Ubuntu4Beginners

Some days ago I really don't know what happened but MPlayer didn't work  anymore, it was giving me an error something like this:

/usr/bin/mplayer: symbol lookup error: /usr/bin/mplayer: undefined  symbol: codec_wav_tags

If you have the same error you can try to reinstall the program. For me the installation from the Synaptic Package Manager didn't resolved my problem and because of this I've installed from an other repository. If you have the same problem you could try the steps below. If you never installed MPlayer or SMPlayer you also can do the same steps.



1. Open the console by pressing ALT+F2 and write there gnome-terminal.

2. In the Terminal write this line to open the source file (where the repository sources are located)

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

3. At the bottom of the file write this things, exactly like below!
If you use Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10) write this:

##MPLayer 
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/mplayer/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/mplayer/ubuntu karmic main

If you use Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) write this:

##MPLayer
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/mplayer/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/mplayer/ubuntu jaunty main

4. After saving the file you have to introduce also a key, like this:

sudo apt-key adv  --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 03E02400

5. You have to update the software sources like this:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

6. If you didn't had this video player you have to install it from scratch

sudo apt-get install mplayer

7. I highly recommend also installing the front-end for MPlayer, called SMPlayer

sudo apt-get install smplayer
sudo apt-get install smplayer-themes 

Hope that this resolves the error undefined symbol: codec_wav_tags and that you can enjoy this beautiful application.

A good tutorial for this subject you can find here.