[CentOS] Adobe Flash Install Woes

Sun Mar 29 19:16:28 UTC 2009
William L. Maltby <CentOS4Bill at triad.rr.com>

On Sun, 2009-03-29 at 09:23 -0500, Chuck wrote:
> 
> I am having a hell of a time getting adobe flash to work on a recent
> 5.2 install.
> 
> From rpm install:
> Running firefox as root -- I have verified there is a symlink
> in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins that points to the actual plugin located
> in /usr/lib/flash-plugins
> nada.
> 
> SoI then copied the plugin directly into /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins and
> eliminated the symlink from the equation.
> nada.
> 
> I then installed the plugin into the $HOME/.mozilla/plugins/ directory
> of a normal user (and making sure everything was read/executable by
> that user).
> nada.
> 
> At no time does the adobe flash pugin ever appear in the plugins panel
> when viewing Tools->Addons from within the browser. I see no errors or
> any logs of any kind getting generated anywhere.
> 
> An rpm check of both firefox and the flash plugin return with no
> complaints.
> 
> I see scads of posts on google regarding other adobe flash player woes
> but none of the solutions i've found so far work.
> 
> Since most of the sites I require access to, even metalink, required
> adobe flash this is a show stopper for me.

Is the firefox losing almost all your plugins? I recently had problems
with this. If you go to Edit->Preferences->Advanced->General and see a
check for "Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on
startup" it will wipe the ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/pluginreg.dat.

Make sure that is not checked. Instead, on a Gnome Desktop, from the
menu bar, System->Preferences->More Preferences->Preferred Applications
and select Firefox there.

I notice you said in another post that shockwave came default. Here too
I guess. But when I test at the site Lanny referenced, it fails for me
too. When I try to download, it says I'm not supported. I just wondered
if your shockwave works.

Oh well, that's really OT and for another day.

Anyway, I'm also on a 32 bit and flash installed and runs just fine.
Here's some tidbits.

$ rpm -aq|grep -i flash
flash-plugin-10.0.22.87-release.i386

$ cat /etc/yum.repos.d/adobe-linux-i386.repo 
[adobe-linux-i386]
name=Adobe Systems Incorporated
baseurl=http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/linux/i386/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
priority=5
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux

That was obtained originally from the Adobe site, IIRC.

$ ls -l /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
total 2872
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     39 Feb 25 05:19 libflashplayer.so
-> /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so
<snip uninteresting entries>
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 127260 Nov  5 18:51 nppdf.so

In my pluginreg.dat, I see

  /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/nswrapper_32_32.libflashplayer.so:$

That reminds me that during my previous travails, someone suggested that
we needed the plugin wrapper. I don't know if this is so, but it's
working for me with the wrappers.

I don't recall how that is setup - I think from one of the FF
administration windows.

$ ls -l /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/
total 736
<snip unrelated stuff>
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root         37 Dec  6 14:27 npwrapper.so
-> /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/npwrapper.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root      80500 Dec  6 14:27
nswrapper_32_32.libflashplayer.so
<snip again>
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root      80500 Dec  6 14:27 nswrapper_32_32.nppdf.so

 ls -l /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/
total 344
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  31304 Jul 17  2008 npconfig
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   2714 Jul 17  2008 npviewer
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 137372 Jul 17  2008 npviewer.bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  80500 Jul 17  2008 npwrapper.so
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root  61420 Jul 17  2008 plugin-config

$ ls -l $(locate libflashplayer)  # I see an older version still there
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       39 Feb 25
05:19 /usr/lib/firefox-1.5.0.12/plugins/libflashplayer.so
-> /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10131640 Feb  2
21:06 /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       39 Feb 25
05:19 /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
-> /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    80500 Dec  6
14:27 /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/nswrapper_32_32.libflashplayer.so

$ ls -l /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10131640 Feb  2
21:06 /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so
[wild-bill at centos501 ~]$ file /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object,
Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), stripped

My setup is "box stock" for this stuff, so I don't think you should need
to mess with tarballs, source, betas, etc.

> 
> Thanks for any help,
> CC
> <snip sig stuff>

HTH
-- 
Bill