Mageia forum

Hi,

After a recent update (a day or two ago), I've come across a strange problem. I don't know what was updated or if there is even a way to see what gets updated and when. In any case, the problem begins with Thunderbird. If I click on a hyperlink in an email under Thunderbird (and Firefox is not open), then Firefox will open. From this point on, Firefox will be incapable of viewing any videos/flash animation. For instance, for YouTube, a black box appears where the video should be. Now, if Firefox is opened directly and I go to YouTube, then the video will run fine. If Firefox is open and I click on a hyperlink in Thunderbird, the hyperlink will show up in Firefox and go to that web page. If I go to any web site that has flash, it will work fine. The only time videos don't work is if Firefox was previously not running and opened by clicking on a hyperlink within Thunderbird.

These are the only 2 web sites I could find addressing this problem on other distributions, however nobody ever had a resolution:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 4&p=516969
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... &t=1910670

I did try installing an earlier (and later) version of Thunderbird, however the problem remained.

Any ideas to how this problem arose and how it can be fixed? Is anyone else having this problem?

Definitely a problem with your setup, doesn't happen here.
If you only see a black box where the Flash movie is supposed to be, it could be that the plugin has crashed. Can be fixed sometimes with an enforced page-reload via Ctrl+F5
Maybe you want to have a look at our MAQeia for Flash plugin: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=880

BTW: You should at least post the software versions you're seeing this with, for firefox, thunderbird and flash.
Also please state how you installed those, via Mageia repositories or via direct download from their respective vendors.

Kodkod wrote:...........................Is anyone else having this problem?

Yep, same here on one of the machines.

Using Mageia 1 - 64bits - with all the latest updates of Thunderbird (10.0.3.1), Firefox (9.0.1.0.1) and FlashPlayer (11.2.202.228-1).
Everything installed through regular means.

Everything stopped working after a recent update from Mageia repositories (32 bit). An update notification at the bottom of the screen occurred, so after apply the updates, then that is when the problem occurred. The software versions match whatever is latest in the repositories as of the date that I posted the first message. The problem isn't on my computer, so I cannot check for a few days. I actually use Slackware, but I have Mageia on a family member's computer. I use TeamViewer to do everything on that person's computer since that person has very minimal computer experience (I did the updates) and I am far away from where she is (different country). From what I recall, I think she now has the latest version of flash. I don't think the latest version of Mageia was in the repository. I tried uninstalling it, and then installing the latest version of Thunderbird (tar.gz file from Mozilla's web site) and then even an older version. It didn't have any impact. What she currently uses probably matches what isadora posted, except she is using 32 bit. Remember that flash works fine if Firefox is started directly (not clicking a link from within Thunderbird). It doesn't make a different if the link in Thunderbird goes to a web site that has flash on it initially or not. Anything with flash has a black box in the place of where the video is supposed to be. I don't understand how this logically occurs.

Well, i've tried to reproduce it here, and it just works. Please open up a bugreport and give me a testcase with clear steps to try to reproduce this again,
maybe there's an important step you missed in your description or something like that. Instructions available at: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_report_a_bug_properly

I'll then look into it as soon as i find some time (i maintain Mageia thunderbird packages).

Sorry for the grammatical errors in the previous post. Also, in the following: "I don't think the latest version of Mageia was in the repository," I meant Thunderbird where I typed Mageia.

In any case, I was able to solve the problem. I did a number of things at once and didn't test until after doing everything, which means I don't know exactly what solved the problem. Here is what I did:

1. Uninstalled both Firefox and Thunderbird (previously installed from Mageia repositories)
2. I download tarballs of both Firefox and Thunderbird (from Mozilla's web site)
3. I uncompressed/unarchived both Firefox and Thunderbird in /usr/local
4. I created symbolic links from the firefox and thunderbird executables in those directories to /usr/local/bin
5. I ran Firefox and went to "about:plugins"
6. I noticed I didn't have the latest flash plugin installed
7. I deleted libflashplayer.so from /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
8. I ran Firefox and went to "about:plugins"
9. It still showed the plugin was installed???
10. I checked back in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins and noticed npwrapper.libflashplayer.so there too (I didn't list the files in that directory in the earlier step [I simply typed "rm -f /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so"], so I didn't notice this extra flash file)
11. I removed npwrapper.libflashplayer.so from /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
12. I checked "about:plugins" in Firefox and no flash plugin was listed
13. I downloaded the flash tarball from Adobe's web site
14. I uncompressed/unarchived the file into a temporary directory
15. I found the file called kcm_adobe_flash_player.so in one of the directories in that temporary directory
16. I moved it to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
17. I restarted Firefox and checked "about:plugins" and saw that no flash plugins were installed??
18. I went back to Adobe's web site and download the flash RPM
19. I installed that.
20. I restarted Firefox and checked "about:plugins" and saw flash was installed (latest version)
21. I closed Firefox
22. I started Thunderbird and went to an email that contained a hyperlink in it and clicked on the hyperlink
23. After Firefox loaded and went to the web site of that hyperlink, I typed in the URL for youtube.
24. I clicked on a random video and I no longer got a black screen. The video ran fine.

