no video can be watched

Asked by Damien Marsic

I have Psiphon 2.5 installed on my computer (Ubuntu 10.04) and it works fine. However, my friend in China says that he can not watch any video. I tried myself on a regular computer (Ubuntu 10.10) and found out that I can not watch any video either when logged in my Psiphon. However, using the same computer and the same browser, I can watch videos without any problems when I go directly to their site without using Psiphon. It's only when using Psiphon that the videos don't show. The message I get depends on the site. For example, on rael.org I get:

An error occurred, please try again later

On Youtube, I get no message, just waiting for the video to display and it never does.

What can I do to enable videos ?

Damien

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Adam Kruger (adam-kruger) said :
#1

Hi Damien. By default and for the safety of our users we disable javascript and flash content (which is usually used for playing video on web pages). We also have special capabilities for allowing certain javascript content through (rewritten of course to be proxied). If you install Psiphon 2.6 (which was just recently released), you should get youtube compatibility. Try it out.

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Peter (peterpn) said :
#2

Dear Admin,
I met the same problem as the user above. I surf youtube page with video but Psiphon 2.6 service cannot let my browser watch the video. The youtube page said flash player must be installed first.

How can I fix this?

Revision history for this message
Peter (peterpn) said :
#3

Hi Admin,
I have checked psiphon 2.6 service again. I used Firefox 6 for this time and the youtube video was displayed as a "black box" only.

Please suggest solution.

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Adam Kruger (adam-kruger) said :
#4

Hi Peter. Try sql/site-compat/youtube.com.sql from trunk.

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Peter (peterpn) said :
#5

Dear Adam,
It still showed "You need Adobe Flash Player to watch this video. Download it from Adobe."

Do I have to install "Flash Player" into the Ubuntu OS running psiphon 2.6??

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Peter (peterpn) said :
#6

I downloaded the newest sql/site-compat/youtube.com.sql from your trunk publishing page and executed it on my psiphon Ubuntu OS, but the result is as above. :(

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td9175 (td9175) said :
#7

I downloaded the latest .sql from the trunk, but was wondering how these files can be executed...? I tried looking around, and ran a few commands, but I still don't think the file was merged because even after recompiling Psiphon, I get the same result on YouTube - a black box. Flash IS installed, and the same video works when not running through Psiphon. I'm on Ubuntu 11.04.

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Adam P (adam+) said :
#8

You can just paste the contents of the .sql file into mysql. You can get a mysql prompt by executing the following:

mysql -upsiphon -Dpsiphon -p"#psiphon_mysql_password#"

...Replacing the last bit with your actual mysql password for the psiphon user. If you've forgotten it, you can find that password in two places, under the directory where you installed Psiphon:
1) [psiphon install dir]/apache2/www/config.php: Look for the line near the top that looks like this:
$config[db_pass] = "#psiphon_mysql_password#"
2) [psiphon install dir]/apache2/conf/httpd.conf: Look for the line that looks like this:
DBDParams "host=localhost,port=3306,user=psiphon,pass=#psiphon_mysql_password#,dbname=psiphon"

NOTE: If you actually see "#psiphon_mysql_password#" on those lines, then you're looking at the raw source code and not at the installed location -- that's just a placeholder that gets replaced during installation.

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Peter (peterpn) said :
#9

Hi Adam,
I know how to run .sql from within my MySQL manager. The problem is youtube video compatibility.

Videos of voa work very well. It is a great success!

I hope you can make youtube video work as well. Thanks.

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Adam Kruger (adam-kruger) said :
#10

Hi Peter. Sorry, I think you need some more files from trunk. See revision 222 in trunk (http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~psiphon-inc/psiphon/trunk/revision/222).
I'm not sure if you'll need any more newer files from trunk. The important ones appear to be
trunk/www/js/yt.js
trunk/www/site-compat/common/yt.php
trunk/www/site-compat/youtube.com/index.php
(and the youtube.com.sql file that you already have)
If this still doesn't work for you then you might want to try upgrading everything to trunk.

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Peter (peterpn) said :
#11

Hi Adam,
I updated all the files you mentioned above and they killed all the videos on voa, rfa!!! :((

My base psiphon is v2.6 which is the tar file on your main page. What is psiphon v2.6's revision number? I think that I have to updated all newer files to revision 233. :((

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Adam P (adam+) said :
#12

Try pulling the latest code from trunk and completely re-installing.

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Peter (peterpn) said :
#13

Adam,
Please teach me how to download the Whole newest Trunk tree and its files to my own machine.

Also, is there a way to uninstall my current psiphon 2.6 elegantly? I want to do a clean installation of the newest trunk. My friends want to watch video from their country.

Thanks so much.

Revision history for this message
Adam Kruger (adam-kruger) said :
#14

Hi Peter. To download the latest source from trunk you can issue the following command:
    bzr branch lp:psiphon

("apt-get install bzr" if you don't already have it)

When I uninstall or reinstall Psiphon 2, I simply delete the directory to which it was installed (install_dir when I issued "sudo tools/psiphon_install.sh install_dir"), then I drop the psiphon db.

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Peter (peterpn) said :
#15

Adam,
Any plan to integrate twitter dot com into psiphon? It helps arab so much for the past year.

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Adam Kruger (adam-kruger) said :
#16

Hi Peter. Users may have better results visiting mobile.twitter.com through Psiphon. It is unlikely that we will make JSF rules for the standard twitter site.

For greater site compatibility, try out our new project on bitbucket (https://bitbucket.org/psiphon/psiphon-circumvention-system). This may be more challenging to set up. We will appreciate your feedback.

Revision history for this message
Peter (peterpn) said :
#17

Dear Adam,
Psiphon 2.6 trunk 297 does not support video anymore. Last year's branch did work! :(

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask Damien Marsic for more information if necessary.

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