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<TITLE>Bug reporting - MPlayer - The Movie Player for Linux</TITLE>
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<H1><A NAME="B">Appendix B - How to report bugs</A></H1>
<P>Good bug reports are a very valuable contribution to the development of any
software project. But just like writing good software, good problem reports
involve some work. Please realize that most developers are extremely busy and
receive obscene amounts of email. So while your feedback is crucial in
improving MPlayer and very much appreciated, please understand that you
have to provide <B>all</B> of the information we request and follow the
instructions in this document closely.</P>
<H2>How to fix bugs</H2>
<P>If you feel have the necessary skills you are invited to have a go at fixing
the bug yourself. Or maybe you already did that? Please read
<A HREF="tech/patches.txt">this short document</A> to find out how to get
your code included in MPlayer. The people on the
<A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-dev-eng">mplayer-dev-eng</A>
mailing list will assist you if you have questions.</P>
<H2>How to report bugs</H2>
<P>First of all please try the latest CVS version of MPlayer as your bug
might already be fixed there. Development moves extremely fast, most problems
in official releases are reported within days or even hours, so please use
<B>only CVS</B> to report bugs. CVS instructions can be found at the bottom of
<A HREF="http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html">this page</A> or in the
README. If this did not help please refer to
<A HREF="documentation.html#known_bugs">the list of known bugs</A> and the
rest of the documentation. If your problem is not known or not solvable by our
instructions, then please report the bug.</P>
<P>Please do not send bug reports privately to individual developers. This is
community work and thus there might be several people interested in it.
Sometimes other users already experienced your troubles and know how to
circumvent a problem even if it is a bug in MPlayer code.</P>
<P>Please describe your problem in as much detail as possible. Do a little
detective work to narrow down the circumstances under which the problem
occurs. Does the bug only show up in certain situations? Is it specific to
certain files or file types? Does it occur with only one codec or is it codec
independent? Can you reproduce it with all output drivers? The more
information you provide the better are our chances at fixing your problem.
Please do not forget to also include the valuable information requested below,
we will be unable to properly diagnose your problem otherwise.</P>
<P>An excellent and well written guide to asking questions in public forums is
<A HREF="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html">How To Ask Questions The Smart Way</A>
by <A HREF="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</A>. There is another
called
<A HREF="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html">How to Report Bugs Effectively</A>
by <A HREF="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/">Simon Tatham</A>. If
you follow these guidelines you should be able to get help. But please
understand that we all follow the mailing lists voluntarily in our free time.
We are very busy and cannot guarantee that you will get a solution for your
problem or even an answer.</P>
<H3>Where to report bugs?</H3>
<P>Subscribe to the mplayer-users mailing list:<BR>
<A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-users">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-users</A><BR>
and send your bug report to:<BR>
<A HREF="mailto:mplayer-users@mplayerhq.hu">mplayer-users@mplayerhq.hu</A></P>
<P>The language of this list is <B>English</B>. Please follow the standard
<A HREF="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt">Netiquette Guidelines</A> and
<B>do not send HTML mail</B> to any of our mailing lists. You will only get
ignored or banned. If you do not know what HTML mail is or why it is evil,
read this <A HREF="http://expita.com/nomime.html">fine document</A>. It
explains all the details and has instructions for turning HTML off. Also note
that we will not individually CC (carbon-copy) people so it is a good idea to
subscribe to actually receive your answer.</P>
<H3>What to report?</H3>
<H4>System Information:</H4>
<UL>
<LI>Your Linux distribution or operating system and version e.g.:
<UL>
<LI>Red Hat 7.1</LI>
<LI>Slackware 7.0 + devel packs from 7.1 ...</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI>kernel version:<BR>
<CODE>uname -a</CODE></LI>
<LI>libc version:<BR>
<CODE>ls -l /lib/libc[.-]*</CODE></LI>
<LI>X version:<BR>
<CODE>X -version</CODE></LI>
<LI>gcc and ld versions:<BR>
<CODE>gcc -v<BR>
ld -v</CODE></LI>
<LI>binutils version:<BR>
<CODE>as --version</CODE></LI>
<LI>If you have problems with fullscreen mode:
<UL>
<LI>Window manager type and version</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI>If only the GUI is buggy:
<UL>
<LI>GTK version</LI>
<LI>GLIB version</LI>
<LI>libpng version</LI>
<LI>GUI situation in which the bug occurs</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
</UL>
<H4>Hardware & drivers:</H4>
<UL>
<LI>CPU info (this works on Linux only):<BR>
<CODE>cat /proc/cpuinfo</CODE></LI>
<LI>Video card manufacturer and model, e.g.:
<UL>
<LI>ASUS V3800U chip: nVidia TNT2 Ultra pro 32MB SDRAM</LI>
<LI>Matrox G400 DH 32MB SGRAM</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI>Video driver type & version, e.g.:
<UL>
<LI>X built-in driver</LI>
<LI>nVidia 0.9.623</LI>
<LI>Utah-GLX CVS 2001-02-17</LI>
<LI>DRI from X 4.0.3</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI>Sound card type & driver, e.g.:
<UL>
<LI>Creative SBLive! Gold with OSS driver from oss.creative.com</LI>
<LI>Creative SB16 with kernel OSS drivers</LI>
<LI>GUS PnP with ALSA OSS emulation</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI>If in doubt include <CODE>lspci -vv</CODE> output on Linux systems.</LI>
</UL>
<H4>For compilation problems/errors</H4>
Please include these files:
<UL>
<LI><CODE>config.h</CODE></LI>
<LI><CODE>config.mak</CODE></LI>
</UL>
Only if compilation fails below one of these directories, include these files:
<UL>
<LI><CODE>Gui/config.mak</CODE></LI>
<LI><CODE>libvo/config.mak</CODE></LI>
<LI><CODE>libao2/config.mak</CODE></LI>
</UL>
<H4>For configure problems</H4>
Include <CODE>configure.log</CODE>.
