OpenBSD Journal

Flash on OpenBSD

Contributed by deanna on from the annoyances dept.

The OpenBSD ports tree currently contains 3 ports specifically geared toward viewing flash content. These are:
  • www/opera-flashplugin - the full-blown official player from Adobe;
  • net/yt - an app that will download youtube videos and convert them to more manageable formats;
  • www/gnash - a standalone flash player and browser plugin.
In this article I will provide information about and recommendations on when to use each.

www/opera-flashplugin

This port, the official answer to flash on OpenBSD as per the FAQ, is the proprietary Linux player from Adobe, which runs in emulation on the i386 platform only. It's useful for those who have i386 hardware and don't mind running non-free software. Those who can use it say that performance is decent enough. This port is recommended for those who just want to see some content, with as little hassle as possible. And unlike any of the other options, this one works with Homestar Runner, which I hear is extremely important to some. ;)

net/yt

yt, a lua script written by Pedro Martelletto, allows downloading and saving of flash video from youtube, and automatic conversion to more useful formats (by default, avi). Movies can then be opened in viewers such as mplayer and xine. This is very handy for non-i386 hardware and for saving movies to disk, and Pedro does a good job of keeping yt in sync with youtube's ever-changing URL schemes.

www/gnash

Gnash is a many-featured flash player and browser plugin; an official FSF project. It works with all flash versions up to, but not including v9. It runs as a standalone player with gtk or kde guis, as well as a plugin for firefox or konqeror. It's been reported to work on several OpenBSD hardware platforms, the source code is fully available, and our port requires no binary emulation.

Gnash is still alpha software, and needs some special care in order to be fully useful on OpenBSD. One of the biggest problems people encounter is the automatic loading of Flash v9 advertisements, which aren't supported and can drain huge amounts of resources if allowed to run.

The best way to deal with this is to install a few firefox extensions to prevent automatic loading of flash content. adblock and noscript work very well for this. The two combined will prevent the hijacking of your attention and system resources by blocking these buggy ads. They're very simple to install and configure, and are very important for making the gnash plugin more of an asset than a liability. I wouldn't recommend using gnash at all without these extensions installed.

Conclusion

It's understandable that many of us are annoyed by the very existence of flash, having endured the "Download flash or go away" messages that have been all over the net for years. In the past, we've been able to get by without it, since most of the content was simply entertainment, and we all have better things to do, right?

This isn't really the case any more, since youtube is becoming culturally important for more serious reasons. Take, for example, the recent incident where the Quebec provincial police planted agents provocateur in the middle of a peaceful protest, and a witness placed footage of the event on youtube for all to see. Or itojun's 5-part video series, ipv6 demystified. Hopefully this article has provided enough information for you to find a way to view these movies on OpenBSD. :)

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By grey (208.80.184.30) on

    " this one works with Homestar Runner, which I hear is extremely important to some. ;)"

    The email the email, it's all about the email. Strong Bad email that is.

    Indeed, lunix flash in emulation has always been the answer (jsyn et al were running this long before the opera port iirc). At any rate a friend who pentests & audits code for Adobe once informed me that the linux stuff is the last to ever get updated or evaluated. So keep that in mind when you think of security ramifications.

    Thankfully, you probably don't have to worry too much about security issues with sb_email, unless you're viewing this one:

    http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail118.html

    (Note, it works even better with pop up blocking disabled).

  2. By Anonymous Coward (128.2.116.53) on

    It should be mentioned that the opera-flashplugin in OpenBSD is the old version 7 of the Linux plugin. The latest version 9 of the Linux plugin is presumably not supported because it uses the ALSA advanced Linux sound architecture
    http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=116907154532729

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (24.22.214.92) on

      > It should be mentioned that the opera-flashplugin in OpenBSD is the old version 7 of the Linux plugin. The latest version 9 of the Linux plugin is presumably not supported because it uses the ALSA advanced Linux sound architecture
      >

      Adobe has a compatibility program so it'd work with OSS, would it be usable on OpenBSD?
      http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Player:Additional_Interface_Support_for_Linux

  3. By Anonymous Coward (65.243.149.146) on

    One other port for dealing with flash is VLC. It can play those pesky .flv files, although you may need to adjust the audio offset. I use this with the VideoDownloader extension in Firefox to get youtube videos.

    I've been using yt for a little while but just recently it started giving me this error:

    $ yt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAO4EVMlpwM
Getting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAO4EVMlpwM ...
/usr/local/bin/lua: /usr/local/bin/yt:42: assertion failed!
stack traceback:
        [C]: in function 'assert'
        /usr/local/bin/yt:42: in main chunk
        [C]: ?
    Line 42 seems to be looking for the video_id and not finding it. Guess they changed their format again?

    Comments

    1. By Deanna Phillips (deanna) on

      > Line 42 seems to be looking for the video_id and not finding it. Guess they changed their format again?

