Codec manager does not find "bad" codecs when universe is not enabled

[Gabriele Monti]

Codec manager cannot find mms and asx codecs wher required by application (e.g totem or firefox). It looks like the manager does not look for codecs in gstreamer-plugins-bad. Users must manually install that package to have mms and asx working.

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

Codec manager is also not finding xvid - this is a regression

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

I just tried this with some freely available xvid videos. It works ok for me, if you have links (or could the videos that fail available for me privately) I'm happy to have a second look.

[Gabriele Monti (psicus78)]

I had problems trying to open this url:

http://www.streamsolution.it/onair/radiobruno.asx

with totem (and mozilla-totem as well obviously)

[GabrielGrant (gabrielgrant)]

It seems likely to me that this is caused by the same root problem as #363594

[GabrielGrant (gabrielgrant)]

...sorry, submitted that comment too soon...(no comment editing...grumble grumble)

My point was, Michael, that if I disable Universe repo, and try playing the stream provided by Gabriele, it doesn't find any codecs ("No packages with the requested plugins found when trying to play that stream. The requested plugins are: Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) demuxer") With Universe enabled, however, it finds gstreamer0.10-plugsin-ugly as it should.

This is a regression, at least from 8.04 (I don't have an 8.10 disc on hand to test), and is pretty problematic for new users. Given that the universe repository is disabled by default, the installer won't find most (all?) required codecs without fiddling around with exactly the type of administrative tool that this package was designed to avoid. I suppose what I'm trying to say (in an admittedly round-about way) is that it seems to me this bug (as well as bugs 351130 and 363594 which both appear to be essentially duplicates) should probably have higher than "Medium" priority, and should really be fixed for Jaunty final, if at all possible.

Gabriele, Scott, could you please test if enabling the Universe repository (System>Administration>Software Sources then check "Community Maintained Open Source Software") causes the relevant codecs to be found?
If so, and these really are all caused by the same root problem, we should probably file a new meta-bug, and mark these three as dupes.

Cheers!

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

I thought universe _was_ enabled by default (in the sources.list sense), it was just that Applications->Add/Remove didn't display universe packages by default

[GabrielGrant (gabrielgrant)]

I'm working right now so I'm not able to check at the moment, but I don't think that universe is initially enabled - only main and restricted. (I originally only looked in the System > Administration > Software Sources sense, and though I assumed this just parses the sources.list when started and is thus the same, I suppose it is entirely possible that at some point they are not properly synced.) I'll check to make sure later on today.

When changes are made within Software Sources, it certainly does update the sources.list. When selecting "All Open Source applications" in Add/Remove Applications, the "Enable the installation of community maintained software?" dialogue appears only if Universe is disabled in sources.list. Upon selecting "Enable", the change is propagated to sources.list.

As I said, whether the codecs are found is dependant on whether Universe is activated in sources.list, which, it seems to me, should not be the case. Is this an incorrect assumption?

[GabrielGrant (gabrielgrant)]

To confirm: I just checked, and universe is indeed _not_ initially enabled in sources.list (and thus also in System>Administration>Software Sources)

Should the Codec installer be searching Universe when its not enabled? Right now it is not. Or should the popup message displayed when trying to open media in Totem be changed to not say "The search will also include software which is not officially supported." when it isn't true? While I would prefer to have the search include Universe packages, regardless of the sources.list, it seems to me that one of these two things needs to change.

Thoughts?

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

Universe should be enabled by default, methinks. If the user doesn't want universe packages we can keep doing what we're doing already - hiding the universe packages inside App Install.

[ignorant (hahampis)]

I can also observe this behaviour in Karmic Koala, alpha 4 release. It is certainly confusing to a new user. Any plans to fix it?

[Vish (vish)]

I didnt notice this bug earlier , But I had started a bug to cover all the different codecs > Bug #405155

If the others agree, then the papercut task here can be closed and dealt in Bug #405155 to cover all user scenarios.

[Vish (vish)]

This is actually a bug rather than a design flaw.
The gnome-codec-install is supposed prompt ,but is not .

Hence not a papercut

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

User tests confirm this is live in a fresh install of Karmic. If the first thing you do is try to open a restricted codec gnome-codec-install will fail. Going to Software Sources and checking that everything is checked will fix the problem.

[Scott Ritchie (scottritchie)]

I believe I know the problem here, and why this has persisted for so long despite apparently "works for me" -- it only occurs on fresh installs, and only before a first apt-get update is run. Similar issues occur with clicking apt-url links -- there's no cache, and so no record of any package in the cache, and so it fails.

To fix this we need to ensure at least one apt-get update is run very early after install time...or during install time.