Flash requires hal for video DRM

[Tommy Trussell]

Until Adobe fixes the issue (if they EVER do) for some types of online videos using DRM, the flash player will fail if you do not have hal installed. See the official word from Adobe at http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/flash-player-11-problems-playing.html

For example, users of Amazon Instant Video complain that some videos don't work and others do. The recommendation is to install hal and usually they will all work. Amazon's forum has a couple of threads that include examples of videos that do and don't work. I will try to find some trailers or something that show the problem but don't require Prime membership to view so I can add concrete examples to this bug.

http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon%20video%20on%20demand/ref=cm_cd_tfp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx3EQAX98ED5WQ3&cdThread=Tx29SBOI1ENX0DM

http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon%20video%20on%20demand/ref=cm_cd_tfp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx3EQAX98ED5WQ3&cdThread=TxFTGOK5LRL3JM

(As of this date the second discussion has become very long, but it includes the best examples of working and nonworking videos and a more involved discussion of the dangers of installing hal on an otherwise up-to-date Ubuntu system.)

I know one "fix" would be to make hal a dependency of the flashplugin-nonfree package, but I know Debian and Ubuntu are trying to stomp out hal dependencies wherever possible.

[Tommy Trussell (tommy-trussell)]

Here is an example of a video demonstrating the issue -- the trailer for Dr. Who Season 7 in HD:

http://www.amazon.com/Season-7-Trailer-HD/dp/B008ZXTNGG/ref=sr_1_10?s=instant-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1347244110

(Unfortunately even though the trailer is free to watch, you must sign in to an Amazon account in order to play it.)

I'm still looking for a movie trailer that has the problem because you don't usually have to be signed in to watch those.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Tommy Trussell (tommy-trussell)]

I forgot that Adobe includes instructions and a sample video for testing Flash DRM at the bottom of the same page: http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/flash-player-11-problems-playing.html

[Tommy Trussell (tommy-trussell)]

Debian recently added hal to "suggests" in the packaging http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=682370 HOWEVER for a typical user that probably wouldn't address the issue at all. In fact, when the player fails, there may not be an indication that the problem is due to the flash player installation on the local computer.

[Tommy Trussell (tommy-trussell)]

Was reading an OpenSUSE discussion of this issue that contained two potentially helpful links....here are the links:

The following RedHat bug includes an analysis of what Flash is using hal for:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=786656

The following Q&A includes info about building a version of hal in gentoo with minimal dependencies just for the purpose of working with Adobe Flash. http://superuser.com/questions/415238/protected-flash-video-requires-hal-on-gentoo

(Hmmm... makes me think someone could build a special flash-hal package that can be a dependency of Adobe Flash but conflict with "real" hal JUST for the purpose of allowing drm content.)

In case the superuser.com item disappears here is what the two answers say:
[quote]
HAL works on top of udev; it has never been "replaced by" it completely; those features that were can be disabled in hal (such as ACL management). There shouldn't be any conflicts as long as Flash Player is the only user of HAL.
[answered Apr 22 '12 at 14:49]

[quote]
For anyone in my shoes who needs to get this installed, grawity's comments to his answer hold the key on how to do it. For an explicit step-by-step:

Step 1: Grab the code

# git clone http://cgit.freedesktop.org/hal-info/
# git clone http://cgit.freedesktop.org/hal/

Step 2: Install hal-info

# cd hal-info
# ./autogen
# make && make install
# cd ..

Step 3: Fix the hal code

To do this, replace all instances of #include <glib/gmain.h> with #include <glib.h>. You can do that with a command like:

# find hal -name "*.c" -print|xargs sed -i 's/#include <glib\/gmain\.h>/#include <glib\.h>/g'
For some reason, that missed one reference (I'm not really a regexp / sed guru) so I just did a grep -r "#include <glib/gmain.h>" * and fixed it manually.

Step 4: Install hal

# cd hal
# ./autogen.sh --disable-policy-kit
# make && make install

Step 5: Don't forget the dbus config!

# cp hal.conf /etc/dbus-1/system.d/

That's it! Now just run it with hald

[answered Apr 25 '12 at 17:08]