Re: flashplayer on debian-amd64 (sid)
> Dear maintainers,
>
> I tested some flash plugins onm my amd64 system.
>
> According to this, I found out, flashplugin-nonfree either from sid or
> experimental is not working. This is because it is using nspluginwrapper and
> the 32-bit version of flashplayer10.
>
> I have found out a better solution. Two opportunities:
[snip]
For those interested in a more Debianly-correct solution, I will share my
latest experience from yesterday, after trying to get the 64-bit Flash
plugin working using 'flashplugin-nonfree' from the experimental
repositories:
First, I began having problems with Flash this Fall with the 1.7.x series
of 'flashplugin-nonfree'. The maintainer of the package, Bart Martens,
realized that it was a violation of Debian policy for the installer scripts
to touch anything in the Debian alternatives system when installing the
plugin, and removed the script code that sets the 'flash-mozilla.so' link
in /etc/alternatives to "auto" mode if it (for any reason) gets set to
"manual".
When I installed versions of 'flashplugin-nonfree' in the 1.7.x series,
Flash was broken. I was holding the package at 1.6.3 for a long time until
I found some time to do some reading on the bug tracking system -- where I
found out about the issue with the Debian alternatives system.
Sure enough, something had set 'flash-mozilla.so' to "manual" on my
system, and updates of the Flash plugin in 1.7.x were not being recognized
after being installed because of that. The alternatives system _was_
properly indicating that the newly-installed version was the preferred
version, but the "manual" status was keeping the links from being updated
to the new version. (Current status can be checked by running
'update-alternatives --display flash-mozilla.so'.)
The fix was to run 'update-alternatives --auto flash-mozilla.so'. After
that, Flash was working fine for me again.
Yesterday, I installed the experimental version of 'flashplugin-nonfree',
version 2 (actually "1:2", with the epoch prefixed) -- which uses the 64-bit
beta from Adobe's website, and has NO dependency on 'nspluginwrapper' -- to
see if it would work for me.
After installing it, I had no Flash support at all... and the Iceweasel
Tools->Add-ons->Plugins menu confirmed that with no listing for "Shockwave
Flash". I had taken notes on my problems describe above during the Fall,
and re-read those notes. After investigating the dates of 'libflashplayer.so'
in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins and /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree, I realized that
cruft was left behind on my system because not all of these files end up
getting tracked properly by the Debian packaging system when stuff from
Adobe gets installed in the filesystem.
Furthermore, the alternatives link to 'flash-mozilla.so' was set to
"manual" again, but the alternatives system was correctly identifying the
new, version 2, Flash player as the preferred version. Simply running
update-alternatives --auto flash-mozilla.so
was enough to allow Iceweasel to use the new Flash player, and it is
working great for me!
This really needs to be documented somewhere -- nothing relevant appears
in /usr/share/doc/flashplugin-nonfree, though the changelog includes some
hints -- and I would argue that the debconf system could be used to ask
for user input if the 'flash-mozilla.so' link in the alternatives is set
to "manual". The sort of grief demonstrated by the post to which I am
responding could be lessened or avoided entirely with a little helpful
information!
Hope that helps someone,
Dave W.
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