New glibc in Fedora 14 breaks Flash

[Mudgen]

The glibc in Fedora 14 apparently breaks the Adobe Flash browser plugin:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638477

This results from a change that corrupts data when memcpy is done with overlapping source and destination. Although this has always been illegal, it has also always worked without issue. It also breaks rrdtool (reported on the Xymon mailing list), and likely a number of other applications yet to be correlated to the change.

Although no less than Linux Torvalds himself has weighed in to the effect that the change is wrong and unnecessary (in the bug report), the glibc team has declined so far to consider fixing it.

Just a public service announcement for those considering upgrading to Fedora 14. Although it's likely that the new glibc will hit prior supported versions at some point.

[MikeTbob]

I seem to remember, Fedora has had a problem with Flash for awhile now....at least for me it did. I haven't tried the latest yet.
BTW, I moved your post here...seeing as this is an announcement and not a request for help.

[oz]

Thanks for the alert - I don't run Fedora or Flash, but it will come in handy for those that do!

Personally, I'm looking forward to some good alternatives to Flash... and just wishing they'd hurry up with them.

[MikeTbob]

Doesn't Fedora use Gnash by default?

[Mudgen]

I seem to remember, Fedora has had a problem with Flash for awhile now....at least for me it did. I haven't tried the latest yet.
BTW, I moved your post here...seeing as this is an announcement and not a request for help.

Thanks, Tbob, sorry for posting in the wrong place. I just wanted to get the word out since Linus broke his Flash unwittingly (and posted a workaround in the bug). Of more consequence could be sysadmins who upgrade systems running Xymon systems monitor or other major applications dependent on rrdtool. Although I'd never run such on Fedora in a production environment.

I remember having to jump through some hoops with Flash through Fedora 10, but IIRC since F12 I've just installed the Adobe 64 bit beta and everything has just worked.

[Mudgen]

Doesn't Fedora use Gnash by default?

I'm still running F12, which did not (F13 horribly broke my test system and was backed out, have not yet tried out F14). Using an available GNU solution would certainly be the Fedora way, but I'd presume that Linus' continued use of Flash is a hint that Gnash is not yet fully functional/compatible.

[Etna]

I'm still running F12, which did not (F13 horribly broke my test system and was backed out, have not yet tried out F14). Using an available GNU solution would certainly be the Fedora way, but I'd presume that Linus' continued use of Flash is a hint that Gnash is not yet fully functional/compatible.

Linus is a pragmatist. He has no qualms about praising Microsoft Windows 7 or other 'proprietary, closed-sourced' applications if they do a good job in satisfying user needs and wants. And whle he has stated that he hates working with binaries, his actions show that he is willing to compromise a lttle here and there if it eventually benefits the end-user.

We really need more people like him around. Great respect to him.

ON a side note, I''m still on Fedora 10, so it won;t affect me in any way.

[Etna]

I seem to remember, Fedora has had a problem with Flash for awhile now....at least for me it did. I haven't tried the latest yet.
BTW, I moved your post here...seeing as this is an announcement and not a request for help.

I have not had a problem with Flash (x86 and x64 versions) in Fedora 10, as well as in Fedora 11 and Fedora 12 when testing them out through LiveCDs.

Instead, it' is my primary 'workhorse' distro OpenSUSE which has more issues with Flash than i can remember. Freezing Chromium and even lagging the whole KDE desktop interface are just some of the issues i face on a daily basis.

Fortunately, the issues are not serious enough to actively interfere with my work, so it's well within tolerable ranges. Plus, nothing is more satisfying that watching Youtube on x64 OpenSUSE 11.1 during lunch break on my laptop in the office.