I don't have and have never used Kubuntu.
Moreover the original reporter has not reported back on the issue with the invalid URL to download the .deb which is a different issue to a segfault, and to avoid complications and confusion, it would be best if these were kept separate.
Closing bug report.