How to: Install Adobe Flash Player on FreeBSD
It is hard to deny that Adobe’s Flash Player had become more then an option when you surf the web. Not long ago we found most of the websites just based on html, css and eventually animated gifs. Video clips were just on subpages and most of us didnt really miss the obtrusive advertisment, often displayed on the banners on commercial websites like magazines.
While you can eventually ignore video websites like Youtube you find more and more pages you cannot even access—you have to skip over a Flash intro to enter the website, click through Flash-created menues, click on Flash animated maps where your current location is and other, often annoying tricks.
There were many FreeBSD users who tried to move Adobe to release their Flash Player plugin not only for Mac OSX, Linux and Solaris but simply to compile a BSD binary what we can use on BSD workstations. Not much of a reaction yet..
These instructions here may help you to get around this little inconvienience. There might be some quirks, but you will get along with a FreeBSD Firefox port and the Linux plugin and the nspluginwrapper written by Gwenole Beauchesne.
At the moment I can not refer to many combinations. I had sucess with these here:
- The port of Firefox I use is /usr/ports/www/firefox-devel. This is currenly the version Firefox 3.0a2
- There is the nspluginwrapper 0.9.91.5
- The plugin is Adobe Flash Player version 9.0.124.0—the .tar.gz for Linux (x86)
- And FreeBSD 7.0-i386
The Adobe Flashplayer plugin is a Linux binary. You have to make sure your BSD System can run these binaries. If you have an existing /usr/compat/linux/ directory then you have already the port for the Linux-userland installed. If not, you have to install it. You have to be root for these steps:
# cd /usr/ports/emulators/linux_base-f4
# make install clean
Also, the file /etc/rc.conf has to contain:
linux_enable=”YES”
—use you favorite editor and type it in.
After rebooting the system you have the Linux emulation available.
If you dont have the actual Firefox already on your computer, install /usr/ports/www/firefox-devel, login as root.
# cd /usr/ports/www/firefox-devel
# make install clean
Now install the nspluginwrapper. This program does the trick what will later prepare the Linux version of the Flash Player plugin to run with Firefox on BSD:
# cd /usr/ports/www/nspluginwrapper
# make install clean
The following steps you have to perform as a normal user. All plugins will get locally installed on your /home/username/.mozilla.
Visit Adobe’s download site http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash&P2_Platfo rm=Linux
and get the .tar.gz for Linux.
Untar it:
$ tar -xvf install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz
Copy this file into the ~/.mozilla/plugins directory:
$ cp ~/install_flash_player_9_linux/libflashplayer.so ~/.mozilla/plugins
and invoke the nspluginwrapper:
$ nspluginwrapper -v -a -i
..check if it had worked:
$ nspluginwrapper -l
it should have created a file like this:
/home/username/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
Restart firefox and check the Flash sample on: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/
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