MPLAYER DOWNLOAD AND INSTALLATION FOR DUMMIES

1. Always try to download mplayer using your distribution's software manager:
| Distro | Manager|
|OpenSuse | YaST |
|Fedora | yum |
|Debian |apt|
|Ubuntu | ~|

If these fail then add the "packman" repository
http://opensuse-community.org/Package_Sources/Packman

(see that page) by issuing the following command as root (all on one line):
zypper addrepo --repo http://packman.mirrors.skynet.be/pub/packman/suse/11.1/Packman.repo

and then try again by asking YaST for mplayer. It should give you a host of modules, select them all and click ACCEPT.

If that fails then the best answer is to use the svn repository. svn is a process ("protocol") for frequently updating the status and files of a software project, such as mplayer. Developers submit daily changes to the component files. The files are accessed by using the program svn, which may already have been installed on your machine by your installation system. Type
svn help
as root at a terminal to determine whether or not it exists, and if not then install it.

Once installed, svn uses a unique internet permissions protocol, called a "port", to access the updated files. Your firewall needs to give permission for the port to be seen and accessed by servers on the internet. Otherwise svn cannot find its target.

"Guarddog" from http://www.simonzone.com/ is an excellent tool to configure your firewall. You can add "ports" in the Advanced tab of the program, then tick the boxes in the Protocol tab for Internet, local and your local network.

Check your results with https://www.grc.com/ (using the ShieldsUp! option) to ensure you have not exposed yourself by opening this port.

Once past all that housekeeping, simply enter the following commands in sequence in a terminal as root:

svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer
# This will download the main software and most of its dependencies and associated codecs. It will not get ALL of them... :-(

cd /root/mplayer # This moves you to where the files have been downloaded

./configure # This is the normal start of an installation sequence that creates a "makefile" summary of all the files that need to be installed

make # This uses the results of ./configure to compile the program

make install # This installs the program.

Test your result by typing

mplayer

as either user or root.

For the explorers among you, this site seems to say it all:

http://linux.justinhartman.com/FFmpeg,_FFmpeg-PHP,_Lame,_Libogg,_Libvorbis,_FLVtool2,_Mplayer,_Mencoder,_AMR_Installation#Download_all_the_files_needed

If it works, Enjoy!

If it doesn't, then have a nice day. Google is your friend. Consider joining:

"MPlayer usage questions, feature requests, bug reports"

Oh yeh. This is for users of Linux. If you are on some proprietary closed source OS then really have a nice day.