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Display smplayer over ssh tunnel

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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Inclined Plane
Posts: 8
Joined: 2017-04-24 17:21

Display smplayer over ssh tunnel

#1 Post by Inclined Plane »

I've had an odd problem appear while using Debian testing. I've always been able to connect from Debian to a headless server using "$ slogin -X server" and run "$ smplayer" on the server and have the smplayer interface appear on my desktop. However, sometime in the past few weeks it quit working. It simply gives "This is SMPlayer v. 15.11.0 running on Linux" in the server command window and nothing else happens. Everything else I've tried seems to open fine through the X forwarding. This occurs at home where both systems are Debian Stretch and at work where the server is Ubuntu 16.04.2 and the client is a third, unique Debian Stretch system. Interestingly, if go the opposite direction and slogin from the Ubuntu system (now the client) to the Debian system as server and run smplayer the interface appears as expected. It must be something on the Debian Stretch clients that is blocking the X-forwarded window.

Something I missed must have changed on the Debian clients that is preventing the window from opening. Any suggestions on how to track down the problem? (I tried slogin -Y as well.)

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debiman
Posts: 3063
Joined: 2013-03-12 07:18

Re: Display smplayer over ssh tunnel

#2 Post by debiman »

you could try different media players:
plain mplayer, or mpv.

but really i suspect some sort of x-y-problem here.
there must be less resource-intensive ways to achieve remote media playback.

Inclined Plane
Posts: 8
Joined: 2017-04-24 17:21

Re: Display smplayer over ssh tunnel

#3 Post by Inclined Plane »

I know what my problem is. Something that used to work very well for me suddenly quit working. Resource usage is trivial once the interface opens (and even that is negligible on this network), particularly compared to routing the audio from my desktop to the server using pulse audio. Plus, I really like the smplayer interface.

Now, can anyone help me determine why I can no longer display the smplayer interface over an ssh tunnel?

Inclined Plane
Posts: 8
Joined: 2017-04-24 17:21

Re: Display smplayer over ssh tunnel

#4 Post by Inclined Plane »

OK, I see I forgot to say what I use the smplayer interface for. The server is connected to my audio system and I listen to streaming radio that way. Once the interface comes up it is just a matter of selecting the particular station from the URL list. I don't stream any media over the link...I agree that would be silly. There are work-arounds of course, but I'm also concerned that if smplayer suddenly stopped working over a ssh tunnel then something else more critical will quit working as well. I'd like to get this figured out.

Bulkley
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Re: Display smplayer over ssh tunnel

#5 Post by Bulkley »

I don't know much about ssh tunnels but I stream radio URLs via a little app called Radiotray which sits in the systray. It's very convenient, easy to set up and low on resources.

Inclined Plane
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Joined: 2017-04-24 17:21

Re: Display smplayer over ssh tunnel

#6 Post by Inclined Plane »

I installed radiotray on the server but couldn't find a way to route the audio to the S/PDIF output through ALSA. Do you know if it is a pulseaudio app only? I suppose I could run a pulseaudio daemon from the command line on the server but that is a complication I'd like to avoid.

To add insult to injury, I tried VLC and the interface works fine over the tunnel and I can route the audio through ALSA, but I get hit badly by this "it's not a bug" bug.

Bulkley
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Re: Display smplayer over ssh tunnel

#7 Post by Bulkley »

Try installing radiotray on your desktop.

Inclined Plane
Posts: 8
Joined: 2017-04-24 17:21

Re: Display smplayer over ssh tunnel

#8 Post by Inclined Plane »

That won't work for me. The audio system is connected to the server so it needs to play on the server. I can set up pulse audio as command-line daemon and route the audio stream via pulse audio, but that is a resource hog (and a pain to make sure that the daemon is always running).

I installed Jessie in a virtual machine and X-forwarding smplayer through the ssh tunnel worked as expected. There is definitely something in the latest testing version that is causing a problem. Just wish I knew what it was!

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pylkko
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Re: Display smplayer over ssh tunnel

#9 Post by pylkko »

I don't know what changed in the smplayer package or elsewhere, you could ask the package maitainers. But I have built several audio server systems such as you describe, that is machines that you can control with another client to play music there (at the non-client side). for example, stretch has mopidy 2.1 and it while not based on mpd offers the mpd API, so it can be controlled by any mpd client. Alternatively, you can have it serve a websocket webpage (tornado), so that any device, even a phone with no native client whatsover, can control the server and get data in (almost) real time. Such non-streaming music control is especailly nice for mobile devices because they can go to modem sleep while you are not using them to control the player (in contrast to say using wifi to download music and sendinf it over bluetooth a2dp to a speaker - something that many people are fond of). There are also numerous extensions for mopidy, a spotify extension, webradio ones, it can play URL's, playlists with radio streams, anything. If you don't want to use a client, you can control it over ssh with simple text based commands.

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debiman
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Re: Display smplayer over ssh tunnel

#10 Post by debiman »

Inclined Plane wrote:this "it's not a bug" bug.
that was nice for giggles!
:mrgreen:
and 1 or 2 good workarounds at the bottom.

Inclined Plane
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Re: Display smplayer over ssh tunnel

#11 Post by Inclined Plane »

I'll try the mopidy + mpd approach. Thanks for the suggestion. The VLC workaround with looping on kept it from completely dying when there was network hiccup but there would still be (very annoying) long gaps.

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