Amazon Instant Video and hal

[Shelnutt2]

After searching I finally found a solution to the amazon instant video issue on linux. Amazon uses flash player to provide it's video service but videos that are drm protected don't work anymore, since around December of last year it seems. I hadn't watched any drm videos so I didn't realize that until today. It seems the form of drm they use requires that hal be installed. However everyone in the linux world has moved on from hal and uses udev. I found the solution here . I know this works as I installed libhal and hal in xubuntu on my netbook and amazon videos started playing fine.

It seems I'm forced to reinstall hal on my desktop box running gentoo if I want to watch amazon instant videos which are protected. My concern is that since hal is depreciated can I install it along side udev? It seems just like a huge mess waiting to happen. I don't want to use or run hald except when I manually start it to watch amazon videos. This whole form of drm is a bit ridiculous and down right dumb. However is it possible to install hal, without setting any useflags and without messing up udev/gnome 3 install?

A better question is hal even still in portage? I thought I remember it was removed and I can't seem to find any packages for it.

[Gusar]

You can run HAL just fine and it won't cause any issues. Stuff doesn't care if it's there or not. Except the stuff that actually needs it, of course, like Amazon Video.

It's indeed not in portage anymore. I have no idea if it's in any overlay, there's a search engine for overlays, but I can't access it at this moment: http://gpo.zugaina.org/. The kde-sunset overlay might have it.

Then there's another thing, not relevant to Gentoo yet, but it will be soon: A feature HAL needs from udev has been removed in udev>=183. However, an Arch user has created a patch to make HAL work with those udev versions again: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=51454

[Shelnutt2]

You can run HAL just fine and it won't cause any issues. Stuff doesn't care if it's there or not. Except the stuff that actually needs it, of course, like Amazon Video.

It's indeed not in portage anymore. I have no idea if it's in any overlay, there's a search engine for overlays, but I can't access it at this moment: http://gpo.zugaina.org/. The kde-sunset overlay might have it.

Then there's another thing, not relevant to Gentoo yet, but it will be soon: A feature HAL needs from udev has been removed in udev>=183. However, an Arch user has created a patch to make HAL work with those udev versions again: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=51454

Good guess on the kde-sunset it was in the overlay. I appreciate you confirming that I shouldn't have any issues.

I'm getting a build error with hal in automake. The relevant error log is:

Code: Select all

gtk-doc.make:55: error: GTK_DOC_BUILD_HTML does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
doc/api/libhal-storage/Makefile.am:64:   'gtk-doc.make' included from here
gtk-doc.make:60: error: GTK_DOC_BUILD_PDF does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
doc/api/libhal-storage/Makefile.am:64:   'gtk-doc.make' included from here
gtk-doc.make:55: error: GTK_DOC_BUILD_HTML does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
doc/api/libhal/Makefile.am:64:   'gtk-doc.make' included from here
gtk-doc.make:60: error: GTK_DOC_BUILD_PDF does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
doc/api/libhal/Makefile.am:64:   'gtk-doc.make' included from here

It seems the issue is generally caused by too old version of gtk-doc-am, but I'm running the latest version. I'm going to see if perhaps I need an older version of gtk-doc-am. Seems like maybe these functions were removed at some point. I already have the docs use flag disabled.

[VoidMage]

Well, the actual problem here is that Amazon sucks a bit and Adobe a lot.

The problem lies in the file called libadobecp-200489-1.so - it still uses libhal which at this date is quite broken.

It's explained here but that article just ignores hal being dead.

There's even this bug, but as usual, Adobe just ignores it.

[Gusar]

it still uses libhal which at this date is quite broken.

HAL still works perfectly fine with the apps that use it. None in portage do, but I'm using pcmanfm-0.5.2 which does, and it works great.

[VoidMage]

What you fail to see, is that hal and udisks/upower conflict.

[Gusar]

What you fail to see, is that hal and udisks/upower conflict.

In what way exactly?

[VoidMage]

Easy - condition race.
Unless you strip down hal (which could be quite tricky), both hal and udisks try to do stuff i.e. with media detection.

I wonder...
Adobe has basically dropped Linux, but Google still builds Flash for Chrome.
Perhaps going at this problem from this angle could help getting it solved.

[Gusar]

Easy - condition race.
Unless you strip down hal (which could be quite tricky), both hal and udisks try to do stuff i.e. with media detection.

Not at all.

The way hal and udisks work is that they subscribe to udev events. And udev can very well send events to all processes interested in them, not just one or the other. In this case to both hal and udisks. Then you have apps higher up that use either hal or udisks. And it is those apps that do stuff, not hal/udisks themselves, they're just middlemen. So say you have pcmanfm-0.5.2 (uses hal) and Nautilus (uses udisks) installed. Now plug in an usb-stick. Udev will tell both hal and udisks that there is a new device, and so it'll appear in both pcmanfm and nautilus. Then mount it in one app, and the other will recognize it's mounted.

