liblightspark.so is installed but cannot find it to remove it
The nicest folks down at Adobe have seen fit to blow away Adobe Flash support for Linux. I guarantee you, there's nothing wrong down there, I guarantee. < That line sounds familiar, I'm trying to place the Joker.
I blew away the out-of-date Flash plugin, and about a month or so ago, followed the instructions in this next reference, to replace it with gnash and liblightsparkplugin.so.
https://www.linux.com/learn/weekend-project-open-source-alternatives-adobe-flash-linux
I am running Linux Mint 17.3 MATE 64-bit with Firefox 47.0.
liblightsparkplugin was worthless. It never performed a lick of work. I may have this figured out why: After I installed it, Firefox knows of it, but perhaps the file disappeared. I attempted to uninstall and it does not exist. "apt-get remove" didn't find it, Package Manager didn't find it, Software Center did not list it as either available to install or to indicate that it was installed. Find command did not find the file on my computer. I seem to have a "registry" entry in my Firefox profile pointing to the missing file.
A shot in the dark: I searched about:config for the file name. Nothing.
What file might I look in in my Profile that is holding this dead-end reference?
Seeing that the "Lightspark" source in the Linux.com reference seems to have nothing to download, what do we have in 2016 to do Flash in Firefox?
Here is what I can do with the installed plugin: It identifies as Shockwave Flash 12.1 r720 (more...). I click more, it identifies the file as liblightsparkplugin.so. I can set the plugin to never enable, always ask, always enable.
When never enabled, the interactive Flash-powered site is asking for Adobe Flash. (Such nice folks!) When always ask, the site asks to enable the plugin. Once enabled, the Flash content area is blank. When always enabled, the Flash content area is blank. Seems in keeping with a missing file.
I can watch CNN video, not CBSN News or ABC News. If I switch off the dead plugin I can watch MSNBC.
Isisombululo esikhethiwe
Type about:plugins in the Location (address) bar to see where the Plugins Firefox is making use of is located on your system.
Plugins are not installed in Firefox like Extensions and Themes (complete) are.
Linux users do have a option to try and that is using a freshplayer plugin wrapper to make use of the Pepper Flash Player (PPAPI) used in Chrome/Chromium browsers to run in Firefox (and SeaMonkey).
Funda le mpendulo ngokuhambisana nalesi sihloko 👍 1All Replies (11)
Hi
I do not know if this helps, but I have just (within the past hour) seen this news release.
Removing the lightspark plugin may require you contacting ubuntu support at askubuntu, the Ubuntu forums or the Ubuntu IRC channel on Freenode.
I hope this helps and is of use.
Seburu, That is interesting news. Useful for Linux users that want to use FlashPlayer but unfortunately a reason for websites not to drop Flash content and that in turn makes it harder for Browsers to drop FlashPlayer support.
FirefoxinUbuntu, I guess despite your display name you are not at present asking about Ubuntu
The article you followed was seven years old
Nathan Willis September 10, 2010 Weekend Project: Open Source Alternatives to Adobe Flash on Linux
I do not have Linux Mint handy at present, but from what I recall it will install Adobe FlashPlayer easily if not by default. I belive their official support fora are
- https://forums.linuxmint.com/
- and a probably relevant more recent thread:
"Install Flash Player Version 11.2.202.235 2012 .tar.gz"
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=101599&p=576842&hilit=install+Flash+player#p577124
- and a probably relevant more recent thread:
Okulungisiwe ngu John99
Seburo and John99, Linux Mint is a takeoff on Ubuntu. It uses the Ubuntu repository system, so directing questions to Ask Ubuntu or to the Linux Mint forums is appropriate.
Firefox regularly declared the Adobe Flash plugin a security threat and it became a regular pain in the tush every time it was disabled. I prefer whatever replaces it to be open source if Flash technology must continue.
My top line about the nice folks at Adobe was an adaptation of another bug report I think in the Red Hat Bugzilla concerning liblightspark.so (computer file not a website), and I thought I'd add some humor from that joker running for Resident. :)
I can add Fox News to the list of news outlets that do not depend upon Flash, along with Dailymotion and YouTube. And CBS News and ABC News may be available on YouTube to avoid the need for Flash.
