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Wednesday December 06, 2006

Flash Not Working With Firefox On 64-bit Ubuntu Edgy

For everything that I currently use a Windows or a Mac OS X computer for, I'm trying to get similar functionality running on my Acer Ferrari 64-bit laptop, under Ubuntu Edgy.

The latest thing I'm trying to get working is a Flash plugin inside Firefox.

I googled around and found a mini-HOWTO buried in a Ubuntu Forum post (thanks mikeyrb).

I downloaded the nspluginwrapper RPM's for the plugin and the viewer

I ran:

  % sudo apt-get install linux32

because another comment on another related Ubuntu forum post said you needed to do this, as linux32 is a binary that nspluginwrapper depends on.

I installed alien

  % sudo apt-get install alien

and converted the downloaded rpm's to deb's:

  % sudo alien -d *.rpm

(I didn't worry about the postinstall scripts not being converted -- i.e. no --scripts option).

I installed the newly created debs (in this order):

  % sudo dpkg -i  nspluginwrapper-i386_0.9.90.4-2_amd64.deb
  % sudo dpkg -i nspluginwrapper_0.9.90.4-2_amd64.deb

I downloaded the Flash plugin .tar.gz bundle from here and unpacked it to get to the libflashplayer.so

I copied the libflashplayer.so plugin to ~/.mozilla/plugins.

  % cd .../install_flash_player_7_linux
  % sudo cp libflashplayer.so ~/.mozilla/plugins

I got nsplugwrapper npconfig program to make the new plugin:

  % /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/x86_64/npconfig -v -a -i

  ...
  Looking for plugins in /home/richb/.mozilla/plugins
  Install plugin /home/richb/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
  into /home/richb/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so

When I restarted Firefox and did "about:plugins" I got:

  Netscape 4 Plugins Wrapper

    File name: npwrapper.so
    nspluginwrapper 0.9.90.4 adds support for i386 compiled Netscape 4 plugins.
    This is beta software available under the terms of the GNU General
    Public License.
  
  MIME Type             Description     Suffixes   Enabled
  unknown/mime-type     Do not open     none       Yes

which doesn't look right.

As a double check, when I try it at http://www.youtube.com and http://www.flash.com and it didn't work.

The contents of my ~/.mozilla/plugins directory looks like:

$ ls -l
total 2164
-rwxr-xr-x 1 richb richb 2158864 2006-12-06 17:58 libflashplayer.so
-rwx------ 1 richb richb   44320 2006-12-06 18:55 npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 richb richb      55 2006-12-06 18:04 npwrapper.so -> ../../../../usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/x86_64/npwrapper.so

This is with:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060601 Firefox/2.0 (Ubuntu-edgy)

should that make a difference.

If anybody has any ideas where I'm going wrong, it would be very much appreciated. Update:
Thanks to everybody who commented it. The winner is Craig Keogh, who writes:

"Rich, I had exact same problem as you. You need to install the 32bit libraries.
  % sudo apt-get install ia32-libs lib32asound2 lib32ncurses5 ia32-libs-sdl ia32-libs-gtk gsfonts gsfonts-x11 linux32 
See this howto but the howto forgets to tell you install the 32bit libraries. 'artik', reply #19, provides the details."

I did this, and restarted Firefox, and now when I do "about:plugins" I get:

Shockwave Flash

    File name: npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
    Shockwave Flash 7.0 r69

MIME Type                       Description             Suffixes   Enabled
application/x-shockwave-flash   Shockwave Flash         swf        Yes
application/futuresplash        FutureSplash Player     spl        Yes

and I can happily watch YouTube. Excellent.

[Technorati Tag: Firefox]

[Technorati Tag: Flash]

[Technorati Tag: Ubuntu]

( Dec 06 2006, 07:25:25 PM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [11]

Christmas Letter 2006

Just like in previous years (2004, 2005), it's time for me to be a cheapskate again.

In a few days I'll be sending out Christmas cards to family and friends around the world. Rather than write a long letter to go with it, I now simply include a URL pointer to this post, and everybody can get to read all the family related links below (in some cases, with help from their children or their children's children).

For everybody else, feel free to ignore this entry.

Here they are in chronological order (latest first). One thing is clear. I've blogged a lot less about family this year than last year.

Happy Holidays! Your Christmas cards will be in the mail early next week.