flashplugin-installer: local downloaded package not found

[Alessandro Menti]

Binary package hint: flashplugin-installer

It's impossible to install the flashplugin-nonfree package while offline even if you have downloaded the adobe-flashplugin_*.orig.tar.gz file manually from Adobe's site.

Steps to reproduce:
1) Download the adobe-flashplugin_*.orig.tar.gz file manually from Canonical's "partner" website (e.g. using wget: wget -c http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/adobe-flashplugin_10.0.45.2.orig.tar.gz)
2) Download the flashplugin-installer package with "sudo apt-get install -d flashplugin-installer". This will cause the package not to be installed, but only to be downloaded in the cache.
3) Disconnect from the Internet.
4) Install the package with "sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer". The installer should complain that it has failed to download the .tar.gz file: this is normal.
5) Run "sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow flashplugin-installer" to reconfigure the package. A window should appear asking you if you have already downloaded the .tar.gz file manually - enter the path to the directory where you have downloaded the .tar.gz file at step 1.

Expected results:
The installer should find the .tar.gz file and install the plugin from there.

Actual results:
A message appears indicating that the file was not found:
"The .tar.gz file does not exist in the directory you entered. Please try again. Enter the path of the directory that the package is in (don't type the filename at the end of the path)."

Ubuntu release: KUbuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

Affected package version: 10.0.45.2ubuntu0.9 (I think it also applies to previous versions of the package)

A manual inspection of the .deb package and some experimental testing shows that the problem lies in the "postinst" configuration script, at line 46 (if [ -d "$RET" -a -f "$RET"/$FILENAME ]; then). Strangely, the script does NOT detect the presence of the tarball correctly.

[Joel Ebel (jbebel)]

The problem appears to be an inconsistency between the config file and the postinst. I'm unsure what the intended behavior is, but the config file checks for the filename and sha256sum of the upstream tarball from adobe which is install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz" If that's not found, then it complains that it can't find the upstream tarball. However, the postinst proceeds assuming that the file you downloaded is the one from archive.canonical.com, which is adobe-flashplugin_10.0.45.2.orig.tar.gz and has a different checksum. In fact, it appears that the only way to fool it is to download both those files into /var/cache/flashplugin-nonfree.

I can easily write a patch to make the control file expect the file from archive.canonical rather than the upstream tarball. To make the postinst deal with the upstream tarball rather than the canonical package would be a bit more tricky. It would be nice to have confirmation from the package maintainer what the expected behavior is supposed to be.

[Joel Ebel (jbebel)]

I think this is technically a dup of bug 314637 but there's a lot more noise over there.

[Joel Ebel (jbebel)]

Patch is attached to the duplicate bug 314637