      Right. The port has been updated to deal with this. Try installing yt-7.


      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (65.243.149.146) on

        > > Line 42 seems to be looking for the video_id and not finding it. Guess they changed their format again?
        >
        > Right. The port has been updated to deal with this. Try installing yt-7.

        I see. I guess the package hasn't made it's way out to the mirrors yet.

  4. By Anonymous Coward (78.32.64.213) on

    Where's the evidence that they were "agent provocateurs" besides some loud, obnoxious old man repeatedly accusing them of being so at the top of his voice?

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (78.32.64.213) on

      > Where's the evidence that they were "agent provocateurs" besides some loud, obnoxious old man repeatedly accusing them of being so at the top of his voice?

      Oops, missed the first link.

    2. By Deanna Phillips (deanna) on

      > Where's the evidence that they were "agent provocateurs" besides some loud, obnoxious old man repeatedly accusing them of being so at the top of his voice?

      On cbc, in the Toronto Star, etc.

      Comments

      1. By Brynet (Brynet) on

        > Where's the evidence that they were "agent provocateurs" besides some loud, obnoxious old man repeatedly accusing them of being so at the top of his voice?
        >
        > On cbc, in the
        > Toronto Star, etc.

        They apparently confirmed the 3 men were "agent provocateurs"..

        http://www.thestar.com/News/article/248608

  5. By Anonymous Coward (68.100.130.1) on

    I don't get why this yt script is needed. I use http://keepvid.com/, and mplayer (1.0rc1 compiled from source) plays .flv just fine.

    And this way if YouTube changes their format, it's the KeepVid guys that have to worry about it, not me.

    I've been doing this for almost a year now, BTW. I had no idea YouTube videos gave my fellow OpenBSD users trouble.

  6. By Anonymous Coward (84.18.240.200) on

    I got youtube working inside firefox by playing it through mplayer, iirc.
    More details here:
    http://blog.mikeasoft.com/2006/11/24/playing-youtube-videos-without-flash/

  7. By Brynet (Brynet) on

    I still haven't heard a convincing reason to use flash.. It's garbage.

    Comments

    1. By Hayden (67.41.218.43) on

      > I still haven't heard a convincing reason to use flash.. It's garbage.

      How about this? At work I get paid to manage a large Cisco wireless system, with over 400 Cisco APs. The management software from Cisco is web based, and I can access it from OpenBSD+Firefox just fine. But part of the application uses Flash to graph usage and other things. If I want to get my work done, I have to use Flash.

      So you would quit rather than use Flash, be my guest....

      I have tried OpenBSD+Opera+Flash and it works fairly well, but I have had the app crash before on random occasions. So I end up bouncing between Windows and OpenBSD. I hope this effort produces a viable Flash viewer that would eliminate the Windows.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (172.143.16.19) on

        > > I still haven't heard a convincing reason to use flash.. It's garbage.
        >
        > How about this? At work I get paid to manage a large Cisco wireless >system, with over 400 Cisco APs. The management software from Cisco is >web based, and I can access it from OpenBSD+Firefox just fine. But part >of the application uses Flash to graph usage and other things. If I want >to get my work done, I have to use Flash.

        Cisco network academy's online curriculum and exams are entirely flash based. This means I need flash for College :(

    2. By Anonymous Coward (128.171.90.200) on

      > I still haven't heard a convincing reason to use flash.. It's garbage.

      it was inevitable that someone would say that on this thread eventually.

      I think Deanna's point is fairly valid, it wasn't so important before, it is becoming more important now. Admittedly it would be better if it didn't exist and there was something better in it's place, in fact I encourage it. I hate Flash, but unfortunatly it is an evil we have to live with.

      At least we don't HAVE to have closed source solutions.

  8. By Pizza is your friend (68.124.164.168) on

    Wheee! Itojun on video. 8)

    Thanks for linking both videos. I wasn't aware of the IPv6 videos by Itojun and it's always welcome to have video evidence of police tactics.

  9. By Andrés Delfino (201.212.70.53) adelfino@gmail.com on

    Swfdec is another free Flash player, unfortunately it isn't ported.
    http://swfdec.freedesktop.org/wiki/

    It can play YouTube videos.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (121.116.246.187) on

      > Swfdec is another free Flash player, unfortunately it isn't ported.

      It supports only ALSA, doesn't it?

      Comments

      1. By Forth (88.177.57.12) on http://ophane.net

        > > Swfdec is another free Flash player, unfortunately it isn't ported.
        >
        > It supports only ALSA, doesn't it?

        No, it does support OSS to :

        --with-audio=[auto/alsa/oss/none] audio backend to use

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (121.116.246.187) on

          > --with-audio=[auto/alsa/oss/none] audio backend to use

          Thanks! I built it with a few lines of hack.
          But Swfdec is much slower than Gnash at last.

