Blog: Installing Flash Plugin 10 for Firefox in FreeBSD 8

WARNING: This post has been marked as obsolete and may be incorrect. It is kept for archival purposes only. Flash is annoying.  Adobe seem to have forgotten that other operating systems exist outside of windows, mac and linux.  Because of this, we have to use the linux-based flash plugin for FreeBSD.

However, this is (mostly) easy enough to configure if you know how.  Here's a guide to do it.

First of all, update your ports tree (see other posts on my blog on how to do this)

Next we need to install the linux compatibility base system (if you haven't already) – to do this, type the following as root:

cd /usr/ports/emulators/linux_base-f10
make install distclean Copy

This will take a while as it installs a few helpers (like rpm), and downloads many linux RPM packages.

Once it is complete, we can install the linux flash plugin by typing:

cd /usr/ports/www/linux-f10-flashplugin10
make install distclean Copy

This will fetch the linux flash plugin.  If it complains about size mismatches or MD5 checksum failures, then you have likely not updated your ports tree like you were told!

Once this is installed, we need to install a plugin wrapper to make it work... To do this, we type:

cd /usr/ports/www/nspluginwrapper
make install distclean Copy

Now we need to make a quick file link.  To do this, type the following:

cd /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins/
ln -fs /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so Copy

Ok, just one final step now (honest!).  For each user that you want to use the plugin, open a terminal as that user and DO NOT "su root".  Then type:

nspluginwrapper -v -a -i Copy

If all is well, you’ll see some mention of flash.  Next time you open firefox, flash will be enabled and fully working – including sound.

Feel free to complain to Adobe about the existence of other Operating Systems 🙂

Updating the ports tree in FreeBSD 8 Formatting external disks for use with FreeBSD