Many local television news videos require Flash, unfortunately.
I will take my question to a Linux forum and report back here with any success I come up with.
edited to remove some spurious text
Okulungisiwe ngu Linux_Mint_Firefox
Mozilla were working on Shumway but that seems to have been dropped on the grounds that Flash is on the way out
Isisombululo Esikhethiwe
Type about:plugins in the Location (address) bar to see where the Plugins Firefox is making use of is located on your system.
Plugins are not installed in Firefox like Extensions and Themes (complete) are.
Linux users do have a option to try and that is using a freshplayer plugin wrapper to make use of the Pepper Flash Player (PPAPI) used in Chrome/Chromium browsers to run in Firefox (and SeaMonkey).
James, Thank you for the about:plugins address! There I found the path to the liblightspark.so file, and found the file on my computer. code from Terminal, output of ls -l /usr/lib/lightspark $ ls -l total 13108 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 109832 Jan 7 2014 liblightsparkplugin.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Jan 7 2014 liblightspark.so -> liblightspark.so.0.7 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Jan 7 2014 liblightspark.so.0.7 -> liblightspark.so.0.7.2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13305416 Jan 7 2014 liblightspark.so.0.7.2 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 2 19:34 plugins
The plugins listing gave me the path to look in and the files are there. Could just be I need to give that liblightspark.so execution privies.
Here, by the way, is the Linux Mint forum parallel thread. https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=229237
Quick question, this being a wiki format, is there a way to kill linking to the lib----.so "website?" I have managed a MediaWiki site in the past.
Well I be damn Adobe has decided to support Linux again and not just with the security updates to the old 11.2 esr branch.
A easy way to use this is to place the libflashplayer.so file in a created plugins folder at ~/.mozilla/plugins/
Okulungisiwe ngu James
A bit kludgy but for example put double apostrophies around the period to break the parsing.
I must also mention we change platform software in a few weeks but no idea what mark-up that will use or whether the kb & fora will be different. I hope its not full of animations & emojis but I don't know how far the planned gamification goes but it looks like we will be reffered to as Firefox Trouper & Sidekick Supporters. Maybe they will have our avatars wearing blonde wigs and building a wall, good answers put a brick on, bad answers allow a Defenders to steal one, but I shouldn't shout that out it may be taken as a serious suggestion.
lib''.''so or '''lib'''.'''so'''
becomes
lib.so or lib.so
Ah, yes. An italic period or a bold period kills the link parsing! Thank you! I brought up "about:plugins" and opened up the page source. There is nothing there but JavaScript. So, if I just remove the liblightsparkplugin.so file from its location, the plugin SHOULD just be gone. It's not hard-coded or like a registry entry found in Windows.
I will just do that and see what comes of it, then report back here.
Simply renaming the file to liblightsparkplugin.so.bak was all it took.
edit -- I left "plugin" out of the backed-up file name.
Okulungisiwe ngu Linux_Mint_Firefox
I just marked the tip to use about:plugins as the solution, because that page offered the path to the plugin that I could not find using the usual Linux tools on the command line. Visiting that path led me to the lightspark file.
After effectively removing Lightspark by renaming its file, I dropped Adobe's libflashplayer.so in the Lightspark path, that didn't get seen, so I dropped it in the mozilla/puugins path utilized by the VLC Media Player:
Path: /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer(1).so -- "(1)" because there already existed a file by that name in my downloads.
Listed as Shockwave Flash 23.0 r0
CBSN played overnight using Adobe Flash. Flash does not inhibit the screensaver as do other video formats. This did not inhibit the sound from playing while the screen went blank.
I will check out the Shumway HTML5 experiment. it is worthwhile to continue its development. I have found that HTML5 works well on YouTube, but that use of the iframe means of embedding Youtube video in another website is inferior to the use of the object code that I now have to generate from other websites.
I will also check out how to use the Google replacement for Flash in Firefox.
Thanks everyone for all the good leads.
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