having gotten DVDs to play on my inspiron 8100, i thought
i'd post a quick summary of what i did, and finish with a
couple of questions.
from www.freshrpms.net, to use ogle (i've never had good
luck with xine, so someone else can jump in here if they
want):
alsa-lib
libdvdcss
libdvdread
ogle
ogle_gui
and now for the fun part -- getting decent playback. since
this involves DMA (among other possible things), i tested
things on my hard drive first. some benchmark testing:
# hdparm -t /dev/hda
showed that i could speed things up nicely by enabling DMA:
# hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda
# hdparm -t /dev/dha (ooh, 5 times the throughput)
you can make this setting permanent by adding the line
USE_DMA=1
in /etc/sysconfig/harddisks.
so, given that my DVD drive is technically /dev/hdb, i can
enable DMA on that as well:
# hdparm -d 1 /dev/hdb
and that pretty much gives me nice, smooth playback. however,
a caveat -- to set this on a permanent basis, you can't just rely
on the USE_DMA line /etc/sysconfig/harddisks, since that file
is only used as the default for actual disks, as i found out
the hard way after reading /etc/rc.sysinit.
instead, just create the file /etc/sysconfig/harddiskhdb,
with the single line
USE_DMA=1
and you're all set.
yes, i know all this is pretty trivial stuff, but enough
people have been asking about DVDs, i figure it was worth
posting.
comments? additions?
rday
p.s. i noticed that setting 32-bit IO support (EIDE_32BIT=1)
didn't make a noticeable difference for the hard drive once DMA
is already enabled. i suspect it wouldn't hurt, but it just
didn't seem to have any benefit. (it *does* make a difference
if DMA is not enabled, however).
