Flash on 64-bit Fedora

To install flash on a 64-bit Fedora systems, follow one of the following methods:

1) Use the pre-release version of the Adobe Flash.

Go here and download the plugin towards the end of the page.
This would most likely be a tar.gz file. Extract the file with "tar zxvf downloaded_filename". This archive would have a single file by the name "libflashpalyer.so".
Check if the file is actually a 64-bit plugin. run "file libflashplayer.so" the output would look like:

libflashplayer.so: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, stripped


In order to install the plugin either copy the file to /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins directory if you have root access. If not, copy the file to ~/.mozilla/plugins directory.

After copying the plugin restart firefox and you should have your youtube vidoes running fine :).



2) Use nspluginwrapper to be able to run 32-bit flash on 64-bit systems.

Note: You should have root access to use this method.

Go here and download the flash rpm version. Install the package with rpm ivh flash-plugin-10.0.45.2-release.i386.rpm. This package will install the flash plugin as /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so along with a couple of other files.

Now install ndspluginwrapper with :
yum -y install nspluginwrapper.i686. This command will pull down close 90 packages as dependencies, let them all be installed.

The nspluginwrapper.i686 package will allow plugins compiled for i386 to run on other architectures (eg x86_64). It will install a proxy plugin as /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/npwrapper.so and during its post installation steps, it runs, /usr/bin/mozilla-plugin-config -i -f command, which will search for all i386 plugins and install them into /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/. You will notice nswrapper_32_64.libflashplayer.so file in this directory which is linked/wrapped from 32-bit to 64-bit by the wrapper.

You will be able to play the flash videos now, but there will be no sound. To fix the sound, run yum -y install alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686 and restart firefox. This should have flash up and running.



To check if the flash plugin is installed fine, go to Tools->Add-ons->Plugins. You should have Shockwave Flash listed among the plugins.

I verified the above steps on a fresh install of Fedora 13 x86_64 alone.

Praveen