[MASTER] No flash in firefox after upgrade from intrepid to jaunty

[mnmeatsgoatnuts]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

While using hardy, i had a similar problem with flash deciding to not work for any particular reason after a fresh os install and would work fine and install fine on an identical reinstall. No problems in intrepid. I did an upgrade using update manager to jaunty alpha 4 and now no flash. wont install from DEB package on adobe.com, fails. Firefox plugin finder says newest version is currently installed.

update: works now after reboot and install of flashplugin-nonfree

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0.6+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-6-generic i686

[Alex Ruddick (alexrudd0)]

This happened to me to. NetworkManager died during the Interpid -> Jaunty upgrade. Flashplugin-nonfree is part of the upgrade. It needs to connect to adobe.com to download Flash, but cannot do so since NM is down. A reinstall will correctly download from Adobe.

I think this is only a symptom of another bug which kills NM during the upgrade.

[MichaelM (michael-the-drummer)]

Not sure if this is the same issue I am having.

After an upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04 beta, Firefox was complaining that additional plugins were required. It was, of course, talking about the flash plugin.

doing a:

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

told me that the plugin was already installed. Doing:

sudo apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

fixed the problem for me.

[ehcpdeveloper (ehcpdeveloper)]

yes, i fixed in similar way too...
this case can be closed..
But i had to manually fix something, so, upgrades amy be more error-free

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 6:56 AM, MichaelM <email address hidden> wrote:
> Not sure if this is the same issue I am having.
>
> After an upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04 beta, Firefox was complaining that
> additional plugins were required. It was, of course, talking about the
> flash plugin.
>
> doing a:
>
> sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
>
> told me that the plugin was already installed. Doing:
>
> sudo apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree
> sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
>
> fixed the problem for me.
>
> --
> No flash in firefox after upgrade from intrepid to jaunty
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/326609
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of a duplicate bug.
>

[jtheuer (mail-jtheuer)]

I was able to reinstall flashplayer-nonfree (see #351277) but firefox does not display videos although it recognizes the plugin (see image).

ii firefox 3.0.8+nobinonly-0ubuntu2
ii flashplugin-nonfree 10.0.22.87ubuntu1

[MichaelM (michael-the-drummer)]

I don't think this case should be closed. I have just completed an upgrade on another machine, and I have the same problem again. For 3 machines all to have this problem where apt says that flashplugin-nonfree is installed, and Firefox says its not there must be something wrong.

[mathieg2 (graeme-salsaholics)]

I've replicated this a few times - I have done 7 installations of ubuntu this week.

sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-nonfree
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

clears the problem. Unexperienced users would not know to do this

As a previous poster stated, it could be related to network manager going offline during upgrade

[Dave Mays (dave-emays)]

What is the adobe-flashplugin package then? Should it be removed?

When removing any and all packages with the name flash in it, then
installing from the Adobe site it installs "adobe-flashplugin" not
"flashplugin-nonfree" Which are different, so when the update occurs it
tries to update "adobe-flashplugin" which has some serious problems.

dave@cerberus:~$ aptitude search adobe-flashplugin
i adobe-flashplugin - Adobe Flash Player plugin version
10
dave@cerberus:~$ aptitude search flashplugin-nonfree
c flashplugin-nonfree - Adobe Flash Player plugin
installer
p flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound - Adobe Flash Player platform
support librar
dave@cerberus:~$

To replicate the problem, remove all flash from the system. Goto
www.adobe.com click install flash, and use the .deb package option for
Linux. Then when that is installed, you will get an update prompt from
the system to update the adobe-flashplugin package, when you do this
upgrade it is hosed...

mathieg2 wrote:
> I've replicated this a few times - I have done 7 installations of ubuntu
> this week.
>
> sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-nonfree
> sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
>
> clears the problem. Unexperienced users would not know to do this
>
> As a previous poster stated, it could be related to network manager
> going offline during upgrade
>
>

[Esko Kauppinen (e-kauppinen)]

I have this problem and removing/ installing flashplugin-nonfree doesn't fix anything.

Some flash animations work but most do not. Like if I go to some flash sudoku site the frame comes there but I cannot insert anything. Dilbert.com animations don't work at all and slow down firefox.

[Justin Myers (chasemyers)]

I have the exact same problem as Esko. I also uninstalled and reinstalled, but it did no good.

