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If you start using Firefox 3 with Flash, odds are good that you'll experience Firefox crashing every few minutes while loading Flash. It seems Pulseaudio (Hardy's new sound system) is triggering a bug in Flashplayer, which causes Firefox to crash. Since Flash is closed-source software, there's no chance Ubuntu is able to fix the problem in time for Hardy Heron's release.
Solution
First you need to download and Install nspluginwrapper from here
Now you need to install libflashsupport using the following command
sudo apt-get install libflashsupport
Now Run the following commands
sudo apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
Now you need to Restart firefox
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I have this problem and this will fix.
Thanks.
i did this and where the should be flash stuff is a grey box :S
This didn’t work out for me, i get the grey box as well when i open another web site with flash installed
This isn’t a “fix”, per se. It is, however, a workaround to keep Firefox from crashing constantly. The nspluginwrapper simply displays the gray box, instead of allowing flash (more accurately, as mentioned above, the conflict between pulseaudio and flash) to crash Firefox. It will still require you to restart Firefox to display flash content again.
Monitor this site for updates on the situation: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/192888
i dont know about u but i decided to go back on 7.10 gutsy gibbon and now im a happy man 😀
(i also had a problem with my fav media player -listen- in hardy heron :S)
This will also greatly increase the CPU usage of flash.
I downloaded Opera to fix the problem … Result is about the same, if flash stops working it doesn’t take the browser with it, and in my impression there are much fewer crashes overall.
Any 64bit package?
thanks! work great for me!
Recently, Firefox 2 crashes for no reason whatsoever. After disabling troublesome plugins (XPL, Flash, running in safe mode), now it just hangs. Will I have to switch back to IE?
markpersy: nspluginwrapper is available in Hardy’s multiverse repo for AMD64.
This is NOT a *fix*. Is a WORKAROUND, like any other of the dozens of sollutions spreading on web.
Please, call it workaround, not fix. It is very bad to Linux image that this is happening. But is worse to say that a workaround is a “fix”.
I’ve been suffering crashes while watching flash on ubuntu since edgy at least. I chalked it up to flash and linux not playing nicely. Recently I did some distro shopping and low and behold not one crash with sabayon, arch, or slackware with at least a week’s time of mad flash viewing on each. In ubuntu I tried a gazillion suggestions from many forums, installed fresh, etc but nothing worked. I really like ubuntu but I’ve put in far too much time dealing with these crashes.
thanks for the fix, those crashes were the only thing that really annoyed me in ubuntu.
Sometimes i even had to reboot because of it! (oh the humanity! :p )
worked great. thanks alot for this solution. (:
flashplugin-nonfree doesn’t work anymore after I upgraded my firefox to firefox3
I had to install adobe flash player. But it seems to conflict with libflashsupport. And when I removed libflashsupport, it doesn’t crash
anymore when I go to youtube or somewhere else with flash content.
But now I can’t use libflashsupport anymore.
Any ideas?
Regards
Thanks for the “fix” or “workaround,” whatever one wants to call it. After a couple of months with Ubuntu Hardy Heron, I am now finally able to use the flash video for my information sites.
–MH Pathfinder
Yes this is a work around but it does works non the less if you get a greyed out box simply reload it and all is well. But ubuntu must work on the flash and pulse audio problem these are major deal killers down the road.
hi all
I got the same problem with firefow, plus pbs with deluge bittorent, and occasionnaly, xserver crashes…
but my pbs were solved ( i had just upgraded my bow, with new mobo, new proc, ram and video card… look like i’ve changed everything, by the way)
all problems were solved with 1 thing : looking for the bios settins, i found out my ddrIIram was not set a good frequency.. once solved, no longer crashes, everything run smoothly…
may be you can try this?
Thanks a lot. This helped me, as I was having this problem.
Doesn’t work for me :S
I get the gray box on every single flash thing, no matter how many times I reload the page (every browser)
Nearly every major website uses flash. Ubuntu needs to convince everyone to change their websites, or fix the flash-is-gray-square bug. I’m on 64-bit Athlon, btw. This is frustrating.
Thank you for this tip. Works like a charm for a bug that is awful and frustrating. Why can’t Ubuntu fix such bugs through updates? It is just plain silly to leave to the user to search for solutions to such everyday problems. Thanks again.
I did this and I can’t say I’m too happy, my fault I didn’t read the comments.
Any ideas to go back to the way I had it ?
thanks.
That solution didn’t fix the problem on my 64bit AMD version of Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 installation. I installed the Swiftweasel web browser hoping that it would run without Flash problems but it also has the same issue.
Thanks, though this hasn’t completely solved the issue, it has reduced it from painful to bearable
I did the “fix” and I no longer had the crashes happening, but as others here I had a blank box where the flash video should have been. I did some looking around and I also installed swfdec-mozilla and dependencies (sudo aptitude install swfdec-mozilla). I could view (with sound) the youtube videos again without crashing. This was on a 32 bit system. I hope this helps and good luck!
I’ve found a reasonable workaround. Remove the nspluginwrapper as well as the flashplugin-nonfree. Re-install flashplugin-nonfree. Go to System > Preferences > Sound. Change all the playback methods to ALSA. This will effectively disable Pulseaudio, and avoid the grey screen of death that is prevalent with the offered solution. Hopefully they can get the bugs worked out of Pulse ASAP.
I am wondering if this is still a valid workaround or is there a more permanent solution? I have numerous firefox 3 crashes in ubuntu and they seem to happen when I click on links that launch a popup or on video-related links. The errors are related to my utils.js file.
I am not sure how to even diagnose where the problems are coming from.
Thanks for any help.
@29: The official PulseAudio website is keeping track to resolving this issue:
http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup#FlashPlayer
Currently, there’s a Ubuntu-specific link to this forum thread:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4928900