Media player processes that can't be killed.
Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 9:24 pm
Hi,
I have a little home network with a few Linux Mint 14 laptops and a Windows 7 desktop all tied together using Samba. The network works fine except for one issue: I have a shared folder with video files on one computer which are being played back on others in the network. We're using either Totem or VLC which works well when playing back local media, but when playing back from the shared video folder the players sometimes freezes up. That would not be a serious problem if you could simply close them down and start again, but what happens is that a non responsive totem or VLC process prevents playback unless they are killed. The problem gets really annoying when it turns out that the processes can't be killed. I have tried all kinds of brutal kills, also as root, to no avail. The only solution is to reboot the machine. Does anyone know why this happens and if there's anything I can do with either the players or with my network to prevent it from happening? I do not expect to have perfect playback at all times since the wireless connection between computers may be flaky, but it would be good not having to reboot every time there's a video playback problem.
I have a little home network with a few Linux Mint 14 laptops and a Windows 7 desktop all tied together using Samba. The network works fine except for one issue: I have a shared folder with video files on one computer which are being played back on others in the network. We're using either Totem or VLC which works well when playing back local media, but when playing back from the shared video folder the players sometimes freezes up. That would not be a serious problem if you could simply close them down and start again, but what happens is that a non responsive totem or VLC process prevents playback unless they are killed. The problem gets really annoying when it turns out that the processes can't be killed. I have tried all kinds of brutal kills, also as root, to no avail. The only solution is to reboot the machine. Does anyone know why this happens and if there's anything I can do with either the players or with my network to prevent it from happening? I do not expect to have perfect playback at all times since the wireless connection between computers may be flaky, but it would be good not having to reboot every time there's a video playback problem.