why did flash randomly stop working in Firefox 1.0.7 on Linux and how can I get it working again?

December 18, 2005 6:26 PM

arrrrh. This is probably a stupid question. Flash 7.0.61 plug-in, Firefox 1.0.7, and Linux 2.6.14 : Flash was working. Then it stopped working.

I've tried everything. I didn't update anything. ObjTabs in Adblock are disabled. I even disabled all my extensions. It still isn't working. So I removed libflashplayer.so and flashplayer.xpt from /usr/lib/firefox/plugins and from .mozilla/plugins Firefox told me it was missing a plugin. I then re-installed the flash plugin. Firefox doesn't complain but no Flash is visible. Right clicking where I know there is a movie or a bit of interface shows the usual Flash menu. Googling didn't help. I don't know why Flash disappeared but it wasn't due to any extensions. I'm rather pissed because I can't find anyone with a similar problem and I can't navigate several flash-based sites I visit regularly. Suggestions?

posted by Grod to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Look in ~/.firefox/plugins. Putting the flash plugin in there always works for me when things get wonky.
posted by joegester at 7:17 PM on December 18, 2005

Flash Player creates a config dir in ~/.macromedia
Have you tried removing it completely and seeing if Flash automagically recreates it?
posted by ori at 7:24 PM on December 18, 2005

The relevant files are in these locations on my machine:
~/.mozilla/plugins/flashplayer.xpt
~/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

Also, try removing all extensions, rather than just disabling them. Adblock comes with its own wrapper for flash objects, I think. Probably not the problem, but you never know.
posted by ori at 7:28 PM on December 18, 2005

Do you have adblock on in firefox?
Just last week i went to a friends house to fix just this issue. A very quick search on goggle led me to this post and sure enough adblock was the culprit.
On preview "but you never know"
I'm feeling recursive......
posted by blink_left at 11:05 PM on December 18, 2005

I've had problems with both flashblock and adblock with Flash. In all cases, the solutions was to completely remove both extensions, reinstall flash, then reinstall the extensions.
posted by salmacis at 1:15 AM on December 19, 2005

I had the same problem, went through basically the same steps, and met with the same failure. Uninstalling Adblock fixed it.
posted by team lowkey at 2:01 AM on December 19, 2005