Flash player install to Firefox 3.0.13 on ubuntu 9.04 gets cannot stat message - help
 

I just did a fresh install of ubuntu on my Panasonic laptop. I have tons of RAM and HD space. I downloaded the latest flash player plugin from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/. I downloaded the .tar.gz for Linux version. The file "install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz" loaded into my /tmp folder. Using instructions I read in Paul G. Sery's book "Ubuntu Linux for Dummies" (page 191 of the 2007 edition), I then did the following: using the Archive Manager, I clicked the Extract button, clicked the Extract button of the next screen, waited for the file to be extracted, and then closed the dialog. So far, so good.

Next, I opened a terminal and typed the following, as listed in his book:

sudo cp /tmp/install_flash_player*/*so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins

I received the following message:

cp: cannot stat `/tmp/install_flash_player*/*so': No such file or directory

I noticed that the extracted file is libflashplayer.so, and I substituted that name in the sudo cp command for flash_player, but received the same cannot stat message. I've also tried the following two:

sudo cp /tmp/install_libflashplayer*/*so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins
sudo cp /tmp/install_libflashplayer.so*/*so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins

Still receiving the cannot stat message. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

No comment on the "Dummies" book, but to install Flash in Ubuntu, use:

Better yet:

which will install all non-free codecs, Flash, Java, etc.

IOW you do not need to download a compile Flash. There's no need to keep reinventing the wheel.

Cheers

Bill:

Thanks for your post: lots of things seemed to happen in the terminal and it said that it had successfully loaded and installed. However, I still have been unable to view streaming video on www.justin.tv (I love watching motor racing from around the world.) When I launch that page I get a salmon-colored screen instead of a video player or the flash symbol (an F in a circle indicated by NoScript, a plugin that limits flash content on a page unless the user specifically accepts it).

I have attached a txt file for your reference that shows the about-plugins screen from Firefox. (I couldn't send an image file as it exceeds the size limit for this forum.) Do I have the proper flash extension properly installed? Video sites like Youtube work properly. Perhaps I need to install a different plugin for live streaming video? If so, please advise how to do it.

Thanks for your help,
Scott