Gentoo issues with Flash video playback in OPERA 8/9

Message

Jammet · Post by **Jammet** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:41 pm

This is about the flash videos such as those on the front pages of http://www.gamespot.com and http://www.tv.com as well as Google Video.

Under Gentoo Linux, Opera 9 (and Opera 8) using the latest Flash plugins should be able to play these videos.

According to a discussion on the Opera boards for Linux here (http://my.opera.com/community/forums/to ... ent1484573 ), I have reason to believe that there is a chance that there is something about Gentoo Linux's ebuild of Opera (both static and dynamically linked) is disabling Opera's capability to start these videos.

Please all Opera 8 or 9 users, check if you can play those videos in Gentoo. I know this sounds awkard, but I've been through testing different versions of Qt, both Blackdown and Sun JRE, completely different and vanilla Opera browser setups.

And the reason why I think this could be Gentoo related is because the only other user to chime in having that same problem was another Gentoo user.

The very latest Opera 9 weekly build is here if you want it for testing:
http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/Weekly-145/intel-linux/

The installer will offer you a /usr/local/ install.

Makaveli[FIN] · Post by **Makaveli[FIN]** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:26 pm

Yep, I'm having the same problem here. I've tried both Opera 8 and the latest weekly, no help.

Jammet · Post by **Jammet** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 10:26 pm

Firefox does the job perfectly fine, using the very same flash plugin, the same Java engine, the same overall settings.

I do not at all have the required expertise to unravel this mystery. If it really is Gentoo related. Be it permissions, be it cached files, file locations, group settings, you name it.

I just don't know. We really need help from somebody who knows their way around Opera and Gentoo.

Kaste · Post by **Kaste** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:21 pm

Hi Jammet

I use Opera9 beta 2 from the website and netscape-flash plugin from portage and it works fine. Did you do Tools>Quickpreferences > Enable Plugins?

That was disabled when i installed and first startled me as well when Flash didn't work.

Makaveli[FIN] · Post by **Makaveli[FIN]** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 8:30 am

Sure the plugins are enabled, since some Flash-sites works just fine.
Google Video and YouTube are good examples of services that doesn't work.
Their flash-videos just keeps loading/buffering and never start.

Kaste · Post by **Kaste** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:13 am

Hmm this is weird.

The ones Jammet posted work for me just fine. The one's you however just mentionend don't.

I don't think you guys have the same problem. Or can you also not see the ones from Jammet's post either Makaveli?

Makaveli[FIN] · Post by **Makaveli[FIN]** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:29 am

No, I can't play the Flash video-clips on those sites that Jammet mentioned. I see the Flash-screen, play buttons and all, but the videos just won't start playing.

neonknight · Post by **neonknight** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 10:39 am

Same here.
I have an AMD64 and I use Opera to view Flash-Movies, because there is no 64bit-Plugin for Firefox.

augury · Post by **augury** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:52 pm

Do you install stuff in /usr/local?

Jammet · Post by **Jammet** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 12:38 am

Kaste: I see by the postings made that there are several others with the same problem. You're the first one to report that it works. Yeah the plugin was enabled

.

So you actually see those videos playing. Is there ever anything out of the ordinary you modified about your Gentoo that might affect Operas behaviour? I do see the flash frontend for the player - and generally all flash pieces otherwise provided. Just not the video.

I'm still so mystified that I have no reliable idea what to blame it on. If you read the Opera board postings (link in first posting of this thread) you'll see that - as far as Opera setups are concerned, I've tried everything in the book - and then some.

augury: Not sure what your question is really aimed at. You normally want to install stuff of your own there to distinguish between files portage installed for you and files you installed yourself.

Skripp · Post by **Skripp** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 10:32 am

Same problem here with 8.52

Kaste · Post by **Kaste** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:20 pm

I apologize for the confusion. I thought you meant the intro flash videos. I can't see the videos on the page either.

Sorry again.

Slegge · Post by **Slegge** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 5:22 pm

I'm having the same problem here. Using Opera 8.51 and Flash 7.0.61 (all from portage).

What platforms are you using? I'm on AMD64, and I've been thinking it might be some 64/32bit problem.

EDIT: It seems to work in firefox (32 bit binary installation) apart from having to stop and buffer video every few seconds

Jammet · Post by **Jammet** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 6:47 pm

Some people have encountered this problem on x86 (including me) as well as well as you and neonknight on AMD 64. I will have to include this information in the bug report I filed about this today.

artworcs · Post by **artworcs** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 6:57 pm

I just checked video.google.com and the video plays just fine.

Code: Select all

*  www-client/opera
      Latest version available: 9.0_pre2
      Latest version installed: 9.0_pre2
      Size of downloaded files: 69,791 kB
      Homepage:    http://www.opera.com
      Description: Opera web browser.
      License:     OPERA-9.0

I never installed netscape-flash or flash for that matter. I just used firefox to download the plugin for me. After that everything works with opera to.

