Pepper Flash needs to be backported to 12.04

[Matt C]

Now that this package is officially the only way to run flash on chromium it should be backported to 12.04, since that release is still supported until 26 April 2017. And I suppose 13.10 as well, but that's probably less pressing. Debian has released this package for wheezy, jessie, & sid, as you can see from the following rmadison output:

debian:
 pepperflashplugin-nonfree | 1.2~bpo70+1 | wheezy-backports/contrib | source, amd64, i386
 pepperflashplugin-nonfree | 1.3 | jessie/contrib | source, amd64, i386
 pepperflashplugin-nonfree | 1.3 | sid/contrib | source, amd64, i386
ubuntu:
 pepperflashplugin-nonfree | 1.3ubuntu1 | trusty/multiverse | source, amd64, i386

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[houstonbofh (leesharp)]

How is this not done yet? The 14.04 64 package works fine in 12.04 so "backporting" is just a matter of copying it over.

In the mean time, try this fix;

1) Go to http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/pepperflashplugin-nonfree

2) Download package for your archtecture.

3) Install.

4) Report if it works or fails.

[psl (slansky)]

Ubuntu 12.04.4, i386.

I downloaded (http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/pepperflashplugin-nonfree) and installed
pepperflashplugin-nonfree 1.3ubuntu1

$ sudo dpkg -i Downloads/pepperflashplugin-nonfree_1.3ubuntu1_i386.deb

I confirm, it works. Chromium browser has to be restarted; after that I can use web sites with Flash again.

[Chris McDonough (chrism-plope)]

http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/pepperflashplugin-nonfree also works for me on amd64 12.04.

[houstonbofh (leesharp)]

So, there is a bug. There is a patch. It works. And nothing can be done since no one owns the package. FYI: You all may want to look at this bug no one is ghoing to fix either. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pepperflashplugin-nonfree/+bug/1312219

[amjjawad  (amjjawad)]

Hi, is there any luck whatsoever that this bug could be fixed? I'm running 12.04 LTS and I don't really want to upgrade as I have zero time for that. I have no problems with Firefox but everytime I use Chromium on this machine (12.04 LTS), I need to suffer and switch browsers because flash does not work here no matter what I do (on Chromium).

I hope someone will fix that soon but all what I see is an action 2 months ago and nothing further ...

[houstonbofh (leesharp)]

amjjawad,
You can fix it for you. See post #3 from me above for instructions. Not sure why this can't be added to backports, however...

Also see my comment in post #6 to keep it current.

[psl (slansky)]

Manual updates with pepperflashplugin were working for some time but not anymore, there is new problem:

# update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree --status
ERROR: failed to retrieve status information from google : W: GPG error: http://dl.google.com stable Release: The following signatures were invalid: BADSIG A040830F7FAC5991 Google, Inc. Linux Package Signing Key <email address hidden>
More information might be available at:
  http://wiki.debian.org/PepperFlashPlayer

[houstonbofh (leesharp)]

Looks like Google updated their key. This fixed it for me...

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 7FAC5991

That command will pull the key from the keyserver again.
Sure would be nice if this was a real package...

[houstonbofh (leesharp)]

Correction to my comment above...

Sometimes it fails after updateing the key... If I try a few more times, it works. It looks like Google is having key problems. Perhaps one server in the load balanced cluster is broken.

[Naël (nathanael-naeri)]

The preferred source for Flash is now adobe-flashplugin from partner, not pepperflashplugin-nonfree from multiverse. It has been so for all supported releases of Ubuntu, including Precise, since 2015-05.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Chromium/Getting-Flash
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/adobe-flashplugin

There is therefore no need to backport pepperflashplugin-nonfree to Precise anymore (which was never done), or to use external repositories (I used to use ppa:skunk/pepper-flash as my source for Pepper Flash plugin when I was using Precise before 2015-05). Closing the bug.