cannot play flash in 64x Ubuntu 7.10

Asked by john williams

Hello.
I have recently installed Ubuntu 7.10 64x in a dual boot with Vista HP 64x. Both systems are working well apart from a few issues.
In Ubuntu I initially found that Firefox would not play flash with the exception of Youtube.
I installed Swiftweasel 32x and this plays all flash content.
However I then installed Swiftweasel 64x and found the same problem as before. It would not play flash apart from Youtube.
I have been on several forums and have installed and uninstalled nspluginwrapper and flashplugin-nonfree many times to no avail.
If I browse Digg for example, sites with flash content such as Metacafe, Collegehumor etc won't work. I either get a buffering message that goes nowhere or just a blank box where the video should be. On some sites it appears to be starting but the one quadrant of the square box is blacked out and that's it.
I still cannot get flash to work in 64x browsers.
Eventually Kilz (on 64x Forum) suggested I report it as a bug to yourselves plus Adobe plus nspluginwrapper.
So far I have only managed to report to you. The other two sites seem diffiicult to navigate in terms of reporting a bug.
In Vista 64x I am running Opera 9.5 without these issues.
My hardware is as follows-Q6600 CPU, nVidia Geforce 8600GT, Asus P5N-E SLI, 4GB RAM, 500GB SATA HDD.
I should add that I am a complete newbie to Linux and pretty much a newbie to computers in general. Perhaps I've bitten off more than I can chew with 2 new OSs in 64 bit

I do hope you can help, John Williams, Lancashire UK

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Revision history for this message
Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said :
#1

I'm not sure I'm following. Essentially, you are using Swiftweasel but it isn't working. Is that correct? The simple solution to Flash in 64bit Ubuntu is to use the built in tools to install the 32bit flash player. This works perfectly fine for me. I have not seen a single site that failed to work. I have been running 64 bit Ubuntu on my laptop for about 2 months and about a month on my desktop.

To install, click applications-add/remove... and then change the "show" box to say "all available applications" and then search for macromedia. It should find the "macromedia flash plugin". Just check it and apply.

If you already have something else for flash it's possible the two will conflict. I would suggest removing all other flash related players first. Use the Synaptic package manager. If you didn't install them with Synaptic then you might have more difficulty getting rid of them. As a general rule of thumb, only use the built in tools to install and remove. You will find that they work extremely well.

Revision history for this message
Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said :
#2

Oh, I forgot to mention that there is an open source flash player for 64bit called Gnash. I tried it first and had a lot of problems. It is alpha software and under development so in time this may be the best answer. It's been a couple months since I tried it so it might be much better now. You could try that first if you want and see. If it doesn't meet you needs remove it and use the macromedia solution.

Revision history for this message
john williams (johnwillyums) said :
#3

Dear Jim.
Thanks very much for your reply. I looked in add/remove as you suggested and
found macromedia flash plugin already installed.
By putting "flash" into the search bar in add/remove I got the following
list:

macromedia flash plugin
GStreamer ffmpeg video plugin
Ubuntu restricted extras
VLC media player
Movie Player Totem (xine backend)
gxine
Gnash SWF Viewer
Kubuntu restricted extras

I then opened synaptic and looked at installed apps and everything above was
there except macromedia flash plugin and Move Player Totem (xine backend)

I don't know whether that helps you but I'm pretty lost. Why do those 2 not
appear in synaptic when they do in add/remove?

To make it clear Swiftweasel 64x works wonderfully in every respect except
that it won't play any flash content apart from Youtube.
Swiftweasel 32x works in every way and plays all flash content.
I also have the Firefox that came with the 64x 7.10 pack and that won't play
flash but a 32x Firefox will.

Obviously i could just stick with the 32x Swiftweasel but I have several
other problems and I thought this would be the easiest to start with.
Apparently not.

