On my system, /dev/rtc doesn't exist. This was the location of the rtc device in pre-devfs times, and also exists if devfs is set up to be backwards compatible. However, this assumption should not necessarily be made. On several systems the location is /dev/misc/rtc, and who knows where it will be when we all switch to udev (once that's matured and finalised). This patch is necessary for such systems where /dev/rtc doesn't exist: which is, of course, a perfectly valid setup to have. This trivial patch adds a -rtc command line option allowing a user to do this (for example): mplayer -rtc /dev/misc/rtc [options] I don't know what format you guys like patches in, so here's a standard diff -u with no header (for patch -p0). adding the patch into the mplayer ebuilds works just like the other patches... cd ${S}; epatch ${FILESDIR}/rtc_commandline_option.patch Of course, it has a stupid name because I'm bad with names. I've tested this with versions 0.92 and 1.0_preX, which is all there seems to be in portage right now.
Created attachment 22603 [details, diff] patch to add command-line option for RTC device location
Why fix this in gentoo? It's not a gentoo specific problem. I would send it for inclusion in mplayer.
I tried to, but got no response. I'm not sure I've submitted it to them correctly. I've pretty much given up on this, and I agree that it's not a gentoo issue. Either it gets applied upstream or not at all. Jensen: feel free to submit it upstream if you want it there. :) Closing.
