317655 - flash plugin does not render text

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[joe williams]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

firefox installs the flashplugin no problems occur. in some instances when viewing a page with flash on it the text on a button, a title or some other object is not displayed. i have experienced this issue on at least google.com/analytics and flickr.com i also have this issue on version 1.0.7.

extra system info:
i am running debian sarge, kernel version 2.6.14 (apt repo), firefox 1.0.7 (apt repo) and 1.5 (mozilla.org), flash plugin installed by firefox. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.login to account on site
2.look at where text should be 
3.

Actual Results:  
no text is rendered

Expected Results:  
text should be seen

please contact me if you need more info.

Comment 1

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

-> Core :: Plug-ins

Comment 2

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

I'm seeing this too with the trunk nightlies on a Fedora Core Test 2 system.

The menus at the top of www.macromedia.com can be navigated but there is no text displayed. The width of the menu items is collapsed too so this doesn't just seem to be a rendering problem but a layout problem in the flash plugin.

Comment 3

[Hermann Schwab]

http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/java_script_comm/javascript_to_flash.html

is a test page for testing JavaScript-to-Flash communication. Please test.
It doesn't work if flashplayer.xpt is missing. This is missing on windows, if you install flash to a zip build. I used to copy the file from an old Netscape installation.

Comment 4

[joe williams]

I have attempted this test. It does not work. But, I have verified that I have the flashplayer.xpt installed, it is in both '/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins' and in '.mozilla/plugins' in my home directory. I suppose this narrowed the problem down to the 'flashplayer.xpt' file?

Thanks for the help.

Comment 5

[Hermann Schwab]

(In reply to comment #4)
> I have attempted this test. It does not work. But, I have verified that I have
> the flashplayer.xpt installed, it is in both '/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins'
> and in '.mozilla/plugins' in my home directory. 

Is Javascript enabled? Javascript must be enabled so that this test is working.
You also can try to copy flashplayer.xpt to your Components directory, as there are a lot of XPTs. Load about:plugins to get it registered.
Do you use flash-blocking or ad blocking extensions?

Comment 6

[joe williams]

I have done and verifyed it is running (it shows up in about:plugins). I do have javascript enabled and i made sure i had 'privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins' set on zero. And i have no extensions other than gestures and mimetype editor. 

I tested it on google.com/analytics and flickr.com and the issue presists.

Comment 7

[Hermann Schwab]

http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/java_script_comm/javascript_to_flash.html
If this doesn't work though flashplayer.xpt is available, JS enabled and flash seen in about:plugins this seems to be your bug. 
Could you retry in safe mode, or using a profile without extensions?
Please start JS console and look for errors and warnings seen there, when testing the Macromedia URL.

Comment 8

[joe williams]

I ran safe-mode and no errors displyed on the jsconsole when going to the test url.

Comment 9

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

The test doesn't work for me either.

Comment 10

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Please get this confirmed at least before nominating for security fix branches. Trunk patches would be good, too.

Comment 11

[Kelson]

I'm seeing this also on Fedora Core 5 with Firefox 1.5.0.1.  I don't think JavaScript is involved, as the flash elements on http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/about/ dont display normal text either.  The banner should show version information below "Macromedia Flash Player is Installed" before it goes into its sales pitch, and the "Version Information" box should actually show some version information instead of an empty box.

Also, right-clicking on a Flash animation and choosing "Settings" brings up a sttings dialog -- with no text.

I also think it's not specific to Firefox or Gecko, as I'm seeing the same problem in Opera 9 TP2.  I've been trying to figure out whether there's an issue with missing fonts, the new X server, the kernel -- I don't know.  IIRC my otherwise-identical setup on a Fedora Core 4 machine shows text in Flash with no problems, so it must be something that changed between FC4 and FC5 that is also present in Sarge.

This mailing list post suggested it might be SELinux-related, but the suggested changes didn't help here.  It does, however, have screenshots illustrating the missing text on the Flash settings dialog: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2006-February/msg00148.html

System: fresh install of Fedora Core 5.  SELinux is on, in permissive mode.
Flash version: 7.0.63
Browser: Firefox 1.5.0.1

Comment 12

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

Attachment: screenshot of cnn.com

What exactly constitutes a confirmation? There are several people who see this problem, isn't that enough?
Also I wasn't nominating this for a security fix branch but for an important bugfix branch since this bug makes some pages unusable. Take a look at the attached screenshot from cnn.com . Since most of the text is not rendered this functionality has become unusable in Firefox and other pages show the same problem. I think this should at least be looked into sooner rather than later.

Comment 13

[joe williams]

If it would help I can post a few of the screenshots of what I have experienced as well. 

Comment 14

[Dawid Gajownik]

Muhahaha! I've found the culprit :D

Flash plugin searches for fonts in wrong directories:
[y4kk0@X ~]$ strings /usr/local/seamonkey/plugins/libflashplayer.so | grep usr
focusrect
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fs/config
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fs-xtt/config
find /usr/share/fonts/ -name fonts.dir
find /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts -name fonts.dir
[y4kk0@X ~]$

Fedora Core 5 provides X.Org X11R7 - first modular release. X.Org X11 developers switched from Imake to GNU Autotools, so files are now installed in normal location:

rpm --eval % configure

/usr/X11R6 directory is now DEAD. /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fs/config should be changed to /etc/X11/fs/config and /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts to /usr/share/X11/fonts.

As a workaround you may want to run these commands as root:

[root@X ~]# mkdir -p /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
[root@X ~]# cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
[root@X X11]# ln -s ../../../../etc/X11/fs
[root@X X11]# ln -s ../../../share/X11/fonts
[root@X X11]# ll
razem 8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 mar 26 23:00 fonts -> ../../../share/X11/fonts
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 mar 26 23:00 fs -> ../../../../etc/X11/fs
[root@X X11]#

BTW Flash plugin is really badly compiled/written. It has text relocations:
[y4kk0@X ~]$ readelf -d /usr/local/seamonkey/plugins/libflashplayer.so | grep TEXTREL
 0x00000016 (TEXTREL)                    0x0
[y4kk0@X ~]$

If you want to use it with SELinux, you must type:

chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/local/seamonkey/plugins/libflashplayer.so

You may find more information about textrels here:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/33992
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/34037
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/pic-guide.xml
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/pic-internals.xml
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/pic-fix-guide.xml
http://people.redhat.com/drepper/selinux-mem.html
http://people.redhat.com/drepper/dsohowto.pdf

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Do you still see this problem with current version of browser AND flash player?
Please comment in the bug with your version and status.

* http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/about/ shows your currently installed version.
* latest test version http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer9.html
* current mass release for linux 9,0,48,0 http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #14)
> Muhahaha! I've found the culprit :D
> 
> Flash plugin searches for fonts in wrong directories:
> [y4kk0@X ~]$ strings /usr/local/seamonkey/plugins/libflashplayer.so | grep usr

Joe, is your problem the same?

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

=> incomplete
comments welcome