Firefox 3 + Hardy 64 bit + Flash + Imeem Working!

If you read my previous post you know that I was having some problems getting flash running with some of my favorite websites on Ubuntu Hardy Heron 64 bit.  There are know problems of getting flash to working well on 64bit linux machines mainly because a 64 bit flashplayer plugin doesn’t exist for linux machines.  Rather the 32 bit plugin has to use a helper program to allow it to run on 64 bit Linux machines.  The program, nspluginwrapper, is fantastic but it adds another layer of abstraction when trying to troubleshoot flash problems.  With that being said, this is documentation of my journey to getting flash to work on my 64 bit Hardy box and meet my particular needs.

Original Setup:

flashplugin-nonfree 9.0.124.0

nspluginwrapper 0.9.91.5

With this setup flash worked for most sites but not with sites such as imeem. Youtube.com, scifi.com, and most others worked well. So if all your favorite sites work well with the packages supplied via the synaptics package manager, I would advise that you stick with those packages.

Test Setup 1:

flashplugin-nonfree 9.0.124.0 (libflashplayer.so)

nspluginwrapper 1.1.0

I had been reading a lot of bug reports submitted on lauchpad for ubuntu about problems with the nspluginwrapper. So I then thought maybe the wrapper was having some type of problem because when I went to imeem; I could see flash attempting to load then immediately seeing gray boxes in some places where flash should have loaded. Using the system monitor to observe the processes running on the computer, I saw that the npviewer.bin(part of nspluginwrapper) turned into a zombie process every time I went to the sites where flash failed to load. Leaving these sites and going to other flash sites like youtube, the npviewer.bin process was working fine.

This led me to download the latest nspluginwrapper 1.1.0.tar.gz. This is the latest unstable build of the plugin so if you want to install it, you will have to compile it from source. *If you want to see how I compiled it from source, check the bottom of the article where I give some install tips.* Then I used the nspluginwrapper to wrap the libflashplayer.so file from the flashplugin-nonfree 9.0.124.0 package. I then copied the resulting file nswrapper.libflashplayer.so from /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins to /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins. I then started firefox and proceeded to load the imeem.com site. My results were even worse this time. I got no gray boxes, but both flash and firefox crashed by just simply navigating to the site.

Test Setup 3:

Flash 10 Beta-flashplayer10_install_install_linux_070208.tar.gz (libflashplayer.so)

nspluginwrapper 1.1.0

Okay, so I figured I had nothing to lose by installing the Flash 10 beta. I downloaded the lasted Flash 10 beta version from Adobe Labs. I decompressed the tar which resulted in a flashplayer-installer script file and a libflashplayer.so. I didn’t use the script file as it is written for a 32bit system, but I wouldn’t need it anyway. I just needed the libflashplayer.so file. Next I used the nspluginwrapper to wrap this plugin and copied the resulting file nswrapper.libflashplayer.so from /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins to /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins. I started firefox and ran into the same problems. Flash ran great on most sites but bombed on imeem. One thing I must say about the flash 10 player is that drop down menus work exceptionally well in it. Most other versions of the flash player have problems displaying drop down menus over other flash content. The flash 10 player handled this exceptionally well. This alone made it worth testing out. Now if imeem would have worked too, I would have been in heaven. But it didn’t so I continued my quest.

Test Setup 4:

Flash Player 9r48

nspluginwrapper 1.1.0

This is one setup that worked for me. I installed the new downgraded libflashplayer.so file just as I had installed the Flash 10 Beta in Test 3 Setup. Then I wrapped it with the nspluginwrapper and copied it to /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins. I cranked up firefox and imeem worked. But the drop down menu support was having trouble again. However flash drop down menus aren’t really a concern for me and I rarely come across them in my surfing. And most times if you just navigate to another page on the site with less flash, the drop down menus will work pretty good. This would have been my final test, but I decided to downgrade to the stable nspluginwrapper 1.0.0.

