Flash plugin 11.2.202.228 and libvdpau1 together cause breakage in firefox and chromium in Precise and Oneiric for nvidia users

Bug #967182 reported by Maria Geller
68
This bug affects 14 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
adobe-flashplugin (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

New update 11.2.202.228 of flash plugin seems incompatible with the Precise X11 stack (edit: or as we now know with libvdpau1).

Previous version 11.1.102.63 works fine.

Symptoms:

Total freeze of firefox and chromium.

Setup:

kernel - 3.2.0-20-generic
X - nvidia 295.20

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

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

Changed in adobe-flashplugin (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
J11 (jarno-ahma) wrote :

On my machine Firefox doesn't freeze but all I get is a black box instead of flash video. I tried to change the file permissions and copy the libflashplayer.so file to all possible locations I know and see if that does anything but all I got was plugin-container hanging.
Locations I tried were:
/usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/ (default directory)
/usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

Setup:
Precise, 3.2.0-20-generic-pae, nvidia 295.20, firefox 11.0

Revision history for this message
Mankeys (mankeys) wrote :

I have black box after update to flash 11.2 (firefox 11.0)

Peter (gedoens81)
summary: - Flash plugin 11.2.202.228 breaks firefox and chromium in Precise
+ Flash plugin 11.2.202.228 breaks firefox and chromium in Precise and
+ Oneiric
Revision history for this message
Peter (gedoens81) wrote : Re: Flash plugin 11.2.202.228 breaks firefox and chromium in Precise and Oneiric

After the update flash is totally messed up. Any flash vid or app is either just a black box or doesn't show up at all.
Also can't reinstall the "old" plugin version because of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/flashplugin-nonfree/+bug/968192

Oneiric, 3.0.0-17-generic i686, nvidia 173 as well as nvidia 280.13, firefox 11.0 as well as firefox 12.0, geforce 7600

Revision history for this message
Maria Geller (mariageller67-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

I've discovered if you ditch libvdpau1 it works again. So the conflict seems to be with vdpau.

But if you want mplayer or mplayer2 you are out of luck, cos both need libvdpau1 to run, and both have libvdpau1 as a formal dependency. And things like smplayer, gnome-mplayer &etc all depend on mplayer.

So on nvidia at least, for the time being, you cannot have both flash and vdpau.

Revision history for this message
J11 (jarno-ahma) wrote :

I installed an old version of flash player to keep using flash content until adobe releases a new version that works.
I did this manually since repository doesn't have older versions and I couldn't use Synaptic's force version option.

This is what I did (on Ubuntu Precise 32bit):

* I Downloaded archived package (Flash Player 11.1.102.63 (174 MB)) from http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html
* I then extracted release version of flash player for 32 bit linux archive and extracted libflashplayer.so from that (readme.txt has documentation for the packages)
* I have flashplayer-installer installed and that places the .so to /usr/lib/flashplayer-installer/ so I backed up that file and copied downloaded version in that folder:
 - cd /usr/lib/flashplayer-installer/
 - sudo mv libflashplayer.so libflashplayer.so_backup
 - sudo cp ~/Downloads/libflashplayer.so .
* Then made sure that both libraries have the same permissions and that the owner is root (they were)
 - ls -la
* I had latest version installed elsewhere so flash wasn't working yet. I had to rename libflashplayer.so in /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/ so that firefox wasn't using that anymore.

* Flash was working and it reports the earlier version. Next I did a sanity check and flash didn't work with the new library version but works with the old one.

Revision history for this message
Maria Geller (mariageller67-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

@J11 just for future reference, flash is always breaking in lunux so make sure you always keep a copy deb of the last known working version. Manually installing the way you suggest certainly works, but it is a very bad idea. You would be better making a .deb yourself.

Or ... you could ditch libvdpau1 like I suggested, but then you lose out on all the mplayer goodness.

Revision history for this message
Maria Geller (mariageller67-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

I should have mentioned that anything that uses apt for installation, like apt-get or aptitude or synaptic or even the "software centre" downloads the debs into /var/cache/apt/archives. So all you need do to keep a copy of a package deb is to make a dir to hold your stuff e.g.