[fert]

Amazon videos again stopped working for me again.

In firefox, it will go through the "loading", then "connecting", then crash every single time with the "Adobe Flash plugin has crashed. Reload the page..."

In google-chrome, it gets through the "loading" and "connecting", and looks like it will play, but the video never plays. Just a blank screen. The top and bottom bars show, and you can adjust the settings, seek, etc, but the video itself never plays.

hald-0.5.14-r1 no longer works for me. When started via the init.d script, it just hangs for a while, then reports that it cannot be started. But honestly, I don't know if that's the problem.

I've been making a feeble attempt at getting hal via git (which reports itself as 0.5.15) to work, but so far no luck.

Anyone currently having luck?

If so, what version of firefox, flash, and hal are you running?

TIA

[Gusar]

Which version of udev are you using?

[fert]

Which version of udev are you using?

189

Is that wrong? Does it need to be downgraded?

[Gusar]

189

Is that wrong? Does it need to be downgraded?

You need to patch HAL to work with it. The patches are at the link I already gave above: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=51454 <- grab the tarball from there, you need two patches from it - hal-libudev-events.patch and udev-update.patch

[fert]

You need to patch HAL to work with it. The patches are at the link I already gave above: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=51454 <- grab the tarball from there, you need two patches from it - hal-libudev-events.patch and udev-update.patch

Thanks! I'm not sure how I missed your earlier post. I'm glad you pointed it out rather than blowing me off for being an idiot.

The Arch patches worked like a charm.

[John R. Graham]

Moved from Multimedia to Unsupported Software as HAL is long gone from Portage.

- John

[tonyp]

You can run HAL just fine and it won't cause any issues. Stuff doesn't care if it's there or not. Except the stuff that actually needs it, of course, like Amazon Video.

It's indeed not in portage anymore. I have no idea if it's in any overlay, there's a search engine for overlays, but I can't access it at this moment: http://gpo.zugaina.org/. The kde-sunset overlay might have it.

Then there's another thing, not relevant to Gentoo yet, but it will be soon: A feature HAL needs from udev has been removed in udev>=183. However, an Arch user has created a patch to make HAL work with those udev versions again: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=51454

Good guess on the kde-sunset it was in the overlay. I appreciate you confirming that I shouldn't have any issues.

I'm getting a build error with hal in automake. The relevant error log is:

Code: Select all

gtk-doc.make:55: error: GTK_DOC_BUILD_HTML does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
doc/api/libhal-storage/Makefile.am:64:   'gtk-doc.make' included from here
gtk-doc.make:60: error: GTK_DOC_BUILD_PDF does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
doc/api/libhal-storage/Makefile.am:64:   'gtk-doc.make' included from here
gtk-doc.make:55: error: GTK_DOC_BUILD_HTML does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
doc/api/libhal/Makefile.am:64:   'gtk-doc.make' included from here
gtk-doc.make:60: error: GTK_DOC_BUILD_PDF does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
doc/api/libhal/Makefile.am:64:   'gtk-doc.make' included from here

It seems the issue is generally caused by too old version of gtk-doc-am, but I'm running the latest version. I'm going to see if perhaps I need an older version of gtk-doc-am. Seems like maybe these functions were removed at some point. I already have the docs use flag disabled.

Were you able to fix this automake error? I can't get it to compile now, after it was previously working but after upgrading udev it won't recompile. I've applied the patches from the arch linux set up but still a no go. I've also tried with different versions of automake by doing the following:

Code: Select all

WANT_AUTOMAKE=1.x emerge -av hal

replacing x with version 8-12

Thanks

[tonyp]

I got this working finally. I had to eliminate all instances of docs in hal, but who needs them at this point?
Here are my patches https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6Ez3w ... WhFaVBSVG8 I put the patches in /etc/portage/patches/sys-apps/hal
I also had to edit the ebuild file to allow for user patches, it should look like this.