Test Setup 5: My Setup

Flash Player 9r48

nspluginwrapper 1.0.0

I downloaded the nspluginwrapper1.0.0 source from here. Then I installed it just like I installed nspluginwrapper 1.1.0 in Test Setup 1. I wrapped the libflashplayer.so with the nspluginwrapper like I did in Test Setup 3. Everything worked just as it did in Test Setup 4.

Installation Tips:

If you are not trying to get particular flash sites working, I would suggest installing the flashplugin-nonfree using the synaptics package manager. On Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04.1, the flash works pretty good just installing the default package in the package manager. If I wasn’t trying to get specific sites to work, it is definitely the setup I would have chosen.

Preparing to install Flash plug-in downloaded from Abode Labs or other source:

-first make sure you remove any flashplayer that is currently installed on your system. These steps can help accomplish this — >

purge any flashplayer installed on your system:

sudo apt-get remove -y –purge flashplugin-nonfree

Check again to make sure flash files are gone:

sudo rm -f /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -f ~/.mozilla/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/*flash*

Now if flash was installed on your system before, there are probably still some files left on the system. There were some left on mine at least and I had to get rid of them:

cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins

rm -f libflashplayer.so npwrapper.libflashplayer.so

cd /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins

rm -f npwrapper.libflashplayer.so

Now if nspluginwrapper isn’t currently installed on your system. Install the nspluginwrapper package via the synaptics package manager. If you choose to download version 1.0.0, you will have to build and compile it yourself. A little further down in the article, I give so tips on that too. So assuming that the nspluginwrapper is installed, you need to get the flash files for the player you want to install. Flash 10 Beta files are available here and Flash 9r48 files are available here. Only use one version. Assuming they are downloaded to the desktop, this is what I did next.

Extract the flash files for the whichever version of flash you are going to use. Here I am using Flash 9r48

tar zxvf install_flash_player_9r48_linux.tar.gz

Change to the newly created directory

cd install_flash_player_9_linux

Copy the libflashplayer.so file to the mozilla plugin directory

sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins

Wrap the libflashplayer.so file with nspluginwrapper

sudo nspluginwrapper -i /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

Now this should create a file in the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory called npwrapper.libflashplayer.so, copy this file to the firefox addons directory

sudo cp /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/firefox-addons/plugins

Now Launch Firefox and type the following in the brower address bar and press enter

about:plugins

Somewhere on the resulting page you should see the flash plugin listed as version 9r48. Flash should be working in your browser now.

Preparing and installing nspluginwrapper 1.0.0 or 1.1.0

*You will probably need to install the following to make and compile the software. These packages can be installed via the synaptics package manager.*

-Packages to install-

libglib2.0-dev

libgtk2.0-dev

libcurl4-gnutls-dev
libcurl4-openssl-dev

libxt-dev libxaw-dev

libc6-dev-i386

g++

g++-multilib

———————-

Again you can get the nspluginwrapper source for 1.0.0 and 1.1.0 from here.

-first make sure you remove any nspluginwrapper that is currently installed on your system. These steps can help accomplish this — >

purge any nspluginwrapper installed on your system:

sudo apt-get remove -y –purge nspluginwrapper

Check again to make sure flash files are gone:

sudo rm -rfd /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper

Now if nspluginwrapper was installed on your system before, there are probably still some files left on the system. There were some left on mine at least and I had to get rid of them:

Remove the nspluginwrapper directory if one exists

sudo rm -rfd /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper

Remove and plugins that may be wrapped with another version of nspluginwrapper

sudo rm -f /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/npwrapper*

sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/npwrapper*

Download nspluginwrapper 1.0.0 or 1.1.0 from here to your desktop.

Extract the tar to your Desktop, in this case I using the 1.0.0 version

tar zxvf nspluginwrapper-1.0.0.tar.bz2

Go to the directory

cd nspluginwrapper-1.0.0

Run configure

./configure

If everything goes well, you can now run make

make

If make goes well, you can install the software

sudo make install

If you don’t get any errors, the software probably installed correctly. Now you can refer to the above instructions to wrap your flashplayer using nspluginwrapper.

I hope this has helped or been at least somewhat amusing.

KJ

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TAGS: 64 bit, adobe, firefox, flash, hardy, imeem, nspluginwrapper, ubuntu