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.

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[Technorati Tag: Flash]

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