[Erez D. (erez0001)]

reinstalling didn't help me either.

it seems that firefox now has 2 flash plugins (that is what i see when i look for installed plugins), one is from swfdec-mozilla and the other from flashplugin-nonfree. i can disable them but not remove them from FF.
disabling the first in firefox disabled flash whatsoever. trying to remove swfdec-mozila with apt is not possible as package gnome depends on it ( dont know why gnome needs to force a plugin into mozilla. why swfdec-gnome is not enough).

anyway, so i am now able only to run flash using swfdec (which does not support all sites i want), or not at all.

[Matt Doran (matt-doran)]

I had the same problem on upgrade to jaunty beta. Sites complained there was no flash, trying to install told me it was already installed.

Uninstall and reinstall did the trick!

[Matt Doran (matt-doran)]

I should mentiond that I used the "--purge" option when uninstalling ...

apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree
apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

[Justin Myers (chasemyers)]

I used the same command as you (actually copied/pasted it when I found it) before I ever posted a comment on this bug, no dice.

I also have the exact same problem as Erez, I can see that there's 2 flash plugins installed, and can disable them but i get the same problem.

[Jerome Lacoste (jerome-lacoste)]

I upgraded 3 boxes, and all had the same issue:

* package installed properly
* firefox doesn't show the plugin under about:plugins
* --reinstall doesn't work (I noticed an error message saying that the license wasn't accepted)

Now for at least 2 machines, NetworkManager was failing (the icon complained about it not being up), but I still had network, at least when I tried to reinstall the plugin before rebooting. So not sure what happened.

[Erez D. (erez0001)]

just to say that i temporary resolved the problem by:
sudo mv /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so.disbaled
( you may or may not need to reinstall flashplugin-nonfree)
and restarted firefox.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

This is not caused by flash

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

marked ubufox as confirmed

[Péter Károly Juhász (stone-midway)]

Installing the newest flash from adobe as a .deb package solved the problem, so the problem should really be in the Ubuntu package.

[DarKnyht (darknyht)]

The problem does not seem to be the flash plugins. I switched to Epiphany and the flash is working exactly as it should.

The few things I noticed in Firefox was that there are two flash plugings flash 10 r12 and 10 r22. If you disable 10 r12 Flash ceases to work, which I means it is using an outdated version of Flash for some reason. I could not find where this version of flash comes from to remove it to test this theory.

So if you want working fullscreen Flash for now, I suggest Epiphany.

[meff (meff-meff)]

This fixed it for me, when purging flashplugin-nonfree did nothing:
aptitude purge flashplugin-nonfree flashplugin-installer nspluginwrapper
aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree
(should redownload and install the plugin now)

good luck

[Jamie Lokier (jamie-shareable)]

I just did an upgrade from Intrepid to Jaunty and have the same problem.

I spotted this in the output from update-manager:

Setting up flashplugin-installer (10.0.22.87ubuntu2) ...
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Downloading...
--2009-04-18 21:05:57-- http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flash
plugin/adobe-flashplugin_10.0.22.87.orig.tar.gz
Resolving archive.canonical.com... failed: Name or service not known.
wget: unable to resolve host address `archive.canonical.com'
download failed
The Flash plugin is NOT installed.

As others have reported, NetworkManager stopped working for a large part of the install and dropped my _wired_ ethernet connection. NM started working again towards the end, after "Setting up flashplugin-installer".

The NetworkManager problem isn't a flashplugin bug.

But flashplugin not being able to fix itself when the network comes back would be best fixed in flashplugin. After all, there might be other reasons why the network is down at that exact moment.

Some ideas:

   - Can it tell dpkg that setup failed and needs to be run again after everything else?

   - Can it use a trigger on the upgrade of NM, or a generic trigger on network change?

   - If fetching fails during upgrade, can it attempt to fetch the file the next time Firefox is started? This would be quite robust.

Also, earlier comments say that uninstalling without --purge then reinstallng does not fix it. --purge shouldn't be necessary, just to trigger fetching the file it needs which it hasn't installed yet.

[Tareeq Ali (terror-eek)]

Ok I have had this issue, I tried both sudo apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree and without the --purge option, and then re-installed didn't work, tried purging again deleted the .deb file from /var/cache/apt/archive folder, and then tried sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree. That did not work at all.

