I've been trying to get the flashplayer plugin working in mozilla but I haven't had any success. I've tried it as root and as my main user account. The directory for the mozilla plugins lists the 2 plugin files but when I click on about>plugins in mozilla, flash isn't listed.

I'm fairly new to linux but I'm pretty sure I've done everything right. I'm using Mandrake 9.1 and Mozilla 1.4.

you need to download the flash plugin, if you already havent done so. Extract the tarball. make a symbolic link from the exact plugin in whatever directory and location it is sttting into the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/i386/ns660/ drectory. (i think this is the correct location. Look to be sure before you do it)

The syntax is, as root

ln -s /home/username/pluginnamefolder/plugin/pluginname /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/i386/ns660/pluginname

This should work for you. This also applies if you need to install the Java plugin, which you will because it doesnt come with mozilla by default. Also, before you do any of this, look to see that the plugins are not just located in the /usr/lib/netscape/plugins/i386/ns660 directory. You may just need to make a symlink from those to the mozilla directory.

Good Luck

Try this is made easy !!!

http://macromedia.mplug.org/rep_uh.html

or you can do that as well.... Very easily.

Here's what I did: I dl'd the tar file, extracted it, ran ./flash-installer, directed it to the /usr/local/mozilla directory, let it do it's thing, and then I restart my session. I've done this both as root and as local user.

I'm not sure why I would need to link the file if it's already in the directory. Please keep in mind I'm quite new to linux.

Oh, and as far as the web link in the post above goes, that doesn't really help me as I don't know what repositories or urpmi' s are. In fact, I don't understand a damn thing on that page.

literally? then I suspect it's the wrong place. Where is mozilla 1.4. installed on your system? If you installed using an rpm, it's probably somewhere unlder /usr/lib and usually the directory has a version number (e.g. /usr/local/mozilla-1.4)

to find out where mozilla is installed on your distro type:


locate mozilla



I have some files in these directories:

/usr/lib/mozilla-1.2.1/chrome/icons/default/
/usr/share/
/usr/local/mozilla
/etc/X11/applnk/Internet/

My mozilla is completely contained in /usr/local/mozilla (no version number in the directory name, but I'm using 1.4). It contains several directories and files, including: chrome, components, defaults, icons, plugins (which the flash plugins are present), etc. There is also my hidden user folder .mozilla which contains a couple of directories, including /plugins, which also has the flash plugins listed.

I did a clean install of mozilla, I didn't get it from my distro disc, but from the mozilla site directly.

when you go into that plugins directory, what are the permissions of the plugin files? you might want to do
chmod a+rwx *
in the plugin directory.

for the plugin directory and the actual flash plugin files, user has rwx permissions. The user is root. Would that have to do with anything?

are you rinning your system as root all the time? I hope not. In order to access the files as a normal user, the permissions have to be set accordingly (others must have at least read access). Just try and see if it helps to change the permissions. If it does not, you can always change thigns back.

no, I'm not running as root all the time. I'm using Mandrake 9.1 and it defaults away from root. However, I installed the plugins as root. I'm going to try changing the permissions now. Hope this works.

Nope, didn't help. I really don't understand why these aren't working. Everything looks to be in order, as far as I can tell. I followed the directions on the flash website to a t.

here are the instruction from mozilla.org (in case they are different from the one on flash website):
http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/linux.html

also, maybe it helps if you get mozilla1.4 as rpm and then the flash plugin as rpm as well. You can get them from texstar:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis...rake/9.1/rpms/

to make things easier so you can download stuff from texstar, etc. using the gui software tools from mandrake, go to
http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/urpmiweb.php

I hope the texstar version works (but I think you will have to reinstall mozilla using texstar's rpm)

yeah doing them both as an RPM may drop dependancies in rpm's locations - that may work.