Flash 10 RC on Ubuntu amd64

Lately, Flash has been acting pretty funky and I wanted to upgrade to the latest player. Adobe has never really supported the 64-bit platform very well, so I was really putting it off.

However, today I really needed to look at a YouTube video (seriously), and I couldn’t get it to play … so I decided it was time to bite the bullet…

*** UPDATE: YOU DO NOT WANT TO USE THIS SCRIPT! ***

This script was for installing 32-bit Flash 10 on 64-bit Ubuntu. Now that Adobe has released a 64-bit Flash, you should NOT be trying to install 32-bit Flash on 64-bit Ubuntu any longer.

Here is a blog entry about installing the new native 64-bit Flash.

Important Note: Although this script worked fine for me and many others, there is a list of concerns with it posted on the Ubuntu Forums. You might want to check that out to be informed before proceeding.

I’ll spare you the errors I ran into, but if you see things like:
*** NSPlugin Viewer *** ERROR: libcurl.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

…don’t be discouraged.

First off, these are the two references that I used to get things working:
My Science Is Better: Install Adobe Flash Player 10 on Ubuntu 64bit

Don’t run that script or anything yet, because you also need to read a bit from this Ubuntu Forums thread to get all the libs that are needed under amd64!

(If you do run the script you will get the NSPlugin Viewer errors for the missing libs. You can just install them with getlibs and continue on.)

Step One: Get getlibs
This is a package that will grab libs, 32 and 64-bit under amd64 (and 32-bit only under i386.)

Step Two: Run the script
This is a very slightly modified script which combines what you need to do from both of the above posts. It is 99% what “My Science is Better” already had – I only added the bit about grabbing the libs and updating the flash player file name.

#!/bin/bash
# Script  created by
# Romeo-Adrian Cioaba romeo.cioaba@spotonearth.com
# Super minor updates by jason.melton[at]gmail[dot]com
# Released under GPL  

echo "Stopping any Firefox that might be running"
sudo killall -9 firefox  

echo "Removing any other flash plugin previously installed:"
sudo apt-get remove -y --purge flashplugin-nonfree gnash gnash-common mozilla-plugin-gnash swfdec-mozilla libflashsupport nspluginwrapper
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -f ~/.mozilla/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/*flash*
sudo rm -rfd /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper  

echo "Installing ia32-libs and nspluginwrapper"
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs nspluginwrapper  

echo "Getting libs"
sudo getlibs -p libcurl3
sudo getlibs -p libnss3-1d
sudo getlibs -p libnspr4-0d  

echo "Installing Flash Player 10"
cd ~
wget http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz
tar zxvf install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz
sudo cp install_flash_player_10_linux/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
sudo chmod +rx /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
rm -rf ~/install_flash_player_10_linux/
sudo nspluginwrapper -i /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so  

echo "Linking the libraries so Firefox can find it."
sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/  

echo "Done :-)"

After this, you should see “Shockwave Flash” as a plugin if you type in “about:plugins” in the browser bar.

YouTube is working fine now!

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Real 64-bit Flash on amd64
• Flash 10 amd64 alpha refresh
• Ring my Dell