status of flash9/flash10 support in RELENG_7 ?

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 13:55:25 +0200
> From: Luigi Rizzo <rizzo at iet.unipi.it>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-stable at freebsd.org
> 
> On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 09:38:05AM +0200, Marc Fonvieille wrote:
> > On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 03:35:00AM +0200, Luigi Rizzo wrote:
> > > Does anyone know what is the status of flash9 or flash10 in RELENG_7 ?
> > > Following the thread of a couple of months ago, i tried to:
> > > - remove all linux-* ports
> > > - set the following in /etc/make.conf
> > > 	OVERRIDE_LINUX_BASE_PORT=f8
> > > 	OVERRIDE_LINUX_NONBASE_PORTS=f8
> > > - set the following in /etc/sysctl.conf
> > > 	compat.linux.osrelease=2.6.16
> > > - set the following in /etc/fstab
> > > 	linproc /usr/compat/linux/proc  linprocfs       rw 0 0
> > > - reinstall linux_base-f8-8_11
> > > - reinstall linux-flashplugin-10.0r22 (which in turn brings in the
> > >   relevant linux-f8-* ports)
> > > 
> > > - also install nspluginwrapper and create a firefox plugin
> > > - upgrade firefox to firefox-3.5,1 (native), just in case
> > > - run firefox with "limit stacksize 4megabytes" (or variants)
> > >   as recommended to avoid npviewer growing/not dying
> > > 
> > > This was done on 3 different machines (one laptop with a centrino,
> > > 2 desktops with AMD X2 dual core running in i386 mode) with mixed
> > > [in]success. On one machine thing started working well, but on the
> > > other two they did not (the various packages were of course slightly
> > > disaligned) and while trying to replicate the configuration i also
> > > broke the good one without figuring out why.
> > > Symptoms are that on certain sites or actions (e.g. switch to full
> > > screen on youtube videos) i get firefox freezing like this
> > > 
> > > 22381 luigi  13  96    0 82580K 57484K ucond   1   0:00  0.20% firefox-bin
> > > 22413 luigi   1  97    0 72920K 33448K futex   1   0:00  0.20% npviewer.bin
> > > 22414 luigi   1  97    0 72920K 33448K futex   1   0:00  0.20% npviewer.bin
> > > 
> > > and recovering control (but no video) after 10+seconds
> > > 
> > > I also get a lot of the following weak_unref warnings with various addresses
> > > 
> > > (firefox-bin:22381): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: IA__g_object_weak_unref: couldn't find weak ref 0x297ba9f0(0x2a10d110)
> > > 
> > > (but not sure how related is this, because it happens even without a
> > > flash plugin).
> > > 
> > > I have also tried flash9 instead of flash10, o fc10 instead of fc8,
> > > all with similar results.
> > > 
> > > Is there a recipe for a working flas9 or flash10 operation ?
> > >
> > 
> > The Handbook gives a reliable, i.e. reproductible one, recipe:
> > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop-browsers.html
> > 6.2.3 Firefox and Macromedia? Flash Plugin
> > 
> > for running Flash 9 under 7.X and with default linux_base.
> 
> from what i remember, flash9 with the default linux_base (fc4)
> did not work for me (though i don't remember the details).
> Are you positive that it is a working configuration on RELENG_7 ?
> 
> Especially, fc4 does not support skype (except skype1.2, which however
> does not authenticate anymore), so using fc4 is not an option for
> me and i suspect desktop users in general.
> 
> 
> > I'm also working on an update for 8.X
> 
> i see that for 8.x you suggest using fc10, which is also something i
> tried on RELENG_7 but had similar symptoms. Is there any known reason
> why HEAD and RELENG_7 should be different in terms of linux_base support ?

Here is what is working for me for both Flash9 and Skype:
linux_base-f8-8_11
nspluginwrapper-1.2.2_2
skype-2.0.0.72,1
linux-flashplugin-9.0r159:

Be sure that your various linux packages are updated to the -f8-
versions, too. The upgrade for linux_base is the tricky one.

Once everything is at the correct version, the user needs to use
nspluginwrapper to set up the correct user mappings. I don't want the
Acrobat plugin, so I pick the plugins I want to wrap rather than use the
automatic option.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751