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/backup

and then copy the file(s) in e.g.

sudo cp /var/cache/apt/archives/adobe-flash*11.1.102.63*.deb /usr/local/backup

to install one or more .deb or you do e.g.

sudo dpkg -i /usr/local/backup/adobe-flash*11.1.102.63*.deb

Easy as that. The point about only having files in /usr that came from a .deb cannot be stressed enough. If you manually copy stuff in, it will break something sooner or later. It is an absolute CERTAINTY.

Revision history for this message
J11 (jarno-ahma) wrote :

@mariageller67
Very true. (although I haven't had flash "always" breaking before)

You shouldn't poke these files manually. If you must work outside package manager (again, not the best idea) it's better to keep the changes out of the system files and contain them in user directory.
For flash it might be possible to place the plugin under the ~/.mozilla directory but I haven't explored this option. System wide changes are meant to be done through package installation system like mariageller67 said.

summary: - Flash plugin 11.2.202.228 breaks firefox and chromium in Precise and
- Oneiric
+ Flash plugin 11.2.202.228 and libvdpau1 together cause breakage in
+ firefox and chromium in Precise and Oneiric
description: updated
summary: Flash plugin 11.2.202.228 and libvdpau1 together cause breakage in
- firefox and chromium in Precise and Oneiric
+ firefox and chromium in Precise and Oneiric for nvidia users
Revision history for this message
Maria Geller (mariageller67-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

Anyone wanting 32-bit i386 debs of the 11.1.102.63 adobe-flashplugin and adobe-flash-properties-gtk can get them here

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?1oouv75h2v2m8mf

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?6gy9864688w59n6

Revision history for this message
Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur) wrote :

Please don't recommend installing packages from arbitrary locations. If you want the previous version of adobe-flashplugin, you can download them from launchpad here:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/adobe-flashplugin/11.1.102.63-0oneiric1/+build/3260792
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/adobe-flashplugin/11.1.102.63-0oneiric1/+build/3260791

Revision history for this message
Maria Geller (mariageller67-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

Those packages are for Oneiric. Where are the links for Precise ?

And why did you wait until now to post them ?

If you are unable to contribute in any meaningful way, then kindly desist.

Revision history for this message
axel (axel334) wrote :

This bug is similar to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/adobe-flashplugin/+bug/967091
and its duplicates.

It would be great if in Ubuntu could be some options build in updater to come back to previous package. At least before the package is deleted from hard disk.

Revision history for this message
Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur) wrote :

It would be great if someone tried different combinations of OverrideGPUValidation and EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode in the /etc/adobe/mms.cfg file to see if there's a workaround.

See:
https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3109467
http://blogs.adobe.com/penguinswf/2008/08/secrets_of_the_mmscfg_file_1.html

Revision history for this message
Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur) wrote :

OK, so with my test laptop.

No mms.cfg, no libvdpau1 = flash works fine

after installing libvdpau1 = wrong tint (LP: #967091)

after adding "EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1" to mms.cfg = black flash video (LP: #967182)
after adding "EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1" and "OverrideGPUValidation=true" to mms.cfg = flash works fine

YMMV.

Revision history for this message
Butter Torch (shalamanono) wrote :

Marc Deslauriers was destroyed in this thread.

Revision history for this message
Maria Geller (mariageller67-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

Good work Marc.

Some sites still crash the container with libvdpau1 + flash11.2 , regardless of the settings or even existence of /etc/adobe/mms.cfg tho.

So either 11.2 without vdpau, or 11.1 with vdpau is the only viable workaround I've found for nvidia people.
Prolly best to stick with 11.1 and wait, hope and pray that adobe's next "gift" to the linux world is more friendly.

Revision history for this message
Bryan Suskevich (spiderstinger) wrote :

It appears this behaviour manifests itself in Natty Narwhal, with Firefox and also Opera.

Revision history for this message
Tobias Radloff (tobiasradloff) wrote :

After upgrading from Oneiric to Precise, I experience black flash video on Firefox as well as Opera while using adobe-flashplugin 11.2.202.235, nvidia-current 295.40 and libvdpau.

Manually downgrading to 11.1.102.63 solved the problem for me. I had to use the debs provided by Maria; the binaries behind Marc's Precise link have been deleted.

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