Omxplayer massive cock up

[fredjam]

Omxplayer no longer works. Anyone who innocently does a 'sudo apt-get update' followed
by a 'sudo apt-get upgrade' will find that omxplayer,. which worked before, no longer works and will
crash your desktop.

Even if you do a firmware update it will still not work correctly. I don't know how many Pis are out
there now, maybe hundreds of thousands. So there are hundreds of thousands of copies of
omxplayer no longer working. It would be helpful in such cases if the programmer who cocked up
the repositories could post a warning message at the top of this forum. So that users do not waste
their time re-flashing SD cards or showing other people what the pi can do only to find that all it
can do is crash.

[bfagioli]

Yes, I agree there is something very wrong with omxplayer. When I run it the entire screen goes black and then I see this error:

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omxplayer Movies/UP-1of5.m4v 
file : Movies/UP-1of5.m4v result 53 format mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 audio streams 1 video streams 1 chapters 0 subtitles 1 length 1254
/usr/bin/omxplayer.bin: symbol lookup error: /usr/bin/omxplayer.bin: undefined symbol: vc_tv_get_display_state

A reboot gets the system back to normal but omxplayer is definitely unusable.

[M_P]

I had that problem too but running rpi-update two days ago (sorry, don't know the version it updated to off the top of my head) got it running again.

[bfagioli]

I had that problem too but running rpi-update two days ago (sorry, don't know the version it updated to off the top of my head) got it running again.

My system is up to date. BTW, I usually do an update/upgrade several times a week. On my machine omxplayer is version 0.2.4 according to "apt-cache show omxplayer" and /usr/bin/omxplayer and omxplayer.bin are dated Jan-28-2013 so I'm guessing that's when it was updated and I just haven't noticed its not working until I read the OP.

[PS1981]

Yes but doing

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update

and

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sudo apt-get upgrade

is not the same as running rpi-update. I had the same problem, installed rpi-update and did the update and it also worked for me.
See this page:
https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update

[bfagioli]

...
is not the same as running rpi-update. I had the same problem, installed rpi-update and did the update and it also worked for me.
See this page:
https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update

Yes that was it. I had no idea that firmware was updated independently. I installed rpi-update, ran rpi-update, rebooted and now omxplayer works fine. Thanks ever so much for the pointer that was very helpful. Where is the firmware stored online? How do I know when there is a new version and is there a release note that informs us what has changed?

[PS1981]

Hey it was good team work. Thanks to M_P, I googled to find out what was meant cos I didn't know that either. Sometimes tips are given for which a certain amount of prior knowledge is required and I had a feeling that this may be such an occasion.

[BerryPicker]

... I had no idea that firmware was updated independently.

My understanding is that the firmware can be updated independently.
The wiki says
"
For Raspbian the latest stable release is included in the image and can be updated with apt-get
The latest bleeding edge version can be downloaded from the RPI firmware section on GitHub.
rpi-update is also available as an easier way of updating the firmware and kernel. Please note, as this firmware is bleeding edge, it really should only be used by advanced users and could potentially still have bugs and be incompatible with existing images.
"
From my reading of this thread, it would seem that the wiki advice is now wrong.

[fredjam]

Nowhere does it say that 'apt-get update' and 'apt-get upgrade' need to be followed by a
firmware upgrade. The person who put that version of omxplayer in the repository messed
up. Even if you do upgrade the firmware omxplayer does not work in the same way and
can crash the screen when it finishes playing a video or audio file.

[duCin0]

If the console "does't work" (you can't see anything you type in...) after running omxplayer try this:
press ctrl+c to make sure you have a working empty command prompt
type "reset"
hit enter

[rocketero]

I can concurr that omxplayer_0.2.4~subtitles~git20130128~f60f9019_armhf.deb does not work on my RPI, then I removed it, and installed a previous version omxplayer_0.2.1~git20120728~63312741_armhf.deb and this one does work

you can download this previous version at:

http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/p ... omxplayer/

the error I was getting was:

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/usr/bin/omxplayer.bin: symbol lookup error: /usr/bin/omxplayer.bin: undefined symbol: vc_tv_get_display_state

and with this older version doesn't happen.

[JollyRoger]

This later version:
omxplayer 0.2.4~git20130208~5c2f65e3
works fine on my Pi. To get it:
1) wget http://omxplayer.sconde.net/builds/omxp ... _armhf.deb
2) sudo dpkg -i omxplayer_0.2.4~git20130208~5c2f65e3_armhf.deb

Note this hint (given in another thread) to stop omxplayer messing up your screen display when it exits:

1) Get the xrefresh app:
sudo apt-get install x11-xserver-utils

2) After that edit /usr/bin/omxplayer with:
sudo nano /usr/bin/omxplayer

and add to the END of the file the following:
xrefresh -display :0

3) Press: Ctrl+O, Enter, Ctrl+X and you are good to go.

Note: You will need to do this procedure each time you update/install/re-install omxplayer to keep the fix ( unless it gets fixed by the developer at some point ).

[BerryPicker]

... ( unless it gets fixed by the developer at some point ).

Thanks for the 'how to'. It looks like the black screen was fixed on 14/02/13. See the build information at http://omxplayer.sconde.net/

P.S. This build now plays MJPEG video. Nice work!