Fix for Firefox3, Flash10, Ubuntu, AMD64

I’ve worked out how to get the Adobe Flash player version 10 working with Ubuntu Hardy on AMD64. It’s weird, and I’m not entirely sure why it works, but lots of people seem to be struggling with this, so hopefully some people find this useful.

This is what you’ll see in /var/log/messages when you attempt to load a website with Flash in it in Firefox 3:

npviewer.bin[25031]: segfault at 0 rip 0 rsp fff1ee60 error 14
npviewer.bin[25044]: segfault at 0 rip 0 rsp ffbc1b40 error 14
npviewer.bin[25054]: segfault at 0 rip 0 rsp ff801f40 error 14
npviewer.bin[25150]: segfault at 0 rip 0 rsp ff9fc870 error 14

The big problem appears to be this file:

/usr/lib32/libc.so.6

This is a symlink to libc-2.5.so. Now, that looked weird to me, since that looks like version 2.5 of libc. In fact, in /lib and /lib64, libc.so.6 links to libc-2.7.so. At a guess, the 32bit library for libc is an incompatible version with the 64bit libraries installed with Hardy. Delete the link, like this:

sudo rm /usr/lib32/libc.so.6

Flash then starts working properly.

You will probably also want to upgrade the package nspluginwrapper (which contains npviewer.bin) to at least version 1.0.0. I’ve gone ahead and compiled and installed version 1.1.4, downloaded from here. I’m not certain this is necessary, but I believe at least version 1.0.0 is needed to fix some bugs in npviewer.bin that are triggered by bugs in the Flash player. This is my nspluginwrapper configuration:

# nspluginwrapper -l
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
  Original plugin: /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so
  Wrapper version string: 1.1.4
/usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
  Original plugin: /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so
  Wrapper version string: 1.1.4
/usr/lib/firefox/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
  Original plugin: /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so
  Wrapper version string: 1.1.4
/usr/lib64/firefox/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
  Original plugin: /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so
  Wrapper version string: 1.1.4

I’m not sure how the link gets set up, but I’d guess it’s something in the libc6 triggers that are called by APT when installations happen, because it keeps coming back even when I delete it, and Flash stops working again. If this happens to you, check to see if the link in /usr/lib32 is back, and if so, delete it again.

This is the combination that works for me:

• AMD Athlon 64 bit chip
• Ubuntu Hardy (8.04 LTS)
• Linux kernel 2.6.24-21-generic
• Flash 10, downloaded from Adobe’s website
• firefox 3, package 3.0.4+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04
• nspluginwrapper 1.1.4, compiled from source

Let me know if this helps you get Flash working again, and we’ll get this fixed in the main build.

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