The No-BS Guide to Playing DVDs Under GNU/Linux Systems

The No-BS Guide to Playing DVDs Under GNU/Linux
Written 04/02/2000, last revised 04/03/2000

INTRODUCTION:

     This page exists because my fellow free software/open source enthusiasts have, as usual, failed to provide a simple howto guide on the subject. Those who feel that only those willing to put in a lot of work "deserve" to be able to play DVDs are not welcome here; flames along these lines will be cordially ignored. This guide is meant to fill a void by explaining, from start to finish, how to go from a DVD-incapable system to a DVD-capable system-- in one sitting.

     A further note-- the techniques contained within this tutorial are, to the best of my knowledge, legal. (This as asserted not by just by me, but by the fine folks who wrote the driver I use, people whose driver was published on Creative Labs's site) This is because rather than doing CSS decryption in software, the DxR2 board itself is allowed to handle it.

     When I first got interested in the playing DVDs (I got my first DVD playing hardware-- namely, a Creative Labs Encore DxR2-based DVD upgrade kit-- rather late in the game), I was disgusted to find that there was no way to play a DVD under GNU/Linux. Rather, there was a highly-disputed program called DeCSS out there. I began distributing DeCSS on my Web site; it was a small Windows program which would decrypt a DVD into a file which could then be played in various means. I distributed it with the intention of helping people who, like me, prefer to spend most of their time in GNU/Linux systems play their legally-owned DVDs. (This could be done by decrypting the DVDs under Windows, rebooting into GNU/Linux, and playing to one's heart's content.) However, the DVD CCA interpreted DeCSS as (and seemingly ONLY as) a pirates' tool, and sent their spooks after myself and several hundred others in a well-publicized lawsuit. I took down my DeCSS mirror.

     Meanwhile, all I wanted to do was play DVDs-- not pirate them. Goodness knows that I can't afford the hardware-- or even the bandwidth-- needed to pirate huge DVD files! However, since there seemed to be no legal way to play DVDs under GNU/Linux, I was stuck, unable to play my own movies on my own system. Until now.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

You will most definitely need-- at least, for the solution outlined in this tutorial-- all of the following:

A GNU/Linux (Debian, Slackware, Caldera, Mandrake, Red Hat, Corel, et cetera) operating system of some sorts
A 2.2 kernel or later, with kernel sources (highly recommended: kernel 2.2.14 or higher
A Creative Labs DxR2 (NOT DxR3 or any other board!) decoder board.
A TV. Yes, a TV. The driver doesn't support VGA overlays yet as of this writing. (I use an old composite color monitor, as used on the old Apple II computers, as mine)
A working compiler system-- you will need to patch and recompile your kernel.

FROM 0 TO 60: SETTING YOUR SYSTEM UP TO PLAY DVDS

Most of the important parts of this tutorial are taken directly from the files contained on, and linked to from, the "Creative Open Source" page, most notably the "ReadMe" file distributed with the DxR2 driver/DVD player utility. (If you can't grok this readme, or if you want more information, read that file!) To the wonderful people who wrote the DxR2 driver, and to all those who provided the information that helped me get this stuff going, thank you. So, here are the installation steps, in an easy-to-follow format.

Let's rock and roll!

