[karmic upgrade] flashplugin-installer creates bad symlink (amd64)

[Nathaniel Smith]

Binary package hint: flashplugin-installer

I just upgraded from jaunty to karmic by running 'update-manager -d'.

Observed behavior: the non-free Adobe flash plugin disappeared from my firefox. 'apt-get install --reinstall flashplugin-installer' seemed to complete without error, but my firefox still had no idea about the existence of any flash plugin -- it didn't show up on about:plugins, etc.

Underlying cause:
Looking in /usr/share/ubufox/plugins, there is a symlink
    npwrapper.libflashplayer.so -> /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
However, /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so does not exist. The installer seems to have placed that file in /var/lib/flashplugin-installer instead. (I.e., the symlink should point to /var/..., not /usr/...)

Running 'cd /usr/share/ubufox/plugins && sudo ln -sf /var/lib/flashplugin-installer/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so .' seems to fix the problem, which is useful as a workaround, and as confirmation that the symlink is, indeed, the problem.

Please fix, kthx.

This is on x86-64.

[Peter Cordes (peter-cordes)]

Found the broken symlink with cruft(8). I don't use ubufox.

flashplugin-installer.postinst does
for p in $VARIANTS; do
... update-alternatives with /var/lib/....so

ln -sf /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so /usr/share/ubufox/plugins

Note the /var/lib vs. /usr/lib mixup.

The postinst should put the path in a shell variable, instead of repeating it 4 times (2 times incorrectly, with /usr instead of /var). e.g.
INST_DIR=/var/lib/flashplugin-installer
INST_SO=libflashplayer.so
and use $INST_DIR/npwrapper.$INST_SO when needed.
Maybe.

 actually, someone who knows what all the paths are supposed to be should have a look at the script and make sure that other occurrences of /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer are ok. e.g.
NSPLUGIN_DIR=/var/lib/flashplugin-installer/ /usr/bin/nspluginwrapper -n -i /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so

flash works for me, in both firefox and seamonkey, but the postinst is a bit of a mess with /var/lib vs. /usr/lib

I also noticed that postinst deletes the tar.gz it just downloaded, so it always has to re-download.
This only matters when mucking around, since normally the postinst will only run after an upgrade,
and those will normally come with a new tar.gz to download.

The lines in question are:
                fp_download_and_unpack

                install -m 644 adobe-flashplugin*/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/
                rm -rf adobe-flashplugin*

 the rm -rf could be rm -rf adobe-flashplugin*[^z] to keep the tar.gz, although that's still somewhat brittle and will stop working
if they ever dist a tar.bz2, for example.

[Peter Cordes (peter-cordes)]

forgot to include my version:
ii flashplugin-install 10.0.32.18ubuntu1 Adobe Flash Player plugin installer

[Thomas Hotz (thotz-deactivatedaccount)]

Can you still reproduce this with supported Ubuntu version and the newest Flash plugin.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for flashplugin-nonfree (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]