Hope this info helps. Kilz on the 64x Forum tried to help and then suggested
I posted it as a bug. I think I must have posted it as a question instead
but if you can help I would be most grateful.

yours, John Williams

On 02/12/2007, Jim Hutchinson <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Your question #19175 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/19175
>
> Jim Hutchinson proposed the following answer:
> Oh, I forgot to mention that there is an open source flash player for
> 64bit called Gnash. I tried it first and had a lot of problems. It is
> alpha software and under development so in time this may be the best
> answer. It's been a couple months since I tried it so it might be much
> better now. You could try that first if you want and see. If it doesn't
> meet you needs remove it and use the macromedia solution.
>
> --
> If this answers your question, please go to the following page to let us
> know that it is solved:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/19175/+confirm?answer_id=1
>
> If you still need help, you can reply to this email or go to the
> following page to enter your feedback:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/19175
>
> You received this question notification because you are a direct
> subscriber of the question.
>

Revision history for this message
Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said :
#4

Hmmm, not exactly sure what to say. If it were me, I'd remove the Swiftweasel stuff and activate these in add/remove

macromedia flash plugin
GStreamer ffmpeg video plugin
Ubuntu restricted extras

That covers most things (but not DVD and MP3 but that's a different question). The only thing I'm not sure about is how cleanly Swiftweasel will uninstall as I've never used it.

I also don't know why some things would show up in add/remove but not Sysnaptic. The opposite will be true though. Synaptic should list everything possible with the current repositories you have set and add/remove should be the "popular" subset of those.

Revision history for this message
neHru (leon-omfg) said :
#5

Hi John,

I once had a problem with flash sites, but I dont know if my previous problem will help in anyway;

I couldnt open any website containing flash, altough I didnt try YouTube. You could try and launch your webbrowser from a terminal, and see if this gives you a more clear error message when opening any particular flash website, like I did.

I ran the browser (Firefox in my example) from a terminal, and this told me what library the browser used for rendering flash, which was an old libflashplayer.so in my $home/.mozilla. This was 32bit, so it didnt work. I tried removing and installing every flash package I could think of before, but none worked, because the old one in my homedir wasnt associated with any package (it was left by an old 32bit installation).

So: try and launch from a terminal, and see if there are any error messages.

Hope this helps you in any way....

Revision history for this message
john williams (johnwillyums) said :
#6

Hello Jim and neHru,

Jim, I tried what you suggested and removed Swiftweasel in both it's forms (64x and 32x)
The other stuff was already installed and activated.
This left me with the Firefox install that came with Gutsy and the 32x Firefox which I put on myself.
As before, only the 32x install will play flash.
Swiftweasel is Firefox optimised for Linux and was recommended on the forums. It's certainly better than Firefox in terms of speed and seems to be compatible with all the themes and add-ons unlike the regular install so I'd prefer to use it whether in 64x or 32x.
Perhaps I'm just being a bit obsessive about having everything in 64x. Back in Vista 64x I'm having to run most things in 32x because 64x software does not yet exist.

neHru. Thanks for your input but I'm not quite clear what you want me to try. Remember I'm a newbie and I don't really know how to launch from a terninal. Perhaps you could give me baby talk instructions?
The websites containg flash open fine in all four browsers and work in every way except that the 64x browsers won't play the flash insert and either display a blank square or a never ending "buffering" message.

Thanks once again for your help and support, John

Revision history for this message
neHru (leon-omfg) said :
#7

Hi John,

Depending on if you use Gnome (Ubuntu) or KDE (Kubuntu) as your display
manager, there should be an entry called "Terminal" or "Konsole" somewhere
in your "Start" menu (I think it should be in the Utilities submenu
somewhere).

This opens the "terminal" I was talking about. In this terminal you can type
commands, such as the command "firefox" which will start firefox (I dont
know for sure, but the command for iceweasel should be plainly "iceweasel").

Error messages provided by firefox will be shown in your terminal. Does it
display any errors when opening a flash site?

On Dec 4, 2007 8:44 AM, john williams <email address hidden>
wrote:

