From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

A few hours ago both chromium and firefox started playing videos, both
youtube and elsewhere.

Two updates have been installed, one related to java and the other
related to png, (isn't png a graphics format?) which may have been
influential.

It does appear that YouTube viewed with Chromium can force ads onto
the screen, even with uBlock.origin Lite installed. On firefox, youtube
plays correctly and I'm not seeing ads with uBlock Origin, at least for now.

Thanks to all for paying attention!

bob prohaska

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 8 Dec 2025 10:29:08 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

When you start Firefox from a terminal does it complain about any
missing libraries?

When you run a GUI app in the regular GUI way, it used to write its error messages to the file ~/.xsession-errors. Trouble is, lines in that file
never had any timestamps or any other identifying information about where
they came from. Under Wayland+systemd, you can now monitor those errors a
bit more cleanly with journalctl --user.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On 8 Dec 2025 10:29:08 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

When you start Firefox from a terminal does it complain about any
missing libraries?

When you run a GUI app in the regular GUI way, it used to write its error messages to the file ~/.xsession-errors. Trouble is, lines in that file never had any timestamps or any other identifying information about where they came from. Under Wayland+systemd, you can now monitor those errors a bit more cleanly with journalctl --user.

Since the latest batch of updates to Bookworm both Chromium and Firefox
are playing videos successfully, albeit with some audio stutter. The
updates seem to have been mostly to libraries, not the browsers.

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On 8 Dec 2025 10:29:08 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

When you start Firefox from a terminal does it complain about any
missing libraries?

When you run a GUI app in the regular GUI way, it used to write its error messages to the file ~/.xsession-errors.

Maybe your system did, I don't get any such file even running
programs that I know dump out errors, but I'm using TinyX. Oh and
a system running Xorg 21 doesn't have it either. Anyway it's easy
to run programs from a terminal window for troubleshooting and
a log would fill up my storage space with junk messages, so I'm not
interested in enabling that.

Trouble is, lines in that file
never had any timestamps or any other identifying information about where they came from. Under Wayland+systemd, you can now monitor those errors a bit more cleanly with journalctl --user.

I find journalctl unclean in all the most important respects, but
you're welcome to it.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 20 Dec 2025 17:38:15 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

I find journalctl unclean in all the most important respects ...

If that’s what your system is using to record its per-user log files,
then your choices are either a) learn to use it, or b) switch to a
different distro.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On Mon, 8 Dec 2025 22:28:53 -0000 (UTC), bp wrote:

Copying a YouTube URL into vlc media player causes an error, which starts with
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'https://rr2---sn-nvopjoxu-25ve.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?expire=1765254131&ei=k083aZHbLNaMlu8PvrCu0As&ip=50.1.20.31&id=o-AJ-TWnr5nbiu1saDbbnTkT--M44S09bXDdhPGEg1........
but I suppose that some deliberate access control by Youtube.

Could just be that VLC’s attempt at extracting media URLs from YouTube isn’t as up-to-date as that in a dedicated downloader like youtube-dl,
yt-dlp etc al.

You could get the media URL from one of those, and then see if VLC
will play it.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On 20 Dec 2025 17:38:15 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

I find journalctl unclean in all the most important respects ...

If that's what your system is using to record its per-user log files,
then your choices are either a) learn to use it, or b) switch to a
different distro.

Already done b), and in fact on Raspberry Pi I have the
(non-Systemd) syslog daemon started manually only for debugging, so
normally there are no such logs at all.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 22 Dec 2025 10:50:06 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On 20 Dec 2025 17:38:15 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

I find journalctl unclean in all the most important respects ...

If that's what your system is using to record its per-user log
files, then your choices are either a) learn to use it, or b)
switch to a different distro.

Already done b), and in fact on Raspberry Pi I have the
(non-Systemd) syslog daemon started manually only for debugging, so
normally there are no such logs at all.

So what happens to the diagnostic messages from GUI apps that you run?
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On 22 Dec 2025 10:50:06 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On 20 Dec 2025 17:38:15 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

I find journalctl unclean in all the most important respects ...

If that's what your system is using to record its per-user log
files, then your choices are either a) learn to use it, or b)
switch to a different distro.

Already done b), and in fact on Raspberry Pi I have the
(non-Systemd) syslog daemon started manually only for debugging, so
normally there are no such logs at all.

So what happens to the diagnostic messages from GUI apps that you run?

They go to the framebuffer console X is started from (Ctrl-Alt-F1),
unless they were started from a terminal window. But those messages
aren't sent to syslog by the GUI applications, maybe your systems
have something extra which does that when GUI programs are started?

Syslog messages go nowhere if there's no syslog daemon running.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

On 22 Dec 2025 15:53:54 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

So what happens to the diagnostic messages from GUI apps that you
run?

They go to the framebuffer console X is started from (Ctrl-Alt-F1),
unless they were started from a terminal window. But those messages
aren't sent to syslog by the GUI applications, maybe your systems
have something extra which does that when GUI programs are started?

I never said they were.
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.raspberry-pi

Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote at 02:57 this Sunday (GMT):

On Mon, 8 Dec 2025 22:28:53 -0000 (UTC), bp wrote:

Copying a YouTube URL into vlc media player causes an error, which starts with
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'https://rr2---sn-nvopjoxu-25ve.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?expire=1765254131&ei=k083aZHbLNaMlu8PvrCu0As&ip=50.1.20.31&id=o-AJ-TWnr5nbiu1saDbbnTkT--M44S09bXDdhPGEg1........
but I suppose that some deliberate access control by Youtube.

Could just be that VLC’s attempt at extracting media URLs from YouTube isn’t as up-to-date as that in a dedicated downloader like youtube-dl, yt-dlp etc al.

You could get the media URL from one of those, and then see if VLC
will play it.

If you're willing to try another player, mpv can play youtube videos if
yt-dlp is installed.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
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