No audio in Flash on Ubuntu 10.04

Upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 went remarkably smoothly, with the exception that audio in Flash was erratic. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Since I use my PC as an entertainment system, this was pretty much a deal-breaker. Googling for it got me no where. Apparently […]

Googling for it got me no where. Apparently “no audio in flash” is the Ubuntu equivalent of “i have a headache” – it's a vague symptom that has multiple possible causes. Long story short, the problem was that I had both Flash 9 and Flash 10 installed. Firefox appeared to pick one at random (as far as I could tell), but audio only worked with 10. The solution was to delete Flash 9 – which I couldn't do from the package manager, because it turned out I had Flash 9 installed locally.

If this sounds familiar, type about:plugins in to the Firefox address bar. If you see two entries for Flash, then give the following a try:

rm ~/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

This is probably the result of some tinkering I did before upgrading to 10.04. I doubt this will be a problem with a fresh install.

Tim Voet —

I had the same problem, only my came from having the folder actually using /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin which was the wrong version. solution was to remove the folder, and to re-install flash 10.

Reply to Tim Voet

mr —

same thing happened to me. I didn't file a bug either. The multi billion $ Adobe can do that I think.

Reply to mr

Joe Tennies —

On my computer, opening “Sound Preferences” (off the volume control in the gnome-panel) fixes this. You can even have flash playing when you do it!

Reply to Joe Tennies

Jason Scheirer —

Thanks for figuring this out. I've just been doing upgrades on the same Ubuntu install for about four years and I found something like half a dozen libflashplayer.so instances scattered throughout the system. I deleted all but the newest and viola, sound's working again. Thanks again.

Reply to Jason Scheirer

disperso —

Thanks, after one day reading forums and trying out every solution suggested, finally someone stumbled on yours and… it works! Grazie grazie grazie!

Reply to disperso

Johnny —

Thanks! Removing all instances of libflashplayer.so and reinstalling flash 10 worked like a charm.

Reply to Johnny

Heno —

Thanks for this,
I have been Googleing for a few days now trying to get this issue fixed. What you did, didn't resolve the issue for me but it did put me on the right track. I did had multiple versions of the flash plugin installed but just removing the .so didn't resolve it.

I have a browse though my Synaptic and found that I had multiple flash plugins installed, I tried marking them all for complete removal but found that the package "adobe-flashplugin“ would not remove, I would get the error ”adobe-flashplugin: subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 2"

I found that doing the following fixed this,

sudo aptitude purge adobe-flashplugin

This removed the last flash plugin from Synaptic so then I did the following to re-install flash

sudo aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree

Now everything is working, with audio.

Reply to Heno

Wouter —

Thanks for this solution!

Just like everyone on here this pointed me in the right direction. Basically tinkering and fixing past problems left me with a flashplayer plugin that didn't work. Removing all options but one (and reinstalling it to be sure) works like a charm.

Reply to Wouter

Chris —

Thank you for the suggestions. I tried almost all. Even installed flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound. However, none worked.

Then I found out flash used my different sound card. I still have to find where I can change this setting.

Reply to Chris

jans —

Hello.
Thank you for tip. I tried reinstalled flashplugin. However, none worked. Its worked for me.

jans

Reply to jans

Aca —

Thank you very much Will.
Works for me too.

Gives me a lot of headache, as my wife used this to say that with every upgrade of Ubuntu I am breaking something giving her the reason to use Windows instead :-)

Best regards,
Aca

Reply to Aca

Budgieboy —

Thanks for all the help. Just needed to purge flash plugin and re-install; now everything working.

Reply to Budgieboy

Audio disappeared again- doh! seems the problem is flashplayer 9 and 10 conflict or some-such. Deleted the flashplayer.so file from usr/lib/flashplayer directory (as root) AND the flashplugin from .mozilla/plugins directory. Then used synaptic to uninstall the flashplugin-installer and flashplugin-nonfree packages. Rebooted and then reinstalled the flashplugin-installer and flashplugin-nonfree and bingo, audio now working in Firefox. If you right click on the flashplayer it reports version 10, which seems to be the one that works. Anyway it's been working for the last 24 hours. Fingers crossed!

Dave Harris —

Thank you-thank you. Nice clear instructions of where to find things and what to do.All working sweet.

