Comment 13 for bug 139138

I am a newbie and have never replied on launchpad yet. But since I was able to fix this problem, I though I would add it in here. Since most newbies like me land up on this page looking for a solution, I thought it would be a good idea. Do let me know if this is not the place for such stuff, I would not do it again.

Here is how I got flash working on my machine
1. aptitude remove flashplugin-nonfree
    This is to get rid of the previously installed plugin. It didn't show us any flash so we are going to be merciless with it. If it asks to get rid of ubuntu-restricted-extras, make sure you remove that too.
2. rm ~/.mozilla/plugins/*flash*
    This is to get rid of the local profiles of flash already present on the system.
3. wget -c http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/ flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz
    Now, we download the actual file from the macromedia site to install flash player.
4. tar -xvzf install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz
    Ok, now that we have the file, we need to unzip it, and add the files to the required folders.
5. sudo cp install_flash_player_9_linux/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/
sudo cp install_flash_player_9_linux/flashplayer.xpt /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/
    First, we copy these two files to the /usr/lib/firefox folders. Sometimes it starts working here, but if you're as unlucky as me it won't. Which is why we have a few more steps.
6. ps -aef | grep firefox
    This is where we check where firefox is really installed. If you see /usr/local/bin/firefox anywhere around, follow step 7, otherwise goto step 8
7. sudo cp flashplayer.xpt /usr/local/firefox/plugins/
sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/local/firefox/plugins/
   Now we move the same files to the /usr/local/firefox folder, so that the flash files are available on that profile too. If it still doesn't work, don't worry, we still have one more trick up our sleeve.
8. mkdir ~/.mozilla/plugins/
   Finally, the last trick, we create a completely local profile for flash. It won't be visible to other users on the machine.
9. cp flashplayer.xpt /root/.mozilla/plugins/
cp libflashplayer.so /root/.mozilla/plugins/
    Finally, we add the files to your local profile.
11. close firefox and restart it
    Now we're all done. Open any flash enabled site, and watch the fireworks.