[CentOS] Problems with Adobe flash-plugin and Firefox-3.5.x under CentOs-5.3 (yum up to date) => libcurl.so.3/libcurl.so.4 missing

[Martin Knoblauch]

----- Original Message ----

> From: Bogdan Nicolescu <dryrye at gmail.com>
> To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> Cc: spamtrap at knobisoft.de
> Sent: Sunday, September 20, 2009 3:51:48 AM
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] Problems with Adobe flash-plugin and Firefox-3.5.x under  CentOs-5.3 (yum up to date) => libcurl.so.3/libcurl.so.4 missing
> 
> On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 6:58 AM, Martin Knoblauch wrote:
> > ----- Original Message ----
> >
> >> From: Martin Knoblauch 
> >> To: Centos Discussions 
> >> Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 3:16:20 PM
> >> Subject: Problems with Adobe flash-plugin and Firefox-3.5.x under CentOs-5.3 
> (yum up to date)
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I am running 32-bit Firefox-3.5.3 on Centos-5.3 (64-bit kernel) on a Dell
> >> Precision M65 laptop. This is likely a Adobe problem, but maybe someone else 
> has
> >> seen this before. Please CC me, as I only receive the digest version of the
> >> list.
> >>
> >>
> >> When using the 10.0.32.18-release version of the flash-plugin, trying
> >> to access *any* page containing flash (e.g. www.adobe.com) causes the
> >> browser to die. This also happens with version 10.0.22.87. Version
> >> 9.0.115.0 works fine. To avoid problems with add-ons, Firefox is
> >> started with "-safe-mode". As far as I know, the problem also happens
> >> with Firefox-3.0.x.
> >>
> >> # uname -a
> >> Linux l6g0223j 2.6.18-128.7.1.el5 #1 SMP Mon Aug 24 08:21:56 EDT 2009 x86_64
> >> x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
> >> # rpm -q flash-plugin
> >> flash-plugin-10.0.32.18-release
> >>
> >>
> >> Any idea? Anything I can help debugging the problem?
> >>
> >
> >  The problem turns out that libflashplayer.so (Version 10.x) is looking for 
> dynamically loading libcurl.so.3 or libcurl.so.4. This dependency is neither 
> documented, nor present in the flash-plugin RPMs from Adobe (both 32- and 
> 64-bit). The dependency probably should also be present  in the firefox RPM 
> itself.
> >
> >  I found out by chance when the problem went away after installing the 
> curl.i386 package to get firefox building on my system.
> >
> > Cheers
> > Martin
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > CentOS mailing list
> > CentOS at centos.org
> > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
> >
> 
> 
> Documented here under dependencies:
> 
> http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/153/tn_15380.html

Hi Bogdan,

 interesting. Care to tell me how to find that page unless you know that you are looking for "libcurl" or a "library dependency"? Just curious. 

 The official Release Notes on the Adobe Home Page don't show this dependency, neither does the System Requirements page or the README that comes with the RPM. 

http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/10/Flash_Player_10_Release_Notes.pdf
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/systemreqs/

<rant
 Adobe really does not do a good job here to reveal the dependencies. One could also argue, that the runtime handling of the dlopen error seems to be lacking also. Just crashing the application without a hint is not really professional.

 And one could blame the firefox developers/packagers for not including a hint to a dependency on libcurl themselves. Apparently their "crashreporter" utility itself uses it and segfaults without an useful error message when trying to report the flash-plugin failure :-)

 But my ranting has nothing to do on a CentOs forum, of course.
rant>

Q: where are the CentOs RPMS for firefox and flash-plugin coming from? They are available via yum, so are they provided by the CentOs team, or are they coming from the developers?

Cheers
Martin