installing Flash on YDL4 (was Re: unable to install Klash...)

[Paul Higgins]

On Saturday 28 October 2006 06:45, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> - Flash? No idea how to get that running. You can use open source
> projects to run some Flash code, but the official Adobe/Macromedia
> software only works under Mac OS X and on x86-clones (Linus/Windows).

Just in case some people missed this, I'll repost it here (it was at the 
bottom of a long post from earlier).  This is how I got Flash--or Flash 
animations and banners, anyway--working in Firefox using YDL 4.0.1 (haven't 
installed 4.1 yet):

===========================================================
> Right now i'll work on installing firefox instead. Paul can you post how
> you got firefox to run shockwave flash? and will this enable me to view
> shockwave flash enabled we pages?

I'm trying to remember exactly what I did--I believe the following is 
accurate, though.  I was visiting sites where Firefox was nagging me about 
how I needed to install a Flash player/extension to see everything on that 
site, and so I clicked "Install", which then took me to the Adobe site (Adobe 
bought Macromedia, I guess), and there was a download for Linux.  Here's the 
site (watch the word wrap on this--it's all one line):

<http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash&P2_Platform=Linux>  

So I copied/printed the directions from the Adobe site, downloaded the file, 
and then unpacked the download (it's a .tgz compressed file).  Then I printed 
out more directions from the unpacked file.  At which point I found out that 
the install script is x86-only.  Lovely.  So then I read through the 
directions again, and found some info on doing a manual install/uninstall.  
Then, quite frankly, I did some guessing.  The Adobe instructions gave me 
some clues:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
To remove the Plug-in Player for Linux:

For root users:

- Quit the browser.
- Navigate to the browser's plug-in directory 
(i.e. /usr/local/mozilla/plugins).
- Remove libflashplayer.so and flashplayer.xpt.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

That told me that I needed to move these files into the plugins directory--in 
other words, the reverse of these directions.  The problem is 
that /usr/local/mozilla/plugins doesn't exist!  But /usr/bin/mozilla 
and /usr/bin/plugins do exist, so I copied libflashplayer.so and 
flashplayer.xpt into both of these directories.  I don't know if this gives 
you fully functional Flash capabilities (I haven't gone to enough Flash sites 
to be sure), but it definitely gave me working animations and banners in 
Firefox.  

By the way, for some reason, Firefox uses the same plugin directory that 
Mozilla does--there is no separate /usr/bin/firefox. 
========================================================

> Note: AFAIK, no one is running YDL 4.1 on an OldWorld Mac. Rumours
> were circulating for a few months after it was released but no hard
> evidence has surfaced!

I keep hearing that it's theoretically possible, but I've seen no evidence 
that anyone is actually running 4.1 on OldWorld.

-PRH