Patch your kernel with the latest CD/DVD-ROM driver patch from http://www.kernel.dk. If, for some reason, the patch fails, feel free to e-mail me and I will help you. To do this:
- Download the "DVD/CD patch" or "DVD/CD + IDE patch" (the latter adds updated support for newer (DMA) IDE hardware as well as the CD/DVD updates) appropriate to your kernel version. (For instance, I use kernel 2.2.14, so I downloaded dvd-ide-2.2.14-2.diff.bz2, the latest patch available for 2.2.14 as of this writing)
- Decompress the thing. It will be a bzip2 file; to decompress it, go: bunzip2 <filename>, where <filename> is the name of the compressed patch file.
- Change directories to /usr/src and go: patch -p0 < <filename>, where <filename> is the name of the now-uncompressed patch file.
Patch your kernel with the latest UDF patch from http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~bfennema/udf.html. http://trylinux.com/projects/udf/index.html is another place to get kernel patches, as well as binary modules and relevent specs! If, for some reason, the patch fails, feel free to e-mail me and I will help you. To do this:
- Download the latest 2.2 or 2.3 patch appropriate to your kernel version. (For instance, I use kernel 2.2.14, so I downloaded udf-2.2.14-2.diff.gz, which was the latest patch available for 2.2.14 as of this writing)
- Decompress the thing. It will be a gzip file; to decompress it, go: gunzip <filename>, where <filename> is the name of the compressed patch file..
- Change directories to /usr/src and go: patch -p0 < <filename>, where <filename> is the name of the now-uncompressed patch file.
Reboot with your new kernel. Make sure everything's working properly, et cetera.
Download the firmware file from http://opensource.creative.com/binaries.html. It will have a name like "dvd1.ux" or the like; the one that was there when I downloaded mine was DVD12.UX. (If for whatever reason you can't find this thing, or anything else listed in this tutorial, e-mail me.)
Make the dxr2 device node: mknod /dev/dxr2 c 120 0
Download the latest "dxr2" tarball (dxr2-(SOMETHING).tar.gz) from http://opensource.creative.com/snapshot.html. Decompress the thing-- e.g. tar -xzvf <filename>, where <filename> is the name of the dxr2 tarball.
Compile and install the driver/program. cd into the directory that was created (cd dxr2) and run:
- make: If this errors out, complaining about "parse error before `dvd_authinfo'", especially on Debian systems, try copying the 'asm' and 'linux' include dirs from the kernel source tree into /usr/include. To do this:
  - mv /usr/include/linux /usr/include/linux.dist
  - mv /usr/include/asm /usr/include/asm.dist
  - cp -avf /usr/src/linux/include/linux /usr/include
  - mkdir /usr/include/asm
  - cp -avf /usr/src/linux/include/asm/* /usr/include/asm
- make insert: inserts all the modules into the kernel
- make remove: (Once you've seen make insert work without bugging out) Gets them back out again.
- make install: Most importantly, installs dvdplay into /usr/local/bin.
Set up the DxR2 modules to run on startup. Put this command into your startup scripts: /sbin/modprobe dxr2. And while you're at it, run it once right now, to get the modules in so you can begin playing DVDs immediately!

For you Red Hat types-- the appropriate file to add this line to the end of is /etc/rc.d/rc.local. Other GNU/Linux systems may have the equivalent file in a different location, or may not have such a file at all (in which case you'll have to make your own custom "run at the end of the startup sequence" script in /etc/rc*.d)
Download gdvd, a GNOME front-end for dvdplay. There are others-- but this one, I know, works. Compiling gdvd should be as easy as tar -xzvf <filename> ; cd gdvd ; ./configure ; make ; make install, provided you have the things gdvd requires installed.
Making darned sure the dxr2 modules are in the kernel (check lsmod-- do you see them? If not, try modprobe dxr2 again.), run gdvd. It may have been installed as something like /usr/local/bin/gdvd_1a; in this case, it'll make it easier on you to go ln -s <name of binary> /usr/local/bin/gdvd. I also find that the following script makes playing DVDs a mite easier. I call the script /usr/local/bin/dvd:
```
#!/bin/bash
mount /dev/dvd /mnt/dvd -t udf &> /dev/null
/usr/local/bin/gdvd $*
umount /mnt/dvd
```
Very simple, but it means you'll never have to mount your DVDs yourself. Of course, you'll have to mkdir /mnt/dvd if /mnt/dvd doesn't exist ;)
Enjoy your DVDs!

SEE ALSO:

     Quite possibly the best single resource useful to those wishing to use their DxR2 board under GNU/Linux is at http://gdxr2.havoknet.com/howto/dvd-HOWTO.html.

AUTHOR:

      Jon Blank (caspianNO@SPAMtwu.net)

DISCLAIMER:

      I'm not claiming ownership of ANY copyrighted, trademarked, patented, "trade secret" or other information mentioned or linked to from this tutorial.