Flash player gone in Chrome and Firefox

[SkittleLinux18]

Hi everybody, as usual, linux continues to have an f-ing mind of it's own and break whenever it chooses to.

At 2 pm today, I could browse the internet and watch movies. I leave and come home at 6:30. Now, I can't watch movies without being told to update flash player. WTF!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!

I go to adobe's website and there is no .deb files. So I download the tar.gz file. Extract and copy the file to the plugin folder as adobe's site instructs. Nothing.

Go to package manager, uninstall and re-install. Restart Chrome. Still nothing.

sudo apt-get install adobe-flashplugin but the package could not be found.

I have no idea why this happened. I am a seasoned linux user. But as usual, Linux likes to randomly break. Does anybody know what the problem is?

[rokytnji]

try this (move your installed libflashplayer.so that you installed first to a new made folder in /home named Backups first) so you know where the new one is located in readout. Since I run AntiX. My location may be different than yours.

harry@antiX1:~$ locate libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so
harry@antiX1:~$ cd /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree
harry@antiX1:/usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree$ ls
libflashplayer.so  pubkey.asc
harry@antiX1:/usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree$

So I find out the default location for me is in /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree folder.. So I know to install the new libflashplayer.so in that directory.

Since you uninstalled old flashplayer first before doing this. You might only get the /home/skittles/Backup folder to show maybe. But might be worth a shot to see. Can't hurt. I usually in Puppy install libfllashplayer.so in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins folder so all browsers can pick it up from there, Even Opera
.
aboutlugins

Shockwave Flash

File name: libflashplayer.so
Shockwave Flash 10.3 r181

[SkittleLinux18]

Hey Roky, thanks for replying. I moved the said file to both /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer and /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins but flash still isn't running. I've tried restarting Chrome and Firefox multiple times, restarting the computer. I'm waiting for an openSUSE iso to finish downloading so I can burn both it and a Mint iso. Then I am going to try restoring the image I made of my linux computer via clonezilla. If that doesn't work (because I cloned the drive wrong at the time I made the ghost image), then I am going to move to Mint or SUSE. Which ever I like more, really. The *buntu dynasty is coming to an end. distrowatch and theregister.org have all had articles about it the past several months. Sad day for everyone, really.

[rokytnji]

Ok. I booted my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Desktop in the house. I was at my motorcycle shop earlier when posting. In Kubuntu should be the same (I run Gnome), So this readout is for Ubuntu

owner@owner-desktop:~$ locate libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
/usr/share/ubufox/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
/var/lib/flashplugin-installer/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so

owner@owner-desktop:~$ cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
owner@owner-desktop:/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins$ ls
flashplugin-alternative.so             libtotem-gmp-plugin.so
libflashplayer.so                      libtotem-mully-plugin.so
libjavaplugin.so                       libtotem-narrowspace-plugin.so
librhythmbox-itms-detection-plugin.so  libvlcplugin.so
libtotem-cone-plugin.so
owner@owner-desktop:/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins$

So

I moved the said file to both /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer and /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins but flash still isn't running.

So check and see if /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer is a symlinked folder to /usr/lib/mozzila/plugins folder. I think the only place you should have installed the new libflashplayer.so was to /usr/lib/mozzila/plugins folder only. May be why flash is not working for you. When pasting into /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins folder. It will automagically create a symlink I think in /usr/lib/flashplugin -installer (if a symlinked folder. I need to look first though. Edit. Nope not a sylmlinked folder. Mine shows libflashplayer.so in there also.

I'm posting in Google Chrome Browser right now. So aboutlugins shows


Flash (2 files) - Version: 10.3.183
Shockwave Flash 10.3 r183

[SkittleLinux18]

Oh buddy, I am so sorry. I already successfully restored my Kubuntu image viz clonezilla. Everything is fine once again. Except for some minor tweeks that I did post-clone and about 170 updates. LOL I can tell you that both those folders (*mozilla/plugins and *flashplugin-installer) were empty except for the libflashplayer.so file. So, I don't think it would have mattered. I don't know what happened or why it wasn't fixing. I am going to run these updates, restart, and then see if the error happens again (unlikely). The good news is that I discovered that I do know how to use clonezilla and correctly, too. I may just make several clones (Kubuntu, SuSE, Mint, etc) and just restore as my heart desireth. haha!

For real, though, thanks for your help. I will revisit this thread if flash goes AFU to BFE again.

[SkittleLinux18]

Ok, so I know there is really very little anyone can do about this, but I did want to follow up with some new information that I think will help others who have this problem.

It is definitely a flashplugin update that is breaking it. It popped up in the automatic updates yesterday, and since I have this install cloned via clonezilla, I figured I'd run the update and see if flash player broke again- sure enough it did. So I am going to restore that image again of my kubuntu install and just get back up and running. But, for everyone else, avoid the recent flashplugin update.

I hope this kind of helps people in the future.

[Rubberman]

If you are running a 64-bit linux, chrome, and 64-bit flash, the latest update installs the 32-bit flash version by mistake, making it unusable. You need to undo the update and reinstall the 64-bit version of flash, which has not been updated yet. FWIW, you can complain to Adobe, although that probably won't do much good. Their support for 64-bit linux is slow and spotty.

[SkittleLinux18]

You need to undo the update and reinstall the 64-bit version of flash, which has not been updated yet.

Yes, I tried this already and it made no difference. I tried doing via package manager, adobe's website and downloading the .tar.bz file, and apt-get. No luck from all three tries. This is Linux, I expect this stuff. As was said here by Miguel de Icaza, "To be honest, with Linux on the desktop, the benefits of open source have really played against Linux on the desktop in that we keep breaking things." Users of Linux have to have a lot of passion for the operating system to deal with it. Oh, and Clonzilla! hahahahaha!!!

[Rubberman]

Do this. Uninstall the flash plugin, Firefox, and Chrome. Then reinstall Chrome and Firefox without flash - Chrome has its own flash plug in, so it should work. Firefox may be able to use it - test and see. If it doesn't work, then install the 64-bit flash plugin. FWIW, uninstalling Chrome and FF should not affect your user settings, passwords, etc. They should still be there when you reinstall FF and Chrome.

[SkittleLinux18]

Alright, this ***** is solved!

Rubberman, I recorded a video of me following your advice here. As you will see, it didn't work. The problem is with flashplugin 11.0.1.152. So I installed version 10 via packagemanager as shown here, and I have flash up and running again in chrome and firefox- no problems.

So the solution is to revert back to flashplugin 10 and avoid the update for 11.0.1.152. Maybe a later version of 11.x will be better. But for now, stick with version 10.