After a recent ‘yum upgrade’ on a 64bit (x86_64) CentOS 5.6 based desktop system, I found that Flash sites weren’t working and that there were many “npviewer.bin” processes left in a Zombie process state and that web browsing was just generally slow.
The solution to this was to ensure that the only Flash plugin & software on the system was from a single 64bit Flash plugin distribution from Adobe, as the dependencies of Firefox installed via Yum meant that a 32bit instance of Flash player was being installed from the RPM Forge Repo.
The steps taken to fix Flash based browsing were:
a) As root run ‘yum remove flash-plugin.i386‘
b) Then find any files in the root (/) or /usr directory trees named based on the glob “*flash*plugin*” and remove those files too.
These files were found to be:
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/nswrapper_32_32.libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/nswrapper_32_64.libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
The file ‘/usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so’ was a symlink to /usr/lib64/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so, which didn’t exist (!), so that directory (/usr/lib64/flash-plugin/) was created (as root run mkdir /usr/lib64/flash-plugin).
c) If the Firefox browser thinks that it does have a Flash plugin installed, then disable that plugin in Firefox and exit Firefox.
d) Then the latest 64-bit Flash Plugin was downloaded from Adobe, at the URL: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer11.html being http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplatformruntimes/flashplayer11/flashplayer11_b2_install_lin_64_080811.tar.gz
This file needs to be extracted in the / directory tree, as the files in that tar archive are:
libflashplayer.so
usr/bin/flash-player-properties
usr/share/pixmaps/flash-player-properties.png
usr/share/kde4/services/kcm_adobe_flash_player.desktop
usr/share/applications/flash-player-properties.desktop
usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/flash-player-properties.png
usr/share/icons/hicolor/22x22/apps/flash-player-properties.png
usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/flash-player-properties.png
usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/flash-player-properties.png
usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/flash-player-properties.png
usr/lib/kde4/kcm_adobe_flash_player.so
e) After extracting the tar.gz in the / directory, the file /libflashplayer.so needs to be moved to the valid location for the Firefox browser, which is that path found with the ‘find’ command above in (a), being: /usr/lib64/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so
ie:
mv /libflashplayer.so /usr/lib64/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so
Then ensure that the symlink found in (a) is now validly pointing to the now existing file /usr/lib64/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so
ie:
ls -lL /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
f) Now knowing that the downloaded Flash 64-bit Plugin is the only one available to Firefox, you can launch Firefox & test the Flash player.
This process worked successfully for me to restore Flash playing in Firefox on a 64-bit CentOS 5.6 desktop, whereas any attempts to use a Flash player via Yum from either the RPM Forge or Adobe’s own Repositories would never work.