Code: Select all

src_prepare() {
        EPATCH_MULTI_MSG="Applying Gentoo Patchset ..." \
        EPATCH_SUFFIX="patch" \
        EPATCH_SOURCE="${WORKDIR}/${PATCHNAME}/patches/" \
        EPATCH_FORCE="yes" \
        epatch
        epatch_user

        eautoreconf
}

Afterwards, just ran ebuild hal-0.5.14-r4.ebuild manifest and then emerge hal

And, in case you need this info:

Code: Select all

emerge --info sys-apps/hal
Portage 2.1.11.31 (default/linux/amd64/10.0, gcc-4.5.4, glibc-2.15-r3, 3.4.9-gentoo x86_64)
=================================================================
                        System Settings
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-3.4.9-gentoo-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-_i5-3570K_CPU_@_3.40GHz-with-gentoo-2.1
Timestamp of tree: Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:45:01 +0000
ld GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.22
app-shells/bash:          4.2_p37
dev-java/java-config:     2.1.11-r3
dev-lang/python:          2.7.3-r2, 3.2.3
dev-util/cmake:           2.8.9
dev-util/pkgconfig:       0.27.1
sys-apps/baselayout:      2.1-r1
sys-apps/openrc:          0.11.5
sys-apps/sandbox:         2.5
sys-devel/autoconf:       2.13, 2.68
sys-devel/automake:       1.11.6
sys-devel/binutils:       2.22-r1
sys-devel/gcc:            4.5.4
sys-devel/gcc-config:     1.7.3
sys-devel/libtool:        2.4-r1
sys-devel/make:           3.82-r3
sys-kernel/linux-headers: 3.6 (virtual/os-headers)
sys-libs/glibc:           2.15-r3
Repositories: gentoo cj-overlay yarik-overlay science kde-sunset x-portage
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/config /usr/share/gnupg/qualified.txt"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo"
CXXFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FCFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-logs config-protect-if-modified distlocks ebuild-locks fixlafiles merge-sync news parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch"
FFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ ftp://ftp.ucsb.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/gentoo/ http://ftp.ucsb.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/gentoo/ http://mirror.usu.edu/mirrors/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.wallawalla.edu/pub/mirrors/ftp.gentoo.org "
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed"
LINGUAS="en en_US"
MAKEOPTS="-j5"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --human-readable --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/var/lib/layman/cj-overlay /var/lib/layman/yarik-overlay /var/lib/layman/science /var/lib/layman/kde-sunset /usr/local/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync27.us.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="X a52 aac aalib acl acpi additions aim alsa amd64 audiofile bash-completion bluetooth bluray bzip2 caps cdb cdparanoia cdr cli consolekit cracklib crypt css cups cxx dbus dga dio directfb dri dts dv dvb dvd dvdr dvdread emacs emul-linux-x86 encode exif fat fbcon ffmpeg fftw fglrx firefox flac flash fortran ftp g3dvl gdbm gif gmp gnutls gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 hbci hfs hfsplus iconv icq icu ieee1394 imagemagick inifile ipod jabber java javascript jikes jingle jpeg kde kdehiddenvisibility kerberos kqemu kvm lash libcaca libnotify libwww lm_sensors mad matroska mime mjpeg mmx mmxext modules mp3 mp4 mplayer msql mssql mudflap multilib mysql mysqli nas ncurses nls nptl nsplugin ntfs ofx ogg ogm openal opencl opengl openmp openrc oss pam pcre pdf perl php png policykit portaudio postgres pppd python qemu qt3support qt4 quicktime readline recode rtsp scanner sdl session smp sox sqlite sqlite3 srt sse sse2 sse3 ssl ssse3 svg sysfs tcl tcltk tcpd theora threads tiff tk truetype udev unicode usb vaapi vcd video vorbis webkit winbind wms wxwindows x264 xine xinerama xml xmms xrandr xulrunner xv xvba xvid xvmc zlib" ALSA_CARDS="hda-intel" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="authn_core authz_core socache_shmcb unixd actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cgi cgid dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CALLIGRA_FEATURES="kexi words flow plan sheets stage tables krita karbon braindump" CAMERAS="ptp2" COLLECTD_PLUGINS="df interface irq load memory rrdtool swap syslog" ELIBC="glibc" GPSD_PROTOCOLS="ashtech aivdm earthmate evermore fv18 garmin garmintxt gpsclock itrax mtk3301 nmea ntrip navcom oceanserver oldstyle oncore rtcm104v2 rtcm104v3 sirf superstar2 timing tsip tripmate tnt ubx" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" KERNEL="linux module" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS="presenter-console presenter-minimizer" LINGUAS="en en_US" PHP_TARGETS="php5-3" PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python2_7" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_2" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18 ruby19" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="fglrx" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account"
Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_BUNZIP2_COMMAND, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, USE_PYTHON

=================================================================
                        Package Settings
=================================================================

sys-apps/hal-0.5.14-r4 was built with the following:
USE="X acpi crypt (multilib) -apm -debug -dell -disk-partition -doc -laptop (-selinux)"
CFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe -rdynamic"
CXXFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe -rdynamic"

[rogerx]

Since I'm actively using the Amazon Prime Video service within the past weeks here in Alaska (where cost of cable TV is excessive), I'm in the process of integrating this hacked in hal into my current Gentoo O/S layout.