<H4>For playback problems</H4>
<P>Please include the output of MPlayer at verbosity level 1, but
remember to <B>not truncate the output</B> when you paste it into your mail.
The developers need all of the messages to properly diagnose a problem. You
can direct the output into a file like this:</P>
<P><CODE> mplayer -v [options] [filename] > mplayer.log 2>&1</CODE></P>
<P>If your problem is specific to one or more files, then please upload the
offender(s) to:</P>
<P> <A HREF="ftp://mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/incoming/">ftp://mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/incoming/</A></P>
<P>Also upload a small text file having the same base name as your file
with a .txt extension. Describe the problem you are having with the
particular file there and include your email address as well as the output
of MPlayer at verbosity level 1. Usually the first 1-5 MB of a file are
enough to reproduce the problem, but to be sure we ask you to:</P>
<P><CODE> dd if=yourfile of=smallfile bs=1024k count=5</CODE></P>
<P>It will take the first five megabytes of <STRONG>'your-file'</STRONG> and
write it to <STRONG>'small-file'</STRONG>. Then try again on this small file
and if the bug still shows up your sample is sufficient for us. Please
<STRONG>do not ever</STRONG> send such files via mail! Upload it, and send
only the path/filename of the file on the FTP-server. If the file is
accessible on the net, then sending the <STRONG>exact</STRONG> URL is
sufficient.</P>
<H4>For crashes</H4>
<P>You have to run MPlayer inside <CODE>gdb</CODE> and send us the complete
output or if you have a core dump of the crash you can extract useful
information from the <CODE>Core</CODE> file. Here's how:</P>
<H4>How to conserve information about a reproducible crash</H4>
Recompile MPlayer with debugging code enabled:
<P><CODE> ./configure --enable-debug=3<BR>
make</CODE></P>
and then run MPlayer within gdb using:
<P><CODE> gdb ./mplayer</CODE></P>
You are now within gdb. Type:
<P><CODE> run -v [options-to-mplayer] filename</code></P>
and reproduce your crash. As soon as you did it, gdb will
return you to the command line prompt where you have to enter
<P><CODE> bt<BR>
disass $pc-32 $pc+32</CODE></P>
<H4>How to extract meaningful information from a core dump</H4>
<P>Please create the following command file:</P>
<P><CODE>disass $pc-32 $pc+32<BR>
info all-registers</CODE></P>
<P>Then simply execute the following on your command line:</P>
<P> <CODE>gdb mplayer --core=core -batch --command=command_file > mplayer.bug</CODE></P>
<H3>General note</H3>
<P>If something is quite big (logs for instance) then it is better to upload
it to the FTP server in a compressed format (gzip and bzip2 preferred) and
include only the path and filename in your bug report. Our mailing lists
have a message size limit of 80k, if you have something bigger you have to
compress or upload it.</P>
<H2>I know what I am doing...</H2>
<P>If you created a proper bug report following the steps above and you are
confident it is a bug in MPlayer, not a compiler problem or broken
file, you have already read the documentation and you could not find a
solution, your sound drivers are OK, then you might want to subscribe to the
mplayer-advusers list and send your bug report there to get a better and
faster answer.<BR><BR>
Please be advised that if you post newbie questions or questions answered
in the manual there, you will be ignored or flamed instead of getting an
appropriate answer.<BR>
So do not flame us and subscribe to -advusers only if you really know
what you are doing and feel like being an advanced MPlayer user or
developer. If you meet these criteria it should not be difficult to find
out how to subscribe...</P>
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