          For those who try to build swfdec-0.5.2:
          #define NAN (0.0/0.0)
          #define isfinite(a) finite(a)
          #define INFINITY HUGE_VAL
          #include <soundcard.h> (not sys/soundcard.h... and you need -lossaudio)

          and replace fpclassify with something like if-else.

  10. By Anonymous Coward (70.173.172.228) on

    there is also an unofficial nspluginwrapper port which lets you run linux plugins with native firefox (on i386 only, since its limited by linux emulation).

    port:
    http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=117823330919828&w=2
    nspluginwrapper page:
    http://gwenole.beauchesne.info/projects/nspluginwrapper

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (84.44.139.72) on

      Youtube isn't working with this on 4.2-current... lots of other flash works though.

      Comments

      1. By Deanna Phillips (deanna) on

        > Youtube isn't working with this on 4.2-current... lots of other flash works though.

        What do you mean by "isn't working"? It should work with at least one of these methods, and, more likely than not, all three. As long as you're not on a VAX, that is. :)





        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (84.44.136.86) on

          > What do you mean by "isn't working"?
          I mean the nspluginwrapper with linux_flash_9, the youtube flash begins to load, the controls are shown but when the video would normally start, the whole flash is greyed out.

          Comments

          1. By Anonymous Coward (70.173.172.228) on

            > > What do you mean by "isn't working"?
            > I mean the nspluginwrapper with linux_flash_9, the youtube flash begins to load, the controls are shown but when the video would normally start, the whole flash is greyed out.

            You can combine opera-flashplugin with the nspluginwrapper port, it works a lot better but obviously doesn't support as much.

          2. By Anonymous Coward (87.230.108.20) on

            > > What do you mean by "isn't working"?
            > I mean the nspluginwrapper with linux_flash_9, the youtube flash begins
            > to load, the controls are shown but when the video would normally start,
            > the whole flash is greyed out.
            Works just fine with 4.1-stable tho, after backporting...


    2. By Anonymous Coward (157.164.136.71) on

      > there is also an unofficial nspluginwrapper port which lets you run linux plugins with native firefox (on i386 only, since its limited by linux emulation).
      >
      > port:
      > http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=117823330919828&w=2
      > nspluginwrapper page:
      > http://gwenole.beauchesne.info/projects/nspluginwrapper

      After correcting the dependency on rpm2cpio which caused a conflict with rpm (Can't install rpm2cpio-1.2 because of conflicts (rpm-3.0.6p4)
      /usr/sbin/pkg_add: rpm2cpio-1.2:Fatal error)

      It does not compile under 4.2-current
      ===> Configuring for nspluginwrapper-0.9.91.4
      GLIB 2.0 environment not usable
      *** Error code 1

  11. By sepp0 (sepp0) sepp0@openbsderos.org on http://www.openbsderos.org

    Nice, here is the Spanish Tutorial =P

    http://www.openbsderos.org/wiki/index.php?title=Flash

  12. By Anonymous Coward (65.34.99.75) on

    I don't care for flash, and hardly even use firefox (the only site I need FF for is online banking, everything else I use either lynx or links). Anyway, sometimes I want to watch one of those goofy youtube videos that invariably pops up in a forum somewhere, and I've had good results with a python script named youtube-dl that you can find on freshmeat.net. Otherwise, I don't have any use whatsoever for flash. When I end up in a place that has a .swf as the first index pape I immediately hit the left arrow to get the hell out of there, and never return there again. :-)

  13. By Anonymous Coward (128.118.75.199) on

    Yeah, unfortunately, flash's becoming important for web browsing. Adobe Flex 2, an alternate framework to AJAX, is using flash and seems being popular for Adobe customers. Adobe has released free Flex SDK and is now open source.

  14. By Anonymous Coward (128.2.116.53) on

    gnash 0.8.1 was released in August, but only 0.8.0 is currently available in ports. Will a gnash 0.8.1 binary package be available for the OpenBSD 4.2 release?

    Comments

    1. By Deanna Phillips (deanna) on

      > gnash 0.8.1 was released in August, but only 0.8.0 is currently available in ports. Will a gnash 0.8.1 binary package be available for the OpenBSD 4.2 release?

      0.8.1 was released broken on OpenBSD. There are some serious regressions, and no new features worth having, anyway.

      For more info see #20880 on savannah, and the OpenBSD sections of the gnashdev wiki -

      http://wiki.gnashdev.org/index.php/Gnash

  15. By spirit (spirit1939) spirit1939@gmail.com on http://spirit45.icpcn.com

    I have port opear


    #make instal

    too slow~ 8-[

    In windowsxp i using opera it can play flash on some websites

    And !some cannot..
    What's is the reason.. i think it is version of falsh plugin...

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