[solved - with howto] flash plugin and firefox

[doctordruidphd]

I know this has been asked and answered a thousand times, but neither searching nor fiddling has made it work, so here comes 1001...

The firefox-3.5 available in the repositories has been altered in more ways than one (try using the search box). So I downloaded the linux version from the mozilla website. Works fine, except for flash. I do have the version of the non-free flash player in the repositories loaded, and it works on the ubuntified-firefox, but I can't get it to work on the non-ubuntified version. This is a 64-bit system, so downloading from the flash site is not an option, nor should it be necessary. I tried the nswrapper thing, but I either get a black screen, or no sound, or other sites just complaining that I need the newest version of flash (which I have).

Anyone have this working?

[lmilano]

Re: flash plugin and firefox

Wha? I just watched an amazing Steve Vai solo in Youtube, Kubuntu 64 bit, with the 64-bit flash plugin (it is alpha but it works great). I would do just that.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: flash plugin and firefox

I found the 64-bit plugin, downloaded it, put it in /opt/firefox/plugins, made sure it is executable, went to Firefox>edit>preferences>applications and set both flv and swf to point to /opt/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so
Nothing. In youtube, the space where the video should be is gone. On wolfenstein.com, all I get are black screens.
There must be more to it.

[lmilano]

Re: flash plugin and firefox

Maybe another thing to try is to see if you can put it in you home directory (I believe there is a place for plugins and extensions in the firefox folder, I believe things installed there override everything else).

What do you see in aboutlugins? Any clues there?

[doctordruidphd]

Re: flash plugin and firefox

Thanks for the help and suggestions.
I got it working, though I had to use the 32 bit player. Maybe because the firefox from the mozilla site is not 64-bit? Not sure why, but the 64bit flashplayer is no go.

Howto:

0. "Before doing anything, backup everything." Otherwise, don't cry to me...

1. Download the latest firefox--.tar.bz2 from the mozilla site. When you extract it (such as tar -xvf firefox--.tar.bz2) it will create a firefox directory. Move that somewhere, such as /opt
Make a symbolic link in /usr/bin to wherever you put the program, such as:

sudo rm /usr/bin/firefox
sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

That way, anything or anyone that calls "firefox" will get your new installation.

2. Hunt and kill all instances of libflashplayer.so on the system, including wrapper versions.

sudo updatedb
mlocate libflashplayer.so
Remove them all, using sudo where necessary.

*** Important caveat here: if you have installed flash for konqueror or other players, this will mess it up, so don't do this. You will have to be selective in what you delete, and in step 6a, you will have to disable the other flash players. That might be tricky, since firefox is not clear about where these plugins reside.

3. Download the tar.gz flash player (not the .deb package) from the adobe website. Easiest way to do this is hit the "Download the latest flash player" from a site that requests it.

4. tar -xvf install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz

5. cp libflashplayer.so ~/.mozilla/plugins

6. Start firefox:

a. Navigate to Tools > Add-ons > Plugins
Look for the "Shockwave Flash" entry; there should be only one. If there are more than one, you haven't completely removed the others. Make sure it is enabled; as of this writing, it is "10.0 r32".

b. Navigate to Edit > Preferences > Applications, and for file types FLV, SWF and SPL, from the dropdown menu, choose "use other", and point to /home/yourusername/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

Close and restart firefox. Works here.

If there are more than one user on your system, you might want to put the libflashplayer.so somewhere else, such as /opt/firefox/plugins, but make sure everyone has x permissions.