Slegge · Post by **Slegge** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 7:37 pm

This seems to be a problem with file premissions of some sort. When i d\l and untar'd the official package from http://www.macromedia.com as my user and set opera's pluginpath to the dir i untar'd to, it works fine.

Slegge · Post by **Slegge** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 8:11 pm

Disregard my last post. After some more testing I've found out that the premissions are ok. Instead, opera can't display the video if the plugin is located inside a directory named "netscape" [examples below]. This must be a problem with the Opera Proxy plugin, afaik, and probably not gentoo related. If someone could test this so we're sure, it'd be great.

This one dosn't work. Plugin hangs at loading videos.

Code: Select all

sugh plugins # pwd
/test/netscape/plugins
sugh plugins # ls -la
total 2118
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    1024 Mar 22 21:06 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root    1024 Mar 22 21:06 ..
-r--r--r-- 1 root root     856 Mar 22 20:58 flashplayer.xpt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2154768 Mar 22 20:58 libflashplayer.so

This works just fine:

Code: Select all

sugh plugins # pwd
/test/plugins
sugh plugins # ls -la
total 2118
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    1024 Mar 22 21:09 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root    1024 Mar 22 20:57 ..
-r--r--r-- 1 root root     856 Mar 22 20:56 flashplayer.xpt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2154768 Mar 22 20:56 libflashplayer.so

This one also works fine, so it can't be related to the depth of the directory structure

Code: Select all

/home/slegge/test/plugins/install_flash_player_7_linux
sugh install_flash_player_7_linux # ls -la
total 2114
drwxr-xr-x 2 slegge users     120 Mar 22 21:11 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 slegge users     152 Mar 22 20:31 ..
-r--r--r-- 1 root   root      856 Mar 22 21:11 flashplayer.xpt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 slegge users 2154768 Dec  9 01:44 libflashplayer.so

EDIT: Might actualy be a problem with the plugin itself, although it works in firefox so i doubt that is the case.
EDITx2: uhh, unless firefox copies the plugin to its own plugin directory that is. If it does, then it might be the flash plugins fault.

Jammet · Post by **Jammet** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 8:44 pm

Amazing work, really. I was at one point wondering if symbolic links could be blamed for this, but then again, I was always reminded that Netscape/Firefox use that very same plugin. Now - but you're asking the right question here... is Firefox really using it from that location or does Firefox copy it elsewhere first?

Confirmed, your approach works. I'm closing the bug on Gentoo, thanks so much for your help!

Would you please file this as a bug at Opera or Flash? I can do it too, but I'm not sure where it actually really belongs right now... do you?

Slegge · Post by **Slegge** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 9:14 pm

I'm not quite sure, but i'll check it tomorrow and file a bug where it belongs.

Slegge · Post by **Slegge** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 6:20 pm

Bug reported to Opera.

Martux · Post by **Martux** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 8:32 am

artworcs wrote:
[quote]

Code: Select all

*  www-client/opera 
      Latest version available: 9.0_pre2 
      Latest version installed: 9.0_pre2 
      Size of downloaded files: 69,791 kB 
      Homepage:    http://www.opera.com 
      Description: Opera web browser. 
      License:     OPERA-9.0
[code/]
[/quote]

How did you get the 9.x-version in portage? I am waiting for weeks now to even get it ~x86... My portage only shows the 8.53 version as latest package...

neonknight · Post by **neonknight** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 3:12 pm

Martux wrote: How did you get the 9.x-version in portage?

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122036

edit: ok forget that one... the opera9-ebuild doesn't work

cghislai · Post by **cghislai** » Wed May 31, 2006 4:54 pm

Hey guys, thanks for this! Shockwave work very well now...

But Im using opera 9_beta2 (the ebuild at http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122036 works fine now) and it consumes all my cpu while playing a video on video.google.com. Does the problem comes from my pc or from this beta version? (or both or none, devlop

)

Theres also some problem with sounds, not using dmix or whatever..

Thanks

Charly

nephros · Post by **nephros** » Wed May 31, 2006 8:14 pm

Try setting the variable XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 and start X from that environment.
Apparently flash and opera son't play nicely with the composite extension.

Hope this helps, it did fix the problem here. There's one or two threads about that here, searching for that variable should turn them up if you want some more information.

dariohy · Post by **dariohy** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 8:52 pm

You were right nephros, changing that variable works just fine to me.

I'm using Opera 8.54. In fact, I could "play" de videos, but not "see" them... insted, I could listen the sounds playing, and the mouse was enabled to navigate within the plugin-content.

Btw, opera uses common paths for looking out for plugins, so, if you tipe:

Code: Select all

emerge netscape-flash

The plugins will be installed in the most common paths and so opera will be able to look for them.