I was finally able to solve the problem by downloading the adobe flash plugin (tar.gz) and copying the (.so) plugin to the /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.8/plugin folder.

the flashplugin-nonfree deb installer does not give any errors, apt does not give any errors.....

[Jamie Lokier (jamie-shareable)]

Tareeq Ali wrote:
> Ok I have had this issue, I tried both sudo apt-get remove --purge
> flashplugin-nonfree and without the --purge option, and then re-
> installed didn't work, tried purging again deleted the .deb file from
> /var/cache/apt/archive folder, and then tried sudo apt-get install
> flashplugin-nonfree. That did not work at all.
>
> I was finally able to solve the problem by downloading the adobe flash
> plugin (tar.gz) and copying the (.so) plugin to the
> /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.8/plugin folder.
>
> the flashplugin-nonfree deb installer does not give any errors, apt does
> not give any errors.....

You might have needed to "apt-get remove --purge
flashplugin-installer" as well, before trying to install
flashplugin-nonfree. That worked for me, and it's
flashplugin-installer which shows the "cannot connect to network
error" during upgrade.

-- Jamie

[Trebacz (david-trebacz)]

I upgraded from Intrepid 8.10 AMD64 to Jaunty 9.04 AMD64. Flash had been working flawlessly in 8.10 64 bit version. I was receiving the dreaded grey box where a flash animation should be in Firefox.

In my case flashplugin-nonfree was not installed (after the upgrade). I'm sure it was before. To be more specific when I ran:

sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-nonfree

It reported it as not installed.

In my case I just installed it using

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Restarted Firefox 3.0.9 -and flash plays fine. Hopefully it will stay that way.

[Jeroen (c0p3rn1c)]

Upgrading from intrepid to jaunty (32 bit) wrecked my flash. Synaptic say it's installed but firefox keeps asking to install it and when I continue to install it firefox says it's already installed.
First I tried to re-install the flashplugin-nonfree package, that diden't work but re-installing flashplugin-installer too did.

/var/log/distr-upgrade/term.log
Voorbereiden om flashplugin-nonfree 10.0.22.87ubuntu1~intrepid1 te vervangen (door .../flashplugin-nonfree_10.0.22.87ubuntu2_i386.deb) ...
n (door .../firefox-3.0-branding_3.0.9+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.9.04.1_i386.deb) ...
Uitpakken van vervangende flashplugin-nonfree ...
dpkg: waarschuwing - kan de oude map `/var/cache/flashplugin-nonfree' niet verwijderen: Map is niet leeg
vangen (door .../firefox-3.0-gnome-support_3.0.9+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.9.04.1_i386.deb) ...
Selecteren van voorheen niet geselecteerd pakket flashplugin-installer.
Uitpakken van flashplugin-installer (uit .../flashplugin-installer_10.0.22.87ubuntu2_i386.deb) ...
../firefox-3.0_3.0.9+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.9.04.1_i386.deb) ...

...

Instellen van flashplugin-installer (10.0.22.87ubuntu2) ...
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Downloading...
--2009-04-27 14:07:31-- http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/adobe-flashplugin_10.0.22.87.orig.tar.gz
Herleiden van archive.canonical.com... mislukt: Naam of dienst is niet bekend.
wget: kan host-adres 'archive.canonical.com' niet herleiden
download failed
The Flash plugin is NOT installed.
Instellen van flashplugin-nonfree (10.0.22.87ubuntu2) ...

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

please check your upgrade log if you spot something like Jamie posted:
...
Downloading...
--2009-04-18 21:05:57-- http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flash
plugin/adobe-flashplugin_10.0.22.87.orig.tar.gz
Resolving archive.canonical.com... failed: Name or service not known.
wget: unable to resolve host address `archive.canonical.com'
download failed
The Flash plugin is NOT installed.
...

If so, you probably got struck by the network connection disappearing during upgrade. Thats fixed in latest update-manager, so new upgrades wont end up in this situation.

Anyway, if you have this in your dist-upgrade term.log, please attach that log file. Thanks

[Esko Kauppinen (e-kauppinen)]

I fixed my flash problems by uninstalling swfdec-mozilla and swfdec-gnome.

Flash seems to work ok now.

