Firefox cannot find Flash plugin
 

I'm running OpenSUSE (12.2) and maintain the most recent Firefox /under "/opt/app" using the following:

* Under /opt/app/, remove the symbolic link for firefox.

* Untar the new firefox into /opt/app.

* Rename the newly created "firefox" subdirectory to "firefox-NN"

* Issue: "ln -s firefox-NN firefox

* Users access firefox via "/usr/local/firefox" which is a symbolic link to /opt/app/firefox/firefox.

This works great for keeping Firefox up-to-date but I haven't been able to get the Adobe Flash plugin to work. The "plugins" page in FF tells me that no plugins are found.

When I visit a page that includes Flash, I get error messages telling me that "my Flash player may be out of date" or that "a plugin is needed to display this content". (Not a big surprise given the output on the "plugins" page.)

Exactly where should I drop the "libflashplayer.so" file so that Firefox can find it? I've seen some posts that say it should go in the "plugins" subdirectory but I don't have such a directory. Where should that be?

I've tried putting it under /opt/app/firefox/plugins (which I had to create). Didn't work. I created a file "firefox.conf" under "/etc/ld.so.conf.d" which contained the line "/opt/app/firefox/plugins" and ran "ldconfig" and got the same results after I bounced FF.

Anybody got an answer to this? I'm stumped.

TIA...

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Rick

If I'm not mistaken Mozilla changed the location for the Firefox plugin, it used to go in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins which is where it is on my system, to /usr/lib/firefox/plugins.

I don't know how it is with OpenSUSE but I had an issue with a Slitaz install where the package manager installed the flash player to /usr/lib/firefox/plugins and I had the same problem as you. I simply created the "plugins" directory under /usr/lib/mozilla/ and moved the libflashplayer.so file there and that fixed it.

Hmm...

I had the Flash software installed under /opt/app/firefox/plugins and it didn't certainly work there. (So the tips that I'd seen about installing Flash where you installed Firefox were wasted reading.) I added a symbolic link in /usr/lib/firefox/plugins and it didn't help. Adding the link in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins seems to have solved the problem. Sort of backwards from your situation but, hey, I'll take it.

Thanks... This has been driving me crazy for a long time.

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Rick

You could try an strace on it and filter out "libflash" with grep.

$ strace firefox 2>&1 | grep -i "libflash" | tee thelog.txt

In debian it links to /etc/alternatives/flash-mozilla.so that links another time to the actual plugin. Also note that the library is libflashplayer.so and the plugin link name is libflashplugin.so (in debian at least).

Also note that adobe has ended linux support of flash at version 11.2. And some sites filter content availability based on the latest windows version (11.8). So even if you have it, you may not get to use it at some websites.

There are two places you can put it, depends on whether you want every user or just you to use it.

/home/user/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

or for all users.

/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so