Also, I understand that what I'm suggesting in this topic may be not the most clever thing, in relation to system security, as installing older software (with known/unknown vulnerabilities) may expose the system to potential attacks. In any case, I just want to share (and gain, from feedback) some knowledge on these matters.
Background
I'm one of the many thousands of GNU/Linux users for whom the Adobe Flash player doesn't work any more, after Adobe released some update for its popular plugin that wasn't compiled properly for older hardware that doesn't support something named SSE2. This seems to particularly affect thousand of Linux users with old AMD processors. Here is one bug report on Adobe tracker, but if you need more info, just google "flash sse2 linux" and you will get a lot of results from different Linux-related user forums & mailing lists.
Intro
The goal of this post is to help users to solve this issue by:
- installing one or a few older versions of the Adobe Flash Player that, hopefully, will work on their system.
- version 10.3.183.43: currently, the latest version on the 10.3.x.x series, with security patches.
- optionally, version 11.2.202.236: this one is not the last version on the 11.2.x.x series, but it's the latest one that works, afaik. We will extract this one from a Google Chrome 19 .deb package. Take into consideration that this version may compromise your system, as it has security issues patched on newer versions (that don't currently work).
- taking advantage of the Debian alternatives' system (see man page on update-alternatives for more info) to easily switch between different Flash player versions.
- optional: installing Gnash (a free, alternative Flash player) will also be installed, for the user to have an extra choice, in case she needs it.
- optional: installing the flashplugin-nonfree package. This package will:
- install the latest version of Adobe Flash Player (currently, 11.2.202.251). This is the version that doesn't work on old AMD hardware (see Background, above) .
- install the /usr/sbin/update-flashplugin-nonfree, which may come in handy for updating the Adobe Flash player to latest releases.
- Important note: you may be asking yourself: "Why we install this package, if it installs a plugin version that currently doesn't work?". Well, in case Adobe fixes the issue with the v11.2.x.x (11.2.202.251+) plugin that currently doesn't work on old AMD hardware.
Step 1: download and install Adobe Flash player plugin v10.3.x.x
From http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html#flash_player_archives, download the latest version on the 10.3.x.x series. At the time of this post, it is v10.3.183.43, and I will use that one for the examples.
The file is huge (61 MB), and contains a lot of stuff, but we will extract it, and then extract another .tar.gz file that is the one that contains the libflashplayer.so file we are going to install.
On a terminal:
Code: Select all
$ unzip fp_10.3.183.43_archive.zip && cd fp_10.3.r183.43_archive/10_3_r183_43/
$ tar -xvzf flashplayer_10_3r183_43_linux.tar.gz && cd flashplayer_10_3r183_43_linux
$ sudo mkdir -p /opt/flashplugin-nonfree/v10.3.183.43
$ sudo cp libflashplayer.so /opt/flashplugin-nonfree/v10.3.183.43/
Code: Select all
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flash-mozilla.so flash-mozilla.so /opt/flashplugin-nonfree/v10.3.183.43/libflashplayer.so 10
Code: Select all
sudo update-alternatives --config flash-mozilla.so
Just select the one we just installed. Don't worry at all about the auto/manual stuff regarding alternatives, we will just ignore that.
Now... that's all. You should be able to start your browser and visit a Flash page (for example: https://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/) and test if this worked. You can also check that the plugin is installed by visiting "about:plugins" (without quotes) on the address bar. This should list the Flash player plugin, and complain that is out of date.
As this is an older version of Flash, Chromium will always prompt you with a yellow bar message like this:
Just hit the [Run this time] button and enjoy the Flash player.Adobe Flash Player was blocked because it is out of date [Run this time] [Update plug-in...]
Personally, I can live with that yellow prompt each time a Flash component is present on a page. If I want to watch a video or any other Flash thing, I just click the [Run this time] button and done. This could be seen more as a feature than a bug.
Step 2: optionally, install Adobe Flash player version 11.2.202.236
Someone found that this older version of the plugin, bundled on a .deb file of Google Chrome 19, will work too.
Be careful, as this version on the 11.2.x.x series has some security issues that may compromise your system. As long as you visit websites that you trust, there may be no problems.
Download http://www.sixtoed-design.com/downloads/google-chrome19-stable_current_i386.deb and extract it.
You will get 3 files, one of them is data.tar.lzma. Extract that one too. You will get all the files of a Google Chrome release. Again, we just want one file: libgcflashplayer.so
Code: Select all
$ ar vx google-chrome19-stable_current_i386.deb
$ tar --lzma -xvf data.tar.lzma
$ cd opt/google/chrome/
$ sudo mkdir -p /opt/flashplugin-nonfree/v11.2.202.236
$ sudo cp libgcflashplayer.so /opt/flashplugin-nonfree/v11.2.202.236/
Code: Select all
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flash-mozilla.so flash-mozilla.so /opt/flashplugin-nonfree/v11.2.202.236/libgcflashplayer.so 10
Code: Select all
sudo update-alternatives --config flash-mozilla.so
Now... that's all. You should be able to start your browser and visit a Flash page (for example: https://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/) and test if this worked. You can also check that the plugin is installed by visiting "about:plugins" (without quotes) on the address bar.
In this case, the browser won't prompt you with a message that the plugin is out of date, even if it is (v11.2.202.236 < v11.2.202.251).
Step 3: optionally, install Gnash, a free Flash player version
Code: Select all
sudo apt-get install gnash browser-plugin-gnash
Code: Select all
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flash-mozilla.so flash-mozilla.so /usr/lib/gnash/libgnashplugin.so 10
Code: Select all
sudo update-alternatives --config flash-mozilla.so
Step 4: optionally, install the flashplugin-nonfree package
If you didn't have this one already installed, you may want to install it, even if it will install the broken version of the Flash plugin player (currently, v11.2.202.251) that led me to write this huge, awfully written post.
Why? Well, in case Adobe fixes the Flash player (hopefully). This way, you will get the updated release if you run sudo update-flashplugin-nonfree --install.
To install the package, just run
Code: Select all
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
Code: Select all
sudo update-alternatives --config flash-mozilla.so
----
So, that's all by now. I will try to come back later and improve this post with feedback or new findings, and rewrite some parts of it that are awfully written (sorry!).