[Installation] Failed to autoload value for VLC installed with snap

[b-luu]

System Info

• Operating system and version: Ubuntu 21.10 (minimal)
• Media Player and version: VLC 3.0.16
• Python version: 3.10.1

Description

vlcrc file wasn't found => autoload of VLC configuration could not work.

Reason

VLC was installed from the store with Snap... So the vlcrc isn't located at $HOME/.config/vlc/ but at $HOME/snap/vlc/common/

Work-around

Create a symbolic link:

ln -s "$HOME/snap/vlc/common/vlcrc" "$HOME/.config/vlc/vlcrc"

For future reference, if you get the same error but you're vlcrc isn't in $HOME/snap/vlc/common/ either, you should be able to find it with:

find ~ -name vlcrc

And then you can simply replace the first path of the ln -s command above, with the one you actually found.

Needed (long-term) solution

Detect snap install and point to $HOME/snap/vlc/common/ in that case

Command line output

Failed to autoload value from PosixPath('/home/<myhome>/.config/vlc/vlcrc'): File not found

Log file

Click to see log contents

``` 2022-01-02 17:46:12,545 - DEBUG - MainThread - notifier - Notifications enabled for categories: exception, misc, scrobble.pause, scrobble.resume, scrobble.start, scrobble.stop, trakt 2022-01-02 17:46:12,680 - INFO - MainThread - scrobbler - Started scrobbler thread. 2022-01-02 17:46:12,687 - DEBUG - MainThread - monitor - Failed to autoload value from PosixPath('/home//.config/vlc/vlcrc'): File not found 2022-01-02 17:46:12,688 - ERROR - MainThread - monitor - Config value autoload failed for vlc. 2022-01-02 17:46:12,688 - WARNING - MainThread - main - Could not start monitor for vlc ```

PS

I wanted to add the work-around in the wiki (VLC player setup section directly) but didn't find an easy way to contribute to the documentation (without having to fork and open a PR)

Thanks

Thanks for this tool, it's great !! And the code is nicely written, it's a pleasure to navigate. Nice work !!

[iamkroot]

Thanks for digging so deep into it and for making a detailed bug report! Simplest solution seems to be to add the snap dir to the list of potential config paths. I'll do just that.

However, do note that the autoload is just a bonus feature. If the app can't find the config files due to non-standard paths, you can always set the values manually using trakts config set players.<player_name>.<key> <value>.

To find out the fields you need to specify, take a look at the config_default.yaml file (all entries with auto-detect for your player need to be filled in manually). Since you don't frequently change the options in your media player (if at all), this should be fine.

I should probably mention this in the wiki too.

[iamkroot]

I wanted to add the work-around in the wiki (VLC player setup section directly) but didn't find an easy way to contribute to the documentation (without having to fork and open a PR)

That is mostly by design; I prefer to have the potential contribution discussed here as an issue first, before you (or anyone else) commits their time and effort into a possibly misguided change.