Why won't Flash Player on Chromium work?

Question

I have installed Chromium on my Raspberry Pi (running Raspian) with sudo apt-get install chromium-browser and I followed the instructions from this site to attempt to get flash player running: http://linuxologist.com/01general/howto-chromium-browser-on-linux-with-flash/

ie I just downloaded libflashplayer.so, placed it in /usr/lib/ then make a symlink to it in /usr/lib/chromium/plugins/. then i open Chromium like so:

chromium --enable-plugins --enable-greasemonkey --enable-user-scripts --enable-extensions

from the command line. However, flash player is still not recognised. The version of flash player I downloaded was from softpedia in tar, which i had to untar.

Has anyone managed to get this working? If so, then what extra steps were required?

Update

Alex requested I run file, so here it is:

$ file /usr/lib/libflashplayer.so
libflashplayer.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, stripped

You are aware that Linux can run on multiple platforms and you need one fitting your hardware. In this case an ARM cpu. — Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen, Aug 12 '12 at 08:03
Even if you get it running, flash will not run well on the Pi. I don't think you should put any more effort into getting it to work. — Jivings, Aug 12 '12 at 10:49
@ThorbjørnRavnAndersen yeah i've been using linux for a while now so i am familiar with it. i wasn't sure if the libflashplayer.so file would have support for arm - i guess i was a bit hopeful there... — mulllhausen, Aug 12 '12 at 15:05
@Jivings the pi has hardware accelleration for h264. It could be made to work relatively well for video playing. — Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen, Aug 12 '12 at 16:01
@mulllhausen Linux is a large area, and if you only use it on an x86-platform you do not learn of the "hey, wrong CPU"-problems. Well, you do now :) — Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen, Aug 12 '12 at 16:02
@mulllhausen What are you using flash player for? Videos, websites or flash development? — ArchHaskeller, Aug 12 '12 at 18:11
@Haskeller just for having a fully functional chromium browser (mainly watching youtube). not for development or anything like that... — mulllhausen, Aug 13 '12 at 00:15

Alex Chamberlain · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-03T12:41:13.680

16

ARM vs x86

Intel processors used by desktops are 32/64-bit architectures, generally known as x86 and x86_64.

ARM processors, which is used by the Raspberry Pi, also use a 32-bit architecture, but it is incompatible with x86. Therefore, x86 libraries will not run on the Raspberry Pi.

How do I know you have an x86 library?

I asked you to run

file /usr/lib/libflashplayer.so

which output

libflashplayer.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, stripped

Intel 80386 tells us it was compiled for x86.

Do Adobe release an ARM version of Flash?

Yes and no. There are versions available for a lot of Mobile platforms, but I believe it is being deprecated (citation needed) and I haven't seen it available for ARM Linux. (citation needed)

edited Sep 03 '12 at 12:41

answered Aug 12 '12 at 15:21

Alex Chamberlain

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This is the correct answer. – Jivings Aug 12 '12 at 19:27
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@Jivings: That's your opinion! ;-) – Jon Egerton Sep 03 '12 at 10:35
Can't edit cos its too small, but I believe that should be "deprecated" not "depreciated" (http://linguisticszone.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/depreciate-or-deprecate.html). – Jon Egerton Sep 03 '12 at 10:37
@JonEgerton So I do. – Alex Chamberlain Sep 03 '12 at 12:41

Alex Chamberlain · Answer 2 · 2012-08-13T20:15:22.683

5

Gnash

Gnash is a free SWF movie player. It is available as a stand-alone application or as a plugin for several popular web browsers. It supports playing media from a disk or streaming over a network connection. Some popular video sharing sites like YouTube are supported on a wide variety of devices from embedded ones to modern desktops.

Installation

Gnash should be in the distributions' repositories.

Debian

$ sudo apt-get install gnash

Arch

$ sudo pacman -Sy gnash

Configuration

It should Just Work, but I haven't tried it yet. Will do soon.

References

Gnash User Manual

edited Aug 13 '12 at 20:15

answered Aug 12 '12 at 11:17

Alex Chamberlain

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I don't think you meant the -y flag for pacman. That synchronizes the package list, something that is unnecessary when installing software. – Aug 13 '12 at 20:14
@BryanDunsmore Or I did... – Alex Chamberlain Aug 13 '12 at 20:15
It is unnecessary to synchronize the package list when installing software. Most people will do this when updating the system instead. – Aug 13 '12 at 20:16
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It didn't work form me with Chromium + Gnash. – FR6 Nov 18 '12 at 04:41

lxp121 · Answer 3 · 2012-08-12T11:04:28.153

4

I think Adobe did not release any flash plugin of ARM Linux.

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/

I don't know where do you get the "libflashplayer.so", but i guess it is X86 or X64 version.

edited Aug 12 '12 at 11:04

answered Aug 12 '12 at 07:28

lxp121

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Hi lxp121 Welcome to Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange. Usually the best answers are supported by facts and citations. Currently this is not a complete answer, can you please improve it? – Jivings Aug 12 '12 at 10:32
@jivings this is a widely known fact. – Chris Stratton Aug 12 '12 at 15:31
@ChrisStratton: The original answer did not include the link or 3rd line. – Jivings Aug 12 '12 at 19:27
It did not need one, as the fact is widely known. – Chris Stratton Aug 12 '12 at 20:18

ArchHaskeller · Answer 4 · 2012-08-13T01:05:37.193

0

Possible solution,install android on a chrooted environment. That way android can play flash because of the google chrome support and the flash plugin . Still a long way until android hits the raspberry pi.

Alternatives to Flash(If your only using it for video play back)

VLC(My favourite choice)

#Arch Linux
pacman -S vlc
#Debian
apt-get install vlc

Install this plugin . Then open VLC goto Tools > Preferences (Click All) > Interfaces > Main interface > Check Web and save. Restart and your done! OR

vlc -I http

Lightroom

edited Aug 13 '12 at 01:05

answered Aug 13 '12 at 00:51

ArchHaskeller

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i installed vlc the other day as its my favourite media player and i wanted to test out a few avis. i didn't know about the chrome plugin though - that's probably the best solution to watching online flash movies (if it works well) - thanks. – mulllhausen Aug 13 '12 at 03:32

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 03 '12 at 10:29

OS maemo/meego(based on debain) supports flash player on nokia n900(with ARM Cortex A8) microB Browser(based on Mozilla Firefox): http://natisbad.org/N900/n900-commented-hardware-specs.html

maemo download link: http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/ next link is needed to generate IMEI for N900 to download image files: *ttp://www.nokiaport.de/tacdatabase/index.php?s=imeitools&lng= i hope this info can help the raspberry pi community

thanks for reply if there is a chance to get it run on raspberry

I don't exactly understand your post. Can you clarify it a little? — hifkanotiks, Sep 22 '12 at 11:52

score -2 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 28 '15 at 15:36

-2

Are you using Google Chrome? I think that's short for Chronium. If so, I read that Google Chrome cannot run correctly on an ARM processor. Hope this helps. Try finding a different browser, use Epiphany or your pre-installed browser, or find another one using

sudo apt-get install

answered Dec 28 '15 at 15:36

Chris

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Hello and welcome. I think your command is missing something. Feel free to edit your answer. – Ghanima Dec 28 '15 at 16:06
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apt-get install what exactly? You're missing the package to install. – Aloha Dec 28 '15 at 17:52
The latest versions of Chromium (45 at time of writing) will only work on the RPi 2 Models without (I believe) any hardware acceleration, older Q&A in this SE community may refer to it working on the older Pis but that is an ancient version 22 that is not around now I think. – SlySven Dec 28 '15 at 20:03