Sunday, September 27, 2009

Linux Bleg

Question for you Linux Gurus out there: does anyone have a pointer to how to get 64 bit Flash working in Firefox? I've downloaded the 64 bit libflashplayer.so and put it in what I think it the right place (/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins).

After jumping through hoops, I have Firefox 3.5, but it still says that I have an old version of Flash. Looking at tools -> Add-ons -> Plugins, it doesn't look like Firefox thinks it has it at all.

Ah, the joys of living on the Bleeding Edge. I don't think it's Kubuntu, I think it's the 64 bit packages. Anyone running 64 bit Linux out there?

As a note to everyone else, the Kubuntu installation was a snap. I had to install an update to get MP3s to play, but the Amarok player politely told me I needed them, and the update manager pulled them down, no fuss, no muss. So I'm sitting here listening to my tunes, and posting from the Konquorer browser. Just can't watch my Saturday Redneck. Yet.

UPDATE 27 September 2009 16:05: I did fine some useful information here. Even ran the script. I'm wondering if there's a Firefox configuration file that needs to get updated before it will realize that it has the right Flash.

8 comments:

Les said...

For 64-bit firefox use /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins

aultl

Borepatch said...

Les, thanks - this seems sensible.

I'll give it a shot when I get back home.

Grumpy Student said...

If you have difficulty getting 64bit Flash to work (and it's very much in beta/alpha stage at the moment - I got Firefox to recognise it but it crashed whenever I visited a page with Flash) you should try using 32 bit Flash which you can do with both 64bit Firefox and with Konqueror.

To get 32 bit Flash working in 64 bit Linux:

1) Remove all existing Flash plugins. This includes GNASH which is an open source Flash implementation. Existing plugins conflict because Firefox chooses its plugins in an odd order.

2) Install nspluginwrapper if it's not installed. On Ubuntu it is in the "nspluginwrapper" package so do an "apt-get install nspluginwrapper". Ubuntu also needs some other stuff to make 32 bit work (the ia32-libs package) which isn't installed by default.

3) Download the 32 bit Flash plugin and unpack it. Copy the libflashplayer.so into your user's plugins folder (~/.mozilla/plugins - create it if it doesn't exist) or into the system-wide plugin folder (I can't remember what that is off the top of my head).

4) Run the command nspluginwrapper -i /home/yourusername/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

(modify the above step for the correct location for your plugin folder)

If this is successful, it should create a new plugin in that folder called npwrapper.libflashplayer.so. Do not delete the old one. This is just a wrapper.

5) Restart Firefox and check about:plugins to see if it is installed.

And that should be it. I've successfully installed 32 bit Flash on both 64 bit Fedora and 64 bit Ubuntu by doing the above. The only difference for Fedora is package names, and that for some reason the nspluginwrapper command has been renamed to npconfig.

Some stuff won't work because Flash on Linux is very badly supported but YouTube (for example) definitely does.

Grumpy Student said...

Thought I'd just add - Konqueror has a much better interface for selecting plugins than Firefox so it may be easier to get it working in that than Firefox.

Anonymous said...

This worked for me: Copy the .so to

/usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins

I seem to recall that was all it took. Works well for an alpha release for 64-bit Ubuntu 7, 8 and 9 (so far)

Jim

Borepatch said...

@Les and reflectoscope, I had this. Actually the firefox-addons/plugins was a link, but changing it didn't make any difference. :-(

@Grumpy Student, I may try this, but it seems like I should be able to get native 64 bit working.

omgawolf said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
omgawolf said...

get gOS. it comes with flash preinstalled.