Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so

[Jose Ramon Huerga]

If I open firefox from a terminal ( $ firefox & ) after some hours I see dozens of errors like this:

Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: no se puede abrir el fichero del objeto compartido: No existe el fichero o el directorio
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: no se puede abrir el fichero del objeto compartido: No existe el fichero o el directorio

In my case, the Flash videos are executed properly, with sound. It seems to be just a warning .

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: firefox 5.0+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.11.04.2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Jul 10 09:45:36 2011
ExecutablePath: /usr/lib/firefox-5.0/firefox-bin
FirefoxPackages:
 firefox 5.0+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.11.04.2
 flashplugin-installer 10.3.181.26ubuntu0.11.04.1
 adobe-flashplugin N/A
 icedtea-plugin 1.1~20110420-0ubuntu1.1
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
LocalLibraries: /home/jrhuerga/.mozilla/plugins/nppdf.so
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=es_ES:en
 LANG=es_ES.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-06-18 (21 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Paul Jackson (pj-usa)]

What I see (happens to be in English) is:
"Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"

This is on Firefox 11.10, Kubuntu 11.10, with an ATI Radeon card (not an NVidia).

Flash works fine within the browser.

Strace'ing and grep'ing around in binaries, not in source,, I'd guess (could be wrong) that the error comes from /usr/lib/libvdpau.so.1 trying to find "%slibvdpau_%s.so%s", where the second "%s" is "nvidia", where I have no such libvdpau_nvidia.so file.

One possible interacting detail -- my $HOME/.macromedia/Flash_Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/settings.sol
file, in fact the entire $HOME/.macromedia/Flash_Player sub-directory tree, has been repeatedly removed and rebuilt in whatever way it is automatically rebuilt when Firefox is restarted and that sub-directory tree is missing. I do this removal automatically on a routine basis, as part of my effort to improve macromedia flash security.

I notice from the strace that the above settings.sol file is referenced just before the failed efforts to find an instance of libvdpau_nvidia.so are attempted.

[Marius B. Kotsbak (mariusko)]

I guess this might be caused by an orphan installation of the Nvidia drivers outside of the Ubuntu packages. I'm trying to remove "/usr/lib/libvdpau.so.295.20", which does not belong to any packages.

[igor (igor822605)]

 I have the same message runing firefox from terminal. But i don't have any hardware from nvidia on my laptop. Every day while i use flashplayer in firefox it freezes firefox after some time.
P/S Xubuntu 11.10 user

[Mark S (zarg-)]

Same as Igor above, I get a lot of these errors running Firefox. I do not have an Nvidia card so cannot see why this driver would try to load. I'm getting a lot of system crashes too.

[Eglefino (ruudino-k)]

I have the same as above when I start firefox from the terminal, after some time it crash!. If I start firefox not from the terminal Firefox 22 or 23 crash faster and I don't see what happens in the background. The version doesn't matter, in August I had 358 crashes... so I read the bug is confirmed.... but is there a solution? I have to write my forum- messages first in an editor before I place them, because with a crash all is away.... pfff, so if there come a solution I like it very much!!

I don't use Nvdia, I have a AMD/ATI/GFX HD-5770 R6xx Juniper in use on a Asus P6T (standard) board. I use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

This error is triggered from the Flash plugin, it's nothing to do with Firefox