Can't get flash to work with firefox

[Ocifer]

Hello,

I am having trouble getting the flash plugin to work with Mozilla Firefox. I ran command:

yum --enablerepo=rpmforge install flash-plugin

And it installed without and warnings or errors. However, I still don't have flash functionality, and if I open the about:plugins page of Firefox, flash is not listed there.

I've installed Chrome as well, and flash works fine with Chrome.

Any thoughts?

[Crystal Cowboy]

If your OS and Firefox are 64 bit, you should be sure to use the 64 bit flash-plugin.

I installed flash-plugin straigth from adobe, not from rpmforge; something like this:
rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-x86_64-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
yum install flash-plugin

I don't like rpmforge because it causes a lot of package updates which the more conservative repositories avoid.

[Nathan]

QUOTE (Crystal Cowboy @ May 7 2012, 05:49 PM)

If your OS and Firefox are 64 bit, you should be sure to use the 64 bit flash-plugin. I installed flash-plugin straigth from adobe, not from rpmforge; something like this: rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-x86_64-1.0-1.noarch.rpm yum  install flash-plugin

That doesn't necessarily work. I have the same problem when using Nightly. Every other browser's got Flash, but Nightly doesn't recognise it.

[Ocifer]

Yes, I should add that I tried downloading directly from Adobe and installing as Crystal Cowboy said, but it still didn't show up in the about:plugins page of Firefox.

I should add the that the computer I am working with is 64 bit architecture. However, I'm pretty sure I have the 32 bit version of SL installed.

Here is the relevant output of uname:

CODE

i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

However, I have had 32 bit SL installed on this very same laptop before and I recall being able to set up flash.

Maybe that might help someone help me.

[tux99]

What do you get when you run:

CODE

find / -name libflashplayer.so

[AndrewSerk]

I have had the issue of firefox/flash not working after the install of flash. This was several years ago (around Fedora 8 I think). The "fix" was to run "mozilla-plugin-config --check" as a regular user then logout/login. You can also run "mozilla-plugin-config --list" to get the list of installed plugins and wrappers used.

Hope this helps,

[Ocifer]

QUOTE (tux99 @ May 7 2012, 03:30 PM)

What do you get when you run: CODE find / -name libflashplayer.so

When I ran that command, I got:

/usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so

Also, to AndrewSerk, I'm not sure where to run those commands. They're not being recognized by my terminal shell.

[AndrewSerk]

Hi Ocifer,
It appears you don't have the nspluginwrapper package installed. Please try to confirm this by running the following command:

CODE

rpm -q nspluginwrapper

If you get a "package not installed" returned then install the package:

CODE

su -c 'yum install nspluginwrapper'

Then close firefox and run:

CODE

mozilla-plugin-config

Logout and login


Hope this helps,

This post has been edited by AndrewSerk: May 8 2012, 08:27 PM

[Ocifer]

Thanks for replying so quickly.

I installed nspluginwrapper and ran the command. Firefox was already closed. I logged out and back in, but it is still not showing up in about:plugins, and quick attempt at youtube shows it's still not registering as installed.

Any thoughts?

[AndrewSerk]

What does this command return?:

CODE

mozilla-plugin-config --list

[Ocifer]

Hey,

I managed to find a solution. Thanks for your answers. I recall having to do this for Fedora, so I looked up the following page, and it gave me a bit of inspiration:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flash

This page will be a good guide for any individual step, but I will go through what I believe to be all the necessary steps.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

First, make sure you have yum installed all of the following packages:

firefox
nspluginwrapper
flash-plugin

In my case, I removed firefox first and deleted the entire .mozilla folder in the home folder. I then re-installed using 'yum install firefox' and the /home/INSERT_YOUR_USER_NAME/.mozilla folder was recreated.

I have read on various pages that this should be enough for SL 6.2, but in my case it was not.

Go into your /home/USER_NAME/.mozilla folder. Inside, there should be a 'plugins' folder. If there is not create one. Inside this plugins folder, you need to create a symbolic link to the libflashplayer.so file (shared object).

