Simple fix for this. When running any application that is either using DirectFB or VDPAU, you may find the following error:

NVIDIA: could not open the device file /dev/nvidiactl (Permission denied)

this is caused by your user account not having access to the video group. Without this access, you have no permissions to access the Nvidia card.

Solution:

Add your username to the video group. Open up a terminal, and run this:

sudo usermod -a -G video username

changing ‘username’ to your actual username. Reboot and all should be well. If you are also a Boxee user like myself then you will find it has the added bonus of boxee no longer crashing when trying to use VDPAU.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 24th, 2009 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.