Description of problem: When I was beta testing RHEL 5.2, I discovered Flash didn't work. Somehow I very quickly found a bug report somewhere that explained that the problem was that the nspluginwrapper wasn't being installed for 64 bits, and so I figured the problem was under control. Using RHEL 5.2 now that it has shipped, I discover that flash works fine in 32 bit RHEL, but is NOT detected on the 64 bit platform. Worse, I cannot find the bug report that simply and clearly stated the problem and the solution. Perhaps I've made the wrong diagnosis. But at any rate, I've tested under 32 bits, and Flash loads right up and works perfectly. But under 64 bit it does not. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: 100% Steps to Reproduce: 1. Visit a flash site in 64 bit RHEL 5.2 Firefox 3.0 beta 5. 2. Follow the prompts to install the flash plugin RPM 3. about:plugins shows no Flash detected after restarting firefox. Actual results: No flash detected Expected results: The flash plugin should have been detected and run. Additional info:
Do you have the nspluginwrapper package installed? (You need both i386 and x86_64).
It's much better to install flash from Adobe repo (install http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm) and then with both nspluginwrapper.i386, and nspluginwrapper.x86_64 everything works well.
Ah HA! As soon as I explilcitly did a "yum install nspluginwrapper" it worked. The source of the flash plugin was Adobe. Can we keep this bug open for a little longer so that we can document why where I went on adobe did not install nspluginwrapper?
Sure, let's just mark that we are expecting a stuff from you.
Sorry for the delay in following up. Had a couple other urgent tasks jump out at me. The link we follow to obtain the flash plug in is: http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer That redirects to: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash Selecting the "rpm for Linux" product, the "Agree and install now" button goes to: http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/flash-plugin-9.0.124.0- release.i386.rpm At first I thought that the problem was that the flash plugin was i386, and that Adobe was not giving me a 64 bit flash package which would have contained a 64 bit nspluginwrapper to make the 32 bit flash work. But listing the contents of that RPM shows no nspluginwrapper in the RPM. Something ELSE seems to be getting nspluginwrapper right for RHEL 5.1 32 bit, RHEL 5.1 64 bit, and RHEL 5.2 32 bit but NOT for RHEL 5.2 64 bit. Listing the contents of the RPM you suggest above, I see that that's only a yum repo spec into Adobe. So it seems like that too expects something else to take responsibility for having installed nspluginwrapper. I believe I would still have to explicitly perform "yum install nspluginwrapper". What I'm getting to here is: Why does an install of flash on the three platforms, 32 bit RHEL 5.1, 64 bit RHEL 5.1 with Firefox 1.5 and 32 bitRHEL 5.2 with Firefox 3 just work, but the same flash install under 64 bit RHEL 5.2 require me to explicitly install nspluginwrapper? I mean MIT *CAN* produce end-user "known issues with RHEL 5.2 64 bit" help page that says, "Unlike everything else you do under RHEL 5, RHEL 5.2 64 is special and requires this extra step." Does the RHEL 5 Firefox install nspluginwrapper by default, and is it possible that the 64 bit nspluginwrapper was supposed to be installed by default either by the Firefox RPM or by something else, but this time around was not?
Ehm, would you like to say that flash works out-of-the box on RHEL 5.1 and 64 bit browser? That must be a miracle. Flash is a 32-bit plugin and it can't work with 64-bit browsers. Nspluginwrapper is a new package (in rhel-5.2) which is supposed to run the 32-bit plugins in 64-bit environment (64-bit browser). Maybe you just used to tun 32-bit browser in 64-bit environment. In that case flash really works out-of-the box.
I will check the RHEL 5.1 system and see if 32 bit Firefox 1.5 is what got installed. Indeed that is a quite sensible and reasonable explanation for the behavior I have seen. Thank you. I'll check on that and get back to you. It does seem more likely that Red Hat bundled in 32 bit Firefox 1.5 rather than that a special default was crafted to make sure 64 bit nspluginwrapper was installed by default with Firefox 1.5.
I just re-ran my test on a clean RHEL 5.1 install, and discovered it was MY MISTAKE. I don't know how I got it into my head that flash worked on 64 bit RHEL 5.1, but in fact the behavior is the same as under RHEL 5.2, and indeed we just need to tell people to yum install nspluginwrapper Thank you for humoring me as I explored this issue. I apologize for wasting your time with my careless testing. You should close this issue with status NOTABUG.
Gladly do. Thanks for letting us know.