Tux99 above provided the command for finding where libflashplayer.so is located. So run the command he suggests:

CODE

find / -name libflashplayer.so

In my case, it returned the following path:

/usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so

So, all you have to do then is create the symbolic link to this file, within the /home/USER_NAME/.mozilla/plugins folder.

CODE

ln -s /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so /home/YOUR_USER_NAME_HERE/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

If you are unfamiliar with creating links, google the "ln" utility. It's not too complicated. In the command above, the first argument to ln -s is the path to the actual file we care about, and the second argument tells us where the created link will reside and what it will be called.

Finally, once you've done this, close all instances of firefox and run

CODE

mozilla-plugin-config

Log out and log back in (or restart if necessary), and it should now show up in about:plugins. Flash should work. Let me know if I've made any mistakes, and anyone who comes across this and needs help feel free to PM.

[AndrewSerk]

Hi Ocifer,
Glad you got flash to work.
My only concern would be since you linked to the real libflashplayer.so you might be missing some security features provided by the wrapper.
Does "mozilla-plugin-config --list" show that libflashplayer.so is using the nswrapper like below?

snippet from "mozilla-plugin-config --list" :

CODE

/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/nswrapper_32_32.libflashplayer.so  Original plugin: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

This post has been edited by AndrewSerk: May 8 2012, 10:11 PM

[Ocifer]

QUOTE (AndrewSerk @ May 8 2012, 05:11 PM)

Hi Ocifer, Glad you got flash to work. My only concern would be since you linked to the real libflashplayer.so you might be missing some security features provided by the wrapper. Does "mozilla-plugin-config --list" show that libflashplayer.so is using the nswrapper like below? snippet from "mozilla-plugin-config --list" : CODE /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/nswrapper_32_32.libflashplayer.so  Original plugin: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

When I run

mozilla-plugin-config --list

I get the following output:

CODE

EXCLUDE_WRAP: libtotem* libjavaplugin* gecko-mediaplayer* mplayerplug-in* librhythmbox* packagekit* libnsISpicec* EXCLUDE_LINK: File/Link /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/libtotem-gmp-plugin.so File/Link /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/libtotem-cone-plugin.so File/Link /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/libtotem-mully-plugin.so File/Link /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/libtotem-narrowspace-plugin.so File/Link /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/librhythmbox-itms-detection-plugin.so

[AndrewSerk]

That is kinda what I suspected. libflashplayer.so is not using the wrapper. You could try to get it to use the wrapper if so desired by running:

CODE

mozilla-plugin-config -i

The -i is for --install Install/wrap all availabile plug-ins
But I can not guarantee that will not break your current working flashplayer.

[Ocifer]

Do I need to pass any arguments to that command?

[AndrewSerk]

I don't think you do. Just run it as posted above as regular user

[Ocifer]

I ran the command. No errors or warnings popped up, but after a restart it appears to not have had any effect. The output of

mozilla-plugin-config --list

has not changed since the last time I posted it.

What does nspluginwrapper require to properly wrap a plugin? It seems that SL 6.2 should come preloaded with a working flash plugin for mozilla. I must have changed/broken something a while ago without taking notice.

The flash plugin still works in its unwrapped form, but I am just curious what nspluginwrapper requires to properly "wrap" a plugin?

EDIT:

To clarify my question a little. Upon a quick google, when the plugin is properly wrapped, the output of the mozilla-plugin-config --list should contain something like the following (this particular snippet is for a 64 bit installation):

CODE

/usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/nswrapper_64_64.libflashplayer.so  Original plugin: /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so  Wrapper version string: X (1.3.0)

I obviously don't have these lines in the ouput when I run the command. However, I don't even have it registering the unwrapped, original plugin right now. What do I have to do/prepare to get mozilla-plugin-config to find it at all?

[AndrewSerk]

Hi ocifer,

I am not sure why that particular install is not cooperating with regard to nspluginwrapper/flash-plugin. I did a "yum deplist flash-plugin" and the deps have changed between flash-plugin.i386 11.2.202.233-release and flash-plugin-11.2.202.235-release. I will look into this further today and post any findings.

[Ocifer]

Hey Andrew, thanks for your help throughout.