MakeMKV above v1.17.7 still broken on Linux

[WoodenCheese]

I haven't found a solution, but I can also confirm that 1.17.7 worked for me first try whereas I'd been struggling with 1.18.3.

I was wondering if the issue was with my installation of Linux Mint, so I spun up an Ubuntu VM which appeared to work (aside from some VM-specific issues). Feeling good, I did a live boot of Ubuntu, installed MakeMKV via Snap, and then immediately ran into the same issue.

Someone on Reddit suggested I do the LibreDrive firmware, but I don't know how to do that on Linux and I don't have another Windows machine (this desktop now running Mint was my last).

[Sayaka]

As far as I know, flashing firmware and dumping firmware are broken on Linux with any version newer than 1.17.7. This might be why MakeMKV hangs - I believe it's trying to get the firmware dump, but due to the bug with the newer versions, it can't.

Do you need to download that manually?

I believe the "firmware tar file" should start with "dump_FW" and is actually a tgz file (so a tar/gzip archive, basically). It can be obtained by downgrading MakeMKV to a version that supports firmware dumping, or by using MakeMKV on Windows and then copying the file into your Linux MakeMKV config folder, for example.

I think I had to insert a Blu-ray disc in order to get the firmware dump.

If you get it downloaded using 1.17.7 does that mean you can then install a later version and it will work?

To the best of my knowledge ? Yes, it will work. Just having the firmware dump tgz file inside the right folder certainly fixed the issue for me.

(Note that when downgrading, you don't need to downgrade the GUI, AFAIK. Just downgrading makemkv-bin should work.)

[nuts_fulgurates]

Version 1.18.3 works for me after flashing my drive with LibreDrive firmware on Debian 13.

Before flashing with LibreDrive I got the infinite spin. After flashing it works fine.

[labmonkey]

Old versions are here:

https://makemkv.com/download/old/

You are a freakin lifesaver tysm!!

I'm finding that the checksums for the tar.gz files on the old downloads page don't match the hashes from the accompanying .txt files. Is that happening for anyone else, or just me? I've tried 3 files and none of them match...

[Sayaka]

Please see this topic for more information on the checksum issue : viewtopic.php?f=3&t=41798

[16442496]

Old versions are here:

https://makemkv.com/download/old/

You are a freakin lifesaver tysm!!

I'm finding that the checksums for the tar.gz files on the old downloads page don't match the hashes from the accompanying .txt files. Is that happening for anyone else, or just me? I've tried 3 files and none of them match...

Checksums match. Do not use Firefox for donwloading. Bug in Firefox.

[Sayaka]

Checksums match. Do not use Firefox for donwloading. Bug in Firefox.

I can confirm this, I used wget and everything is fine checksum-wise now. Thank you very much for solving this mystery.

[tomty89]

Bug in Firefox.

Not exactly.

Apparently it's really just that Firefox sends this header:

Code: Select all

Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br, zstd

(which is what curl would also do when run with --compressed)

Which apparently result in the server to perform on-the-fly gzip compression on what it serves -- only those that has already gzip-compressed. (I'm not sure what's the exact "criterion" that triggers the compression. Could be any file type that the server "doesn't really recognize" -- the content-type response header is set to "application/octet-stream" when a *.tar.gz is requested from it, whereas for .exe and .dmg the header would be set to something more specific.)

With that said I did see that there has been discussion (decades ago) about whether Firefox should decompress such on-the-fly compression -- or more precisely, when the response header "content-encoding: gzip" is received, it seems like the verdict is that it should only do so conditionally -- when the extension is not .gz. (I think the argument is more or less like "we cannot tell whether it is on-the-fly compression done by the server or not when the file is served with the header and named with .gz".)