> Question #19175 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/19175
>
> Status: Answered => Open
>
> john williams is still having a problem:
> Hello Jim and neHru,
>
> Jim, I tried what you suggested and removed Swiftweasel in both it's forms
> (64x and 32x)
> The other stuff was already installed and activated.
> This left me with the Firefox install that came with Gutsy and the 32x
> Firefox which I put on myself.
> As before, only the 32x install will play flash.
> Swiftweasel is Firefox optimised for Linux and was recommended on the
> forums. It's certainly better than Firefox in terms of speed and seems to be
> compatible with all the themes and add-ons unlike the regular install so I'd
> prefer to use it whether in 64x or 32x.
> Perhaps I'm just being a bit obsessive about having everything in 64x.
> Back in Vista 64x I'm having to run most things in 32x because 64x software
> does not yet exist.
>
> neHru. Thanks for your input but I'm not quite clear what you want me to
> try. Remember I'm a newbie and I don't really know how to launch from a
> terninal. Perhaps you could give me baby talk instructions?
> The websites containg flash open fine in all four browsers and work in
> every way except that the 64x browsers won't play the flash insert and
> either display a blank square or a never ending "buffering" message.
>
> Thanks once again for your help and support, John
>
> --
> You received this question notification because you are a direct
> subscriber of the question.
>

Revision history for this message
john williams (johnwillyums) said :
#8

Jim, neHru.

Hello again. I seem to have solved my browser problem with a suggestion from "daflame" on a thread in absolute beginner talk.
Daflame suggested that flash was still tied to gnash rather than flashplugin-nonfree.
I presume that might be due to the order in which I installed them.
Anyway, he suggested that I uninstall anything to do with gnash in synaptic and then enter the following command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure flashplugin-nonfree

I'm pleased to say that this has worked and I now have full flash capabilities on my Swiftweasel 64x install.

I would recommend this optimised version of Firefox to anyone. It is optimised for Linux and also for individual cpus and is much much faster than Firefox 64x. There are also 32x versions. The other plus point is that it is fully backwards compatible with Firefox themes and addons, so I can have Redshift or Old Factory etc.

Anyway I'd like to thank both of you for your time and effort and if you can pass this fix on to anyone else having similar problems.

Thanks once again, best wishes, John Williams

Revision history for this message
Dara Adib (daradib) said :
#9

Just a note: this is a problem that you will have when installing the flashplugin-nonfree package- that is what Firefox does when you install Flash AFTER December 4th, until this bug is fixed in Ubuntu 7.10 (hopefully soon), caused by Adobe's update of Flash 9.0 update 3 (9.0.115.0) codename "Moviestar" on December 4th.

http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200712/120407adobemoviestar.html

This causes Ubuntu to not install the flash plugin, detecting a change in the flash plugin installer file (via MD5 checksums). See bug 173890. This bug has been fixed in the next release of Ubuntu (Hardy 8.04) and it should soon come as an update to Ubuntu 7.10.

If you want an immediate fix, do the following.

Using Synaptic Package Manager, remove the package flashplugin-nonfree. For more information on how to do this, see the Ubuntu documentation here: https://help.ubuntu.com/7.10/add-applications/C/advanced.html#synaptic

Alternatively, you can run this command in the Terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal): sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-nonfree

Then just download this package (32-bit only) and install it (it is identical to the current package in the next release of Ubuntu, Hardy 8.04): http://launchpadlibrarian.net/10761023/flashplugin-nonfree_9.0.115.0ubuntu2_i386.deb

If you have 64-bit Ubuntu, you currently need to build a binary package from this source package: http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/flashplugin-nonfree/9.0.115.0ubuntu2

Revision history for this message
john williams (johnwillyums) said :
#10

Dear Cyrus, thanks very much for your reply.
As I said in my post of 5.12 I seem to have solved this problem with the
help of "daflame" on Absolute Beginners forum.
He felt that my problem was that flash was tied to gnash so he suggested I
uninstall everything to do with gnash in synaptic and then do

sudo dpkg-reconfigure flashplugin-nonfree

I did this and now seem to have full flash capabilities in 64x Swiftweasel
(I am running 64x Gutsy+ 64x Vista dual boot)
However, now that you mention it I do recall an Adobe update coming in at
the same time so I'm not sure what I've done or what actually solved the
problem.
So far everything seems fine so I'll leave it as it is but thanks very much
for your input.
All the best, John Williams

On 08/12/2007, Cyrus Jones <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Your question #19175 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/19175
>
> Linked to bug: #173890
> https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/bugs/173890
> "flashplugin-nonfree fails to install... new version?"
>
> --
> You received this question notification because you are a direct
> subscriber of the question.
>

Revision history for this message
john williams (johnwillyums) said :
#11

I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

- John

John Williams
Key Worker at Almond Villas Group
Blackburn, United Kingdom

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