If successful, I will open a bug (on bugs.gentoo.org) and post all the files and patches within one central location for others wanting to use the Amazon Video service within Linux.

(I can't remember why I dropped integrating the portage overlay a few weeks ago, but will find-out shortly. And, I can only imagine people are awaiting an HTML5 or similar solution. Also have to chance some newbie Gentoo Dev will shut the bug down. ;-)

Anybody feel free to take the lead on this if they wish, and quickly post a URL here.

2013.01.30 @10:16: Currently the details omitted within the last user's How To post; 1) The patch file provided is really a gz (gunzip) file and not a bzip2 file, and needs to be specified as such within the ebuild. 2) The patch file name the previous user provided by a 3rd party link is not named properly within the ebuild 3) After the previous are mitigated, the patch files do not apply cleanly to the sources or is uncompressed to another location prompting a "Cannot find $EPATCH_SOURCE!" Another step omitted, >=hal-info-2008 is needed and also needs to be added to the users' overlay.

[BitJam]

FWIW, I've been running Amazon Prime with a custom version of hal-0.5.14-r4 since last May. If you send me a pm with your email I will send you a tarball of my /usr/local/portage/sys-apps/hal. Here is the contents of the files subdirectory:

Code: Select all

0.5.14-hald.conf
0.5.14-hald.rc.1
glib.patch
hal-0.5.14-gentoo-patches-4.tar.bz2
hal-0.5.14-gentoo-patches-5.tar.bz2
hal-unmount.dev

I have not tried to reinstall it since last May.

[BitJam]

After an emerge -uDN world last night, the hald service hangs when I try to start it. But "ps aux | grep hal" shows that hal seems to start. Of course, Amazon videos stopped playing. The flash player crashes due to a segfault in libdbus. Strange but true.

I was able to work around this problem by simply starting hald manually:

Code: Select all

# /usr/sbin/hald --verbose=yes --use-syslog --daemon=yes

First I had to use kill and killall to stop the stop-start-daemon and the hal processes it had started.

The problem was very repeatable. I'm not certain the work-around is.

I was also unable to re-emerge hal. The emerge failed during automake.

edit: That workaround is bogus. During the emerge world, udev got upgraded from 171-r10 to 197-r4. I downgraded back to 171-r10 and hal and Amazon video are both much happier. I don't think udev was even running when I encountered the problems because I normally use mdev. Is it possible that just installing udev-197-r4 was enough to break hal?

[rogerx]

I haven't made much headway on this issue since you emailed the tarball to me.

Reason being, I'm a little edgy about privacy & using a 3rd party tarball versus something more formally published for the majority.

Although I'd be happy to create a bug on bugs.gentoo.org, I'm almost certain most others will also be additionally edgy with even my work (or unsupported work posted on bugs.gentoo.org) and their privacy of their accounts.

[krinpaus]

I haven't made much headway on this issue since you emailed the tarball to me.

Thanks to information from BitJam and previous posters in this thread, I've had success
(and can still rebuild hal-info and hal) by using the ebuilds found on http://gpo.zugaina.org/ ,
specifically for app-misc/hal-info-20091130 and sys-apps/hal-0.5.14-r4 .

The tarballs for each package are found on http://hal.freedesktop.org/releases/ .

hal-0.5.14-gentoo-patches-4.tar.bz2 can be found at http://ftp.las.ic.unicamp.br/pub/librix ... distfiles/

-I only start hald when I'm going to go specifically into Amazon Prime Instant Videos, not in my startup
-udev-197-r8 and kernel 3.4.30
-hal is built with X and acpi
-automake-1.11.6

Ken

[moosh]

I believe there's a better solution now in the form of the package media-libs/hal-flash which is available in the portage tree.

[rogerx]

[quote="moosh"]I believe there's a better solution now in the form of the package media-libs/hal-flash which is available in the portage tree.[/quote]

Thanks Anthony Wiener, I mean Moosh.

I've check some free Dr. Who Amazon.com video trailers and they work, but I'm not sure if they have DRM within the feeds.

I've finally found the Adobe Flash DRM test video, and hal-flash appears to work wonderfully!

http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/ ... -play.html

I'm set for Winter as long as they don't screw things up again. ;-)

2013.08.08 21:20 UTC - For historical purposes, See Gentoo Bug #478480 "media-libs/hal-flash - HAL compatibility layer for www-plugins/adobe-flash" (http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478480) This bug introduces this hal-flash package ebuild. (Apparently, OpenSuse implemented this fix a while ago.)

Also, the HOMEPAGE for this hal-flash package contains the test video instructions and medium for users. (ie. https://github.com/cshorler/hal-flash)