Have to restart firefox to view flash content

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage . I have classified this bug as a bug in flashplugin-nonfree.

I can confirm this bug, Flash video gets replaced but a white rectangle. Only closing and restarting Firefox cures the problem

Further info.

Going to tools addons and disabling then re-enabling the flash plugin followed by reloading the page restores flash without having to restart Firefox.

Not ideal but a work around until it's fixed.

Had the same problem:

Package: firefox-3.0
Architecture: amd64
Version: 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
flashplugin-nonfree_9.0.124.0ubuntu2_amd64

flash samples from eg http://www.macloo.com/examples/flash/index.htm play just fine, but visiting some websites cause flashplayer to stop. Going back to the examples that were working, they now display as blank objects. Restarting firefox and these flash examples work again.

Reverting to using gnash player for now.

reproduce:
1. goto: http://www.unisuper.com.au/investments/investment-performance
2. Select: "All investment options" from <Investment option:>
3. Click go:

When page loads, the flash apears briefly, but page then refreshes and flash plugin object becomes blank.

Not sure what causes this problem, but I am experiencing it as well.

Sometimes I will leave my FF open on and return to browse, only to have to restart FF when I try to load a page that uses Flash. Sometimes it will happen mid-session; I will be at one page that uses Flash and it works just fine, reload or go to another page that uses flash and it isn't working.

Very annoying bug. Is this something everybody is experiencing?

are you all using amd64

amd64 here.

Yes'ir. AMD64

I can also confirm this bug. I am using 8.10 64 bits on a i386 machine. For some unknown reasons flash content stops working on firefox. The only way I've found to make it work is by restarting the application.

Carlos, Could you please expand on what you mean by "For some unknown reasons flash content stops working on firefox"?

Does this mean that the flash content will play for awhile then quit?
What is the source of this flash content?
Is it the same flash file or all flash files?
If more than one flash file do this always happen at the same point in the file, such as 2 minutes?

Have you installed all the lastest updates?

Thanks

Hi bigbal50,
When I said: "For some unknown reasons" I meant to say that it happen suddenly without any logic explanation. This happened to me in the following websites: www.youtube.com www.credicard.com.ve etc...

I happen to have the latest updates. It is not a constant behavior though...

This appears to be around from time to time so we are marking it Confirmed.

Hi,

Same issue spotted on Fedora, especially after firefox is restored from a saved session - it is fully reproducible then (firefox restart after plugin installation or after kde session restored). I found this issue on all firefox versions 3.0.x.
Please check if this fixes your problem:
- ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins ~/.mozilla/
- restart firefox
- done, should not happen again

Cheers

I've seen this for months too, using 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy).
(Intel, not AMD)

Once the situation starts, it seems any flash you try to load will have this problem, until you restart firefox. Usually I'll get some youtube URL sent to me, click it, youtube will come up - with an empty box instead of the video player. I'm not convinced it's youtube's player, but as someone said above, probably something else that hung the flash plugin.

From the about:plugins page:
File name: npwrapper.libflashplayer.so
Shockwave Flash 9.0 r159

Can confirm thios on 64-bit karmic

I first encountered this problem back in Hardy (amd64 then and ever since), and I still got bitten by it in Karmic Alpha 5 time and again. Flash is bad enough as it is, but with this erratic behavior nuisance becomes sheer torture. My guess is that nspluginwrapper is the culprit here. The Flashblock add-on (oblig. IMHO) might be another suspect, altough that doesn't seem very probable to me.

Anyway, installing the native 64-bit version of the Flash plug-in seems to have fixed this issue for me. Officially it's still in alpha, but so far I've had no problems with it at all (apart from Flash still being Flash and the plug-in still being non-free software, but that's a different matter).

Detailed instructions and lots of other information can be found Ubuntu Community Documentation:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AMD64/FirefoxAndPlugins

I'm using Karmic, AMD 64.

It seems that uninstalling Flashblock has solved this issue for me. I've checked more than a dozen sites with Flash video and games and I don't have any problem so far.

What about you?

For me following the hint in Comment 17 with installing the 64-bit version manually from adobe made it work much more nicely.

Please confirm this is the same bug as bug #338785

That does NOT feel like the same bug, as it contains actual errors. THIS bug would only result in blank areas where flash should be, until a restart - no error messages of any kind.

This is back with lucid.

Running 64 bit with the 32 bit plugin using npwrapper.

Not sure if I can confirm this is 'exactly' the same bug. But I'm on Lucid and I do have problems with flash when it comes to having Youtube running. Sometimes it's two youtube videos, sometimes it's Youtube with a facebook flash game. But one thing for sure, it's certainly flash running in firefox; I don't have this problem when running it in Chrome.

Oh, and I should add there doesn't seem to be any option for me except for killing firefox-bin because firefox freezes up completely and I can't get at any sort of disabling and re-enabling of flash.