erratic response while playing a cd

I'm running Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3 on a desktop at
the office, and lamentably I don't have root privs.  I haven't been
able to get gnome-cd to successfully retrieve info from freedb.org,
so I decided to try other cd players, including grip 3.2.0.  I don't
need its ripping capability, just a nice cd player that hits freedb.
I've built it from source, and it does hit freedb without a hitch.

Unfortunately, its behavior is quite erratic.  For example,
sometimes when I hit the "next track" button while playing track
6, it seems to completely ignore the request other than the time
display showing "07 00:00" until I release the mouse button.  At
other times, "next track" seems to work for about 5 seconds (though
the time display shows "-- --:--"), before it jumps to the start
of the disc & starts playing there for a few seconds, then walks
through the next few tracks (1 second each) & picks up somewhere in
the middle of track 4.  Then it might jump back to where it was in
track 6.  This is just an example - I've tried different discs, and
from different points while playing, and it's always erratic, in
both condensed & track display mode.  No other cd software players
(like gnome-cd) are running when this behavior is exhibited.

I don't believe it's a faulty cd-rw unit, since when I start
gnome-cd while grip is still running, & I hit the gnome-cd
"pause/play/stop/next/prev" buttons, the response is flawless (and
interestingly, the grip time display stays in sync with the cd-rw
unit, reflecting the correct track number, pause state, etc.).

My hunch is I didn't supply a necessary switch to the build script;
all I used was "sh configure --prefix=/custom/builds/grip/grip-3.2.0" .

Does anyone have suggestions on what I can try?

I tried grip 3.3.1, but it pulls a segfault at startup:
(grip:30570): Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkwidget.c: line 1827
(gtk_widget_hide): assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

I tried grip 3.0.7, but the configure complains about libhttp not
being installed (even though libghttp is installed), and I'm not
keen on pursuing what might turn into several hours of dependencies
just to hit freedb.

I've got the output from configure for 3.2.0 ready to go but didn't
want to clutter the list; ask me for it if you think it might reveal
something.  The only oddball things I could spy:
[...]
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
/custom/downloads/grip-3.2.0/missing: Unknown `--run' option
Try `/custom/downloads/grip-3.2.0/missing --help' for more information
configure: WARNING: `missing' script is too old or missing
checking for gawk... gawk
[...]
checking cdda/cdda_paranoia.h presence... yes
configure: WARNING: cdda/cdda_paranoia.h: present but cannot be compiled
configure: WARNING: cdda/cdda_paranoia.h: check for missing prerequisite headers?
configure: WARNING: cdda/cdda_paranoia.h: proceeding with the preprocessor's result
configure: WARNING:     ## ------------------------------------ ##
configure: WARNING:     ## Report this to [email protected] ##
configure: WARNING:     ## ------------------------------------ ##
checking for cdda/cdda_paranoia.h... yes
[...]
configure: WARNING: id3lib not found - disabling id3v2 support
[...]

(Yes, I did diagnose the cdda_paranoia.h problem & report it to
gnu.org, but I thought cdparanoia is for ripping, which would mean
the erratic grip behavior isn't related.)

Thanks. :-)
-- 
J.D. Laub (Laubster) |"Your leg's too long / Your skull's too strong /
[email protected]| Suppose your nose is wrong." - Renaldo & the Loaf


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