Manually install Adobe Flash / Temporary flashplugin-nonfree fix

By | 2007/12/26
18 Comments

I realized the other day that the flashplugin-nonfree package appears to be broken.  It’ll act like its installing but at the end, if you pay close attention, it’ll give an error about the md5sum not matching and give up.  This applies to installing the package manually or via the browser notification itself.  I wanted to post a temporary fix while we wait for the package to be updated.

Manually Install Adobe Flash

  1. Download the Flash for Linux archive
  2. Unpack the archive (/tmp perhaps)
  3. sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins

Once you’ve copied the file Flash should be functional.  You may need to restart the browser if you run into performance problems.  Also note that these same steps work for installing flash for the Epiphany browser (yes, even placing them in the firefox folder).

If you still have the flashplugin-nonfree package installed this shouldn’t immediately conflict and my guess is that once there is an update it’ll seamlessly fall into place.  I don’t forsee any conflicts, but you’re welcome to correct me if I’m wrong.

18 thoughts on “Manually install Adobe Flash / Temporary flashplugin-nonfree fix”

  1. Asa

    Will this work for x64? I know theres some kind of wrapper for x64 between flash and Firefox and I don’t know if installing flashplugin-nonfree will prepare the wrapper for me.

  2. Weeber

    I thought it was only me, the flashplugin has been broken for a while now. We have to fix that.

  3. HOLOGRAPHICpizza

    I found out that the package was broken a few days ago, but I didn’t realize it was as simple as copying the .so file. I actually ran the installer from adobe’s website, and who knows what it did. But at the moment flash seems to be working. 🙂

  4. bla

    “I don’t forsee any conflicts, but you’re welcome to correct me if I’m wrong.”
    Flash 9.0.115.0 does not work in Konqueror

  8. Ploum

    Well, I found an easier and better fix : install the gnash plugin. It worked perfectly for my GF today.

  9. zlatan

    This is not the answer for Konqueror and Opera users.

    They need to download archive for developers and than to install 9.0.47 version pof flash player in that archive

  10. Chris Samuel

    I found a better way (for me on AMD64) was to extract the archive and then use the nspluginwrapper (which gets pulled in automatically when you install the non-free flash package) by doing:

    mkdir -p ~/lib/
    cp libflashplayer.so ~/lib/
    nspluginwrapper -i ~/lib/libflashplayer.so

  11. Louis

    I noticed the same thing yesterday, but I did it a bit differently. I just clicked on the install script. Just extract the folder and click on the script.

    It certainly is easier to copy it over, but some people may feel uncomfortable navigating to the right folder.

  12. Earl

    Thank you! Thought it was just me at first 🙂

  13. Aroll

    Thank you so much man, I was fighting with the plugin for the last 2 days!

  14. gold o

    hi my name is ononnya i am working for club penguin i wish this really works i been trying for 9 days

  15. michael

    Sorry, I just installed ubuntu 7.10, and am a beginner at this. I’m sure it’s very obvious but what do you mean by sudo cp?

  16. Mark

    Firefox 3.0b (the default installed on Ubuntu 8.04) needs the .so file in dir firefox-addons/plugins

    so, for firefox3 copy like this:
    sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/

Comments are closed.