Esko

[Tom Smythe (mythtomes)]

I have had the same or similar problem with flash except that I get a terrible swwshing sound from my speakers whenever accessing a site that uses flash. I have tried every suggestion on this link line to no avail. Adobe's flash test page does not see that I have flash installed in firefox. Firefox thinks I have the latest version and that it is operational. So does Ubuntu. Furthermore, I have NO problem with flash when using either Epiphany of Seamonkey as my browser. Don't want to change browsers but running out of options. Anyone, any other suggestions?

[KFX (evan-hauth)]

Thanks, Esko.
Standard Def. Youtube worked for me, no HQ or HD, though. No other sites worked correctly. Flash didn't work in Epiphany at all. So I tried,

sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-nonfree

sudo apt-get remove swfdec-mozilla

sudo apt-get remove swfdec-gnome

At this point firefox told me that It was missing the flash plugin, I didn't even get that before. So I tried to install the adobe plugin in FF. It told me It was installed. So I downloaded and installed the .deb from adobe.

Fixed. Full screen to.

[Tom Smythe (mythtomes)]

Thanks KFX,

I tried the sequence you suggested. Now Adobe's tester says that I have the latest installed. Pandora works!! Some other sites say that I need the latest Flash Player. I am still getting a bad sound, somewhere between a sWWsh and a swWCk sound whenever I enter a site that has Flash Content though not necessarily just sites with flash content. (Does this site have flash content? It happens here.)

Problem partly solved.
Still in need of further suggestions, ideas, help.

thanks, again.
Tom

[akrde (and78386)]

I still have big problems with Flash in Jaunty, it's very very slow!

I tested Flash on this site: http://www.autobahn.nrw.de/olsim3_5/nrw.html

The cursor is very very delayed here since Jaunty on 3 computers, which were upgraded from Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop (i386).

I tested it on Windows XP and here Flash works as fast as it should on this site.

I uninstalled and reinstalled flashplugin-installer (with and without --purge), no effect.

I uninstalled flashplugin-installer and installed flashplugin-nonfree, no effect.

[Oliver Bedford (oliver-bedford-yahoo)]

Just a me-too-posting:

Doing a

apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree
apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

also solved the problem for me.

The site http://www.autobahn.nrw.de/olsim3_5/nrw.html works reasonably fast.

ojo@hermes:~$ uname -a
Linux hermes 2.6.28-11-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:58:03 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux
ojo@hermes:~$ dpkg -l firefox | grep ^ii
ii firefox 3.0.10+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.9.04.1 meta package for the popular mozilla web browser

Oliver

[mvdberg112 (sp1471)]

I tried also what Oliver tried, i.e.:
apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree
apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
But it did not work. Without the plugin the browser would give a message that flash needed to be installed, and with the flash the flash itself would not start runing, with a gray or black frame. After removing gnash it worked!

I have now sold the computer that had Linux on it and cannot test future solutions.

Everyone thanks! Michael

[Oliver Bedford (oliver-bedford-yahoo)]

Update: the purge/reinstall does only fix the problem temporarily.

A few minutes ago I tried to visit a website which uses flash: no flash, the site gives me a link for downloading flash. After doing purge/reinstall as described above and restarting firefox the site works.

In both situations I don't see any difference in about:plugins.

I don't visit flash sites regularly (on the contrary, I really try to avoid them), so in the meantime my computer has seem some changes/updates etc. firefox is still the same.

Oliver

[leenis (eileen-vaskos)]

what Esko and KFX worked for me,

uninstalling flashplugin-nonfree, adobe-flashplugin, swfdec-mozilla, and swfdec-gnome
using synaptic package manager.

then i went to a flash site ie HULU.com and firefox recognizess a plugin is missing, I chose to install missing plugins using firefox and i chose the adobe flash plugin and flash and pandora are all working now.

cheers

[Steve Cohen (stevecoh1)]

Is there a definitive response to this bug from Ubuntu yet? This seems uncharacteristically like a swamp.

[Steve Cohen (stevecoh1)]

leenis, and also Esko and KFX:

This worked for me too, except I only had to do the uninstalls. I then went to my previously non-working website and all was well.

Is the root of the problem that swfdec is still buggy?

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

If you remove swfdec only does it fix this issue?
Does anyone still see this bug in upgrading to latest stable Ubuntu release?

[Bryan Quigley (bryanquigley)]

Looks like no one still sees it. Closing.