[MPlayer-users] mplayer unable to dump file

[Corey Hickey]

Ambrosius Nihilo wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I am trying to record off of a radio stream (for example Austrian Public 
> Radio).
> 
> The command
> 
> mplayer -noframedrop -dumpfile /home/my-directory/sound-file.ram 
> -dumpstream mms://stream4.orf.at/oe1-wort
> 
> does the trick beautifully on my old computer.

It works fine for me, too.

> However, on my new computer where I installed mplayer via Debian (Ubuntu 
> Linux Dapper) as opposed to from source (my old computer) [I ran into 
> difficulties doing it by hand on my new computer, so I'd rather not 
> re-install from source], the same command does not work and produces the 
> following error message:
> 
> Stream not seekable!
> Cannot open dump file.
> 
> mplayer works fine otherwise, and the command
> 
> mplayer mms://stream4.orf.at/oe1-wort
> 
> plays back Austrian Public Radio without a hitch. Could anyone help, 
> please?

Does /home/my-directory exist? (I'm assuming you're using "my-directory" 
as an example; I will do so as well.)

Do you have ownership of and write permissions on /home/my-directory?

Does /home/my-directory/sound-file.ram already exist with read-only 
permissions or the wrong ownership?

Is /home mounted read-write?

Does your disk have any free space?


I can't think of anything else at the moment, except for perhaps a 
kernel bug or disk/filesystem problem, which is unlikely in this case 
unless you've noticed anything else wrong.

-Corey