124757 - Flash plugin works only for root user on SuSE linux

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Andreas Bieniek]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.8) Gecko/20020204
BuildID:    2002020415

The installed flash plugin 5.0 r47 works only for the root user on 
SuSe Linux 7.3

The same plugin withe the same permissions work on Netscape 4.7 for all users.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Install plugin in:
    File name: /usr/local/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
    Shockwave Flash 5.0 r47

Permissions:
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       947992 Feb 10 00:44 libflashplayer.so
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         2363 Feb 10 00:44 ShockwaveFlash.class

2.Start mozilla from your account
3.Start mozilla as root

Actual Results:  After 2: The flash plugin does not display any contents
After 3: The flash plugin works fine

To set the -s bit on the libflashplayer.so file does not help to solve this problem.

Comment 1

[Kai Lahmann (is there, where MNG is)]

maybe related to the /dev/dsp problem..?

Comment 2

[R.K.Aa.]

Reporter: When running as normal user, is anything accessing your sound-device
when flash fails to load?

Comment 3

[Andreas Bieniek]

My first guess was also that the problem is related to the /dev/dsp problem. If
the kde system sounds are enabeld, it takes about a minute until the message:
"Starting Plugin for type application/x-shockwave-flash" appears. Disabeling the
system sounds of KDE, or starting mozilla with "artsdsp mozilla" solves this
behaviour, but in all cases I get the "Starting Plugin..." without anything
beeing displayed. From the behaviour it looks more that flash is trying to
access some device, or system program, where the permissions are not given to
the normal user. Is there a way to find out which devices and program flash is
trying to use ?

Comment 4

[R.K.Aa.]

If you keep your plugins in a globally accessible dir:

Can you do an "about:plugins" and make a note of the plugins you see there.

Then quit moz, rename your regular users .mozilla directory, start moz as
regular user from scratch, creating a new profile. 

Does about:plugins now show the same as before?
Does it alter the behaviour of the app when you use a flash enabled site as
regular user?

Comment 5

[serge (gone)]

What is your disk chach setting? see bug 116562

Comment 6

[Andreas Bieniek]

> Then quit moz, rename your regular users .mozilla directory, start moz as
> regular user from scratch, creating a new profile.

Running mozilla on a new account works fine. Then, I moved the .mozilla
directory and recreated the .mozilla directory from scratch. After that, the
flash plugin works fine, as well. I also tried creating a new account before
adding the files for the flash plugin (As it was done in the first place.) This
works fine, as well. The comparison of the "Preferences" and about:plugins of
the working and non-working account show no differences. So I have no clue what
went wrong in the first place, except there might have been a leftover of a
mozilla 0.95 installation on my account. (I am not absolutely sure if I deleted
the old .mozilla directory). I will levave the non-working account untouched for
further investigations, if needed. Thank you very much for your kind help to
track the problem.

Comment 7

[shrirang khanzode]

wfm, then?

Comment 8

[R.K.Aa.]

i think this may have been related to bug 115337. The clue would likely be in
your old .mozilla/appreg

Since 0.9.5, mozilla has improved a lot in how it picks up plugins (and
mimetypes), but appreg increments for each new installation or registration, if
mozilla think the plugins are "new". The syntax and content of what it registers
today seems to be good. But it wasn't always as fit to fight, and the
"incrementing" thing is still a possible culprit (i filed bug 109739)

A way around it all would be to add a plugin-dir pref to your prefs.js, and keep
plugins in a directory separate from the installation dir. That way they don't
get new timestamps each time you install.

I don't know how interesting an old horked appreg itself is: The version mess is
fixed by now, and it may be not be considered  very productive to code for
"repair" of old appregs from the beta periode.

If you like, you can test whether appreg was the culprit - check out
http://home.c2i.net/dark/My_Mozilla_FAQ.html#tricks