Reply to Dave Harris

Christian —

Thanks, works great

Reply to Christian

Ross —

Heno's solution worked for me. Thanks!

Reply to Ross

Paolo —

good

Reply to Paolo

Erica —

Oh my goodness thank you so much. Was about to pull my hair out with the on again, off again video / sound issues this was causing me.

Found a combination of Will's, Heno's and Budgieboy's fixes did the trick for me.

Thanks guys!

Reply to Erica

Peter Bengtsson —

Yay! That actually worked!

Reply to Peter Bengtsson

J Reid —

Searched every for this solution. Thank you so much!

For the newbies out there who think even this was a little too cryptic, here are some step by step instructions:

1. open a terminal and ‘su’ to have root access.
2. cd / to get to the root directory
3. search all subdirectories for ‘libflashplayer.so’. To do this use this command: find . -name ‘libflashplayer.so’ -print
4. write down all these occurences of libflashplayer.so
5. Open synaptic package manager. Search for anything installed on your computer named flash and mark it for complete removal.
6. I did the same thing for firefox. It will be reinstalled later on the correct version of libflashplayer.so
7. Once everything is deleted, Use synaptic to reinstall adobe flash player. I installed these: flashplugin-installer, flashplugin-nonfree, flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound
8. Reinstall firefox in synaptic.

Reply to J Reid

Damn! I typed that quickly and i forgot that between step 6 and 7 there is another step. Once everything is deleted and your system is clean of firefox and flash, search for instances of libflashplayer.so again and delete any instances it finds. There shouldnt be any. Then proceed to step 7.

my apologies.

JKO —

THANK YOU! Tried everything else and your solution worked perfectly. Genius!

Reply to JKO

Jérôme —

Thanks a lot for that: I had first tried

then

but that would only work for one session i.e. until reboot.

All sorted now.

Reply to Jérôme

A1an —

The flash plugin is indeed unstable; anyway, if audio stops working it may be a configuration issue, related to the setting saved in your home directory.
Clearing everything in the local configuration directory may solve the problem without the need to re-install:

rm -rf ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer

Reply to A1an

Did:

rm ~/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

Just you said in your article - nothing else. Works like a charm.

You are a badass - I've been trying to find a solution since 10.04 came out. I am guilty of locally installing flash plugins, did the about:plugins, saw two, removed it - sound in flash.

andres —

Many thanks! I tried several “solutions” but the only one that worked was yours.

Reply to andres

yuanjin —

Thank you so much, this solution works fine for me. I am finally able to play flash video with sound. ^^

Reply to yuanjin

Joe Sauer —

rm ~/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so did it for me!
This was too easy! :o)

Reply to Joe Sauer

Blimundus —

Yep, this solved the sound problem for me as well!

Reply to Blimundus

Ed Hutchinson —

Thank You,

I deleted the flash plugins in the home directory and blew away the /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin directory. Then uninstalled the plugins (completelty) with synaptic. I left the flashplugin-installer installed.

I restarted the system and called up a Youtube video just to see what would happen, and it played with sound without needing to reinstall anything!
Ed

Reply to Ed Hutchinson

Tom —

thanks for this - fixed my problem.

Reply to Tom

Laura —

Thank you SO MUCH! The headache is gone.

Reply to Laura

headache —

But seriously im a complete idiot on ubuntu and stuff and i cant find any synaptic on this computer… i cant delete any files i could find including flashplugin.so or sumthing. also cant install the synaptic.

Reply to headache

simon —

Thanks a lot, this erased a Pain i* t** a** that I`ve been having for soooo long wwith my Ubuntu. I love ubunt but this really drained my love a bit, but it was now soo simple….

Reply to simon

ubuntuflash —

great check out i resolve new ubuntu flash flicker prob

Reply to ubuntuflash

Pedro —

It worked for me too! Thanks for the tip.

Reply to Pedro

ok —

Thank you Will. Been looking to resolve this problem when I upgraded to LL. Tried several other ideas none worked and a few caused other problems. As you said I had both 9 and 10 installed. removed 9. Restarted Firefox. Sound with videos. Yay! Thanks again. :)

Reply to ok

No audio in Flash on Ubuntu 10.04

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