I am using Debian 5.0 (Lenny) upgraded from Debian 4.0 ( Etch). Being an upgraded install seems to make quite a difference in a number of areas as I am still running several applications which are no longer available due to lack of maintenance. I am running a number of applications that would simply not be available on a clean Debian 5.0 install.

I installed Adobe Flash 10 not from the Debian repository but using “dpkg -i” and the Ubuntu deb package from the Adobe website. The Flash version in the Debian repository was down level from the version I wanted installed. The install ran fine and the verification of flash in Iceweasel, Iceape, Chrome and the Gnome web browser all verified as version 10 on the Adobe web site.

Subsequently I discovered that Iceweasel was being misidentified as not running Flash 10 on a web site that required Flash 10. This was not happening with any of my other browsers. I looked in Tools/AddOns/Plugins in Iceweasel and found that Flash 9 and Flash 10 were both present. Disabling the Flash 9 plugin caused Flash verification to fail as if Flash were not on my system.

I did an “apt-get remove flashplugin-nonfree” which appears to have removed all traces of Flash 10. Now all of my browsers verify on the Adobe site as Flash 9 and work properly on all sites that require Flash 9 or lower. Looking in “/usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins” I see no flash plugin library at all. A Flash plugin library was in this folder until I did the above remove operation.

I do not understand how Flash 9 can be installed and operational and not have a library appear in the Iceweasel's plugins folder. Using “dpkg -l” as well as Synaptic I cannot seem to find a package to remove that would remove Flash 9.

Anyone know the name of a package I can remove to uninstall Flash 9?

Anyone know in what folder I might look for the Flash 9 library?

Anyone know if a fresh install of Iceweasel supports the automatic installation of Flash when visiting a web site that requires flash? This may well be how Flash was installed originally and part of the reason why I can find no reference to it in the expected folders.

Any and all suggestions will be appreciated?

You installed the Ubuntu .deb package, search the forums for all the threads where it totally screwed up people's Debian systems. Never a good idea to mix ubuntu and debian.


Adobe Flash Player is <non-free> and cannot be in a stable Debian release, as Adobe doesn't provide security support for older versions (see http://bugs.debian.org/457291). The easiest way to install flash is with the flashplayer-mozilla package from <debian-multimedia.org>; or flashplugin-nonfree <contrib> package from backports.org. http://wiki.debian.org/FlashPlayer

Plugins are usually installed to : /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

.. which is a default location for (nothing but) plugins,
.. and is one of more locations where browsers will look for those.


The command : dpkg --get-selections > selections.txt
will save a text file with all installed packages.

dpkg --get-selections | grep flash
.. probably to show the installed flash player packages
( if it's a .deb package ).

You may also check the hidden folder
/home/'user'/.mozilla/plugins/
to see, if you have any flash copies there.
.....

I am connected to the multi-media repository and had the newer version of Flash I required been available there at that time I would have gotten it from the repository. I also knew there was risk in installing the Ubuntu version of Flash. What is interesting is that subsequent to doing this manual install of Flash I began sometime later receiving security updates to Flash from the Debian repository.

At one point the Debian repository version of Flash was quite problematic. There were several problems but the primary one was that it ignored the variable in the page source which described how images were to be layered on the screen. Flash simply took priority and would overlay menus and even other Flash images that were to be background at the time. There were sites where you could not even get to the menu structure because there was a Flash image just below the menu selection which blocked the menu from appearing when selected.

Thank you, Thank you knudfl!

You have answered a question that has plagued me since my original installation of Etch. This was a long time ago and memory fades but I seem to remember visiting my first web site that required Flash using Iceweasel and being asked if I wanted to install Flash. I responded yes out of curiosity to see what would happen. To my surprise Flash was installed and worked sort of (see note above). I believed that the browser would not have the authority to do this installation and would have failed to install Flash but now know that it had just enough authority to do so. There is indeed a Flash library in the folder /home/'user'/.mozilla/plugins/ and Iceweasel would have had the authority to place it there.

This library in a hidden folder does not appear to be an installed package. If it is does anyone know which package?

The only packages I think candidates for the origin of this library are listed below:
libflash-mozplugin deinstall
libflash0c2 deinstall
libswfdec-0.6-90 install
swfdec-gnome install

The top two are the Flash 10 version I removed yesterday. I do not know about the other two.

It would appear that all I have to do is remove this Flash library from the folder /home/'user'/.mozilla/plugins/ and reinstall Flash 10?

What I do not know is whether this will have any adverse effect on my package structure.

Any and all advise will be appreciated!

That's nothing flashplayer ran on my thing even though there was no flashplayer.so.

It stopped working after rebooting so presumably flashplayer was simply in RAM but not on the hard drive.

Are you using a backport? Here's how you are meant to install flashplayer on Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/FlashPlayer .

Hope helps.

Incidentally, does Flash Player tear or shear on your system? I.e. the picture has lines across it, especially when it pans, where the picture is displaced a little along the line. Flash player always does this with me and I'd like to know if it's my problem or flashplayers'.

Flash 9 was operational on my system because “libflashplayer.so” for Flash 9 existed in the Plugins folder inside the hidden folder for Mozilla in my home folder. I simply did not know to look for it there until prompted to do so by the above reply. It would appear that Iceweasel uses it there directly as there is no link to it in an Iceweasel hidden directory in my home folder nor in the regular Plugins folder for Iceweasel. Without this library or its' functional equivalent in the executable path on a system I have not a clue how Flash could function in a browser.

I did not use the Backport repository in my sources list but I do have the Debian-Multimedia repository in my sources list. I did a dpkg install of the package file “install_flash_player_10_linux.deb” from the Adobe web site. This package being indicated as applicable to Ubuntu and not Debian on the Adobe web site.

I have, as best I can remember, never had a image rendering problem with any version of Flash I have ever had operational. The primary problem I had was in getting images to layer in the proper order based on their assigned priority. Flash images would always appear on top even when a menu selection list or other image should have appeared on top. This version of Flash was quite useless and this is why I decided to try the Deb package from the Adobe web site. The problem you describe sounds more like a video driver issue than a problem with Flash but that would be pure guess on my part.

What I have yet to determine is whether the “libflashplayer.so” library file in my home folder is part of a package installed on my system which could be removed. If not part of an installed package I also fail to see how the library would ever receive any updates or security patches.

Thanks for the link to the WIKI on a Debian Flash install.

Not from a package.
Will only have that location (/home/'user'/.mozilla/plugins/)
if you copied it there yourself. AFAIK.
So you can just delete it.