I'm suspecting that if I returned to using Firefox and Thunderbird from the repositories, it would probably work normally. I haven't tried doing that for verification. I don't have a lot of time at the moment to be experimenting, although may try it in a month or two. I'm just glad it is working now. What happened in the last update that caused the problem? I really don't know. The problem still doesn't make sense to me. Why would everything work fine if starting Firefox directly, but not work if starting Firefox by clicking on a link in an email? Maybe having the two instances of the flash plugin in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins created a problem. I found it odd how Firefox was recognizing the previous two flash plugins in that directory and not the flash plugin that I copied over to that directory. It only recognized the newest version of the plugin when I installed the RPM from Adobe's web site.

Well, anyone else with the problem...maybe check the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory and see if two versions of libflashplayer.so are there. Get rid of one file (or temporarily move it elsewhere) and see if that resolves the problem. If that doesn't work, perhaps try moving the other file elsewhere and putting the other file back. If that doesn't work, then simply move both files elsewhere (or delete them) and install the RPM from Adobe's web site.

I'm still clueless for the reasoning of what I did that resulted in solving the problem. The logic behind the original problem still doesn't make any sense to me.

Well, step 5-20 are a homegrown problem of yours with the flash plugin.

I'm unclear of what is meant by "homegrown problems" and reference to those steps; those steps (excluding 13-17) were necessary to reach the final resolution. I didn't personally put those flash plugin files there. I went into Firefox and checked "about:plugins" the first two times to ensure no instances of flash were being detected by the browser. Steps 5-20 (again, excluding 13-17) were necessary since I wanted to do so to ensure no conflicts occurred (and ended up being correct in this regard). Then I proceeded to install the latest version. Whether that was necessary (i.e. installing the latest version) or not for resolution of the problem is something I don't know. I'm suspicious having 2 copies of the flash plugin may have contributed to the problem, although I haven't experimented for confirmation (it isn't my computer). I posted these steps as guidance to a solution (no problems were created in the steps of what I was doing and the original problem didn't manifest itself until after performing a Mageia update - just the click of a button to update packages after seeing the update notice). I took the time to post the previous message since I thought they might provide helpful since in no instance online have I seen anyone post a solution to this problem.

Note that I didn't verify whether flash started working after deleting the first plugin (either directly from starting Firefox or indirectly starting Firefox). I was planning on just installing the recently released version, so I proceeded to get rid of the other copy too. I didn't finally check if everything was working until I was completely done with all of those steps. I also didn't originally notice the presence of two copies since I was typing everything from the command prompt and never listed the contents of the plugin directory. I already knew the file name, so I simply typed in the commands to delete it. Deleting them was important, otherwise I would have had three different flash plugins (all with different names).

This solution still doesn't explain why Firefox could work fine if started by itself, however problems arose when Firefox was started by Thunderbird. In any case, it doesn't matter much anymore since the problem is resolved (at least for the person I was helping). I'm hoping my comments will help others with the same problem since one person already acknowledged the existence of the problem here (thank you for doing so).

All your steps could be simply replaced by 3 easy steps, if the starting point is a default installation:

1. remove following packages: mozilla-firefox mozilla-thunderbird flash-player-plugin
2. get firefox and thunderbird tarballs from mozilla, extract into your home and create shortcuts
3. get flash plugin from adobe and install it

And about your steps 5-20, those are self-inflicted and unnecessary, if you would have removed it cleanly and then installed flash plugin properly.
Next time you have issue with the flash plugin, please take a look at our MAQeia for that: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=880
You might also want to read there the note that the usage of flash plugin directly from adobe is not recommended and has various disadvantages ...

Otherwise, if you don't give any clear steps to reproduce that problem, we can't fix it.