Moritz & Cley, Thanks for the responses! I believe I checked most of these points, but I will do so more methodically to ensure I didn’t miss anything.
As far as why on the root user, I’m only speculating that’s how this application is working. I know its daemon runs as root, so I’m guessing that why it’s having issues calling ffplay. That said, a daemon calling it is different than me starting an interactive shell and calling it, so as you point out that may be where my issue is! I will dig into this more tomorrow and let you all know what I find. Thanks again! I appreciate the great support you all provide. Jeff > On Apr 2, 2018, at 07:46, Moritz Barsnick <barsn...@gmx.net> wrote: > > Hi Jeff, > >> On Sun, Apr 01, 2018 at 16:28:28 -0400, Jeff wrote: >> However when running *ffplay* as the root user over X11 on the same files, >> I am getting met with the '*Unable to initialize SDL*' error. > > First of all: *WHY*?? There is usually no good reason to run anything > as root, if you are not administrating the system. If the user and > ffplay need access to some files or devices, grant the user access, > instead of using root. > >> I came across this ( >> http://www.ffmpeg-archive.org/help-ffplay-Could-not-initialize-SDL-td4675063.html) >> thread/post form Moritz indicating there may be an issue using ffplay as >> root? > > The user never gave indication as to what he was doing, so we can't > know. My questions in the last e-mail are still valid. > >> In this particular case, there is a program daemon which is run as root >> that calls ffplay. This is why the call is being made by the root user. > > A daemon that has access to a display? In that case, ffplay should be > called as something like "su <displayuser> -c 'ffplay'". > >> It seems something is different in the case of root over X11 vs. a direct >> terminal call from the root user's desktop, but I don't have the foggiest >> idea. > > I don't see a specific ffmpeg / ffplay issue. See Cley's answer: No X11 > program may work at all. It has always been that way, at least for the > last 20 years or so. X11 uses "cookie authentication". To allow root to > use the user's cookies, you can either: > - open up access to the display using "xhost +local" (giving up all > security), > - migrate the auth cookie to the root process, > - use sudo from the user account to root (I think), > - log into root's account with "ssh -X" (which will automatically > migrate the cookie and give access via an SSH tunnel). > > The latter two require interactive use, I guess. > > Extra issue: If your display uses Xwayland, some of the above no longer > work. See also e.g. here: > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1266771#c4 > > Cheers, > Moritz > _______________________________________________ > ffmpeg-user mailing list > ffmpeg-user@ffmpeg.org > http://ffmpeg.org/mailman/listinfo/ffmpeg-user > > To unsubscribe, visit link above, or email > ffmpeg-user-requ...@ffmpeg.org with subject "unsubscribe". _______________________________________________ ffmpeg-user mailing list ffmpeg-user@ffmpeg.org http://ffmpeg.org/mailman/listinfo/ffmpeg-user To unsubscribe, visit link above, or email ffmpeg-user-requ...@ffmpeg.org with subject "unsubscribe".
