Flash Player

[austinite]

I am trying to get a Knoppix or any live distro to boot with Macromedia's Flash Player installed. I have read that there are some copyright issues but mabe a script could make this happen. I limp around the command line in linux. What I want is to be able to boot easily to let my kids play internet flash games without jepodizing the underlying Windows install.

Could I install flash and other plugins to a USB thumbdrive? If so how? Firefox won't let me install Flash directly I have to download the install file, decompress it, and install it at the command line. Easy for some but hard for me every time.

If anyone has a solution lots of detail or places to look would be appreciated.

Does the DVD version offer any hope of booting with more plugins installed?


Thanks in advance

[arkaine23]

A guy from Austin makes a remaster called Overclockix, which has always included a flash player.

[Jason W]

You can install Flash Player to your hard drive, like I do, and activate it with a script. I am sure it would also work with other storage also, if you specify the mount points. Your mount points will be different than mine, of course. Off subject, I also have a RealPlayer icon and Windows Media Codecs install with the same simple script I use to easily activate Flash Player. I install the two Flash Player files on my hard drive at /mnt/sda1/flash. I install RealPlayer8 with the installation program at /mnt/sda1/RealPlayer8 instead of the default. I unzip Win32 codecs at /mnt/sda1/essential-20050412 from the mplayer site. I then write a script in a text editor named Multimedia. It goes:

#!/bin/bash

mkdir /UNIONFS/usr/lib/win32
cp /mnt/sda1/essential-20050412/* /UNIONFS/usr/lib/win32
ln -s /mnt/sda1/RealPlayer8/realplay /home/root/Desktop/RealPlayer8
cp /mnt/sda1/flash/flashplayer.xpt /UNIONFS/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins
cp /mnt/sda1/flash/libflashplayer.so /UNIONFS/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins

Then make sure the script is executable (right click on Properties, check "executable" under permissions). And make sure it is available to all users, too. Each time you reboot, just click on the script wherever you have it and you are ready to use RealPlayer, Flash for Firefox, and Xine with windows codecs. Of course, I run as root by booting as Knoppix 2, but once you have installed the stuff to your hard drive, it should work running as user. The /home/root would be replaced, of course, by /home/knoppix or whatever your home directory desktop is.

[pau1knopp]

I would use a minor variation of the script above where I use symbolic links for the flash software instead of actually copying it to the unionfs. saves memory / diskspace in ram disk.

mkdir /UNIONFS/usr/lib/win32
ln -s /mnt/sda1/essential-20050412/* /UNIONFS/usr/lib/win32
ln -s /mnt/sda1/RealPlayer8/realplay /home/root/Desktop/RealPlayer8
mkdir /home/knoppix/.mozilla/plugins
ln -s /mnt/sda1/flash/flashplayer.xpt /UNIONFS/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/
ln -s /mnt/sda1/flash/libflashplayer.so /UNIONFS/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/

i use a klik .cmg to run realplayer gold on the rare occasions that i need it, but the same logic would apply if you wanted to keep an installed copy in a directory on a thumb (or other) drive.

[foxdog27]

I've had a bit of a frustrating time trying to get realplayer to work (without installing it every time I re-boot my machine). So I tried the above tip (the symbolic links version), as user not root. I replaced the "/home/root"s with "/home/knoppix"s, and tried it out. However, I got permission denied errors for creating the directories and the links. Any tips as to what I am doing wrong?

Cheers,

Rob.

[Jason W]

To do the little script as user, and assuming the script already resides on the storage media, it is a little different. You will need write permissions to your system outside of your home directory, and a superuser shell will do. Open a terminal, and at the user prompt ($), enter

$su

then

#cd /mnt/sda1

then

#./Multimedia

That should do the trick.

[foxdog27]

Thanks for the su tip -- have done that and the "Multimedia" script worked. It didn't do what I wanted however! My situation is that I have RealPlayer10GOLD.bin on my usb thumbdrive /mnt/sda1, and every time I reboot my machine if I want realplayer to work in Mozilla I have to (re-) install the realplayer via:

# cd /mnt/sda1
# su
# ./RealPlayer10GOLD.bin

What I was/am after is a method of having realplayer available without having to re-install it all the time, and running this Multimedia script looked like a good solution. What I have just tried (after trying lots of stuff and it not working) was to go to the log file created when I install realplayer, for me this file is "/mnt/sda1/RealPlayer/install.log". Scrolling down this file I came to a line "post-install setup commands:". Every line below this point I copied into my Multimedia script file. (There were about 200!) I have just tried running this script, and so far give it a partial success -- there were no complaints from running the script itself. When I tried in Mozilla to view realplayer content, it whinged the first time (something about not having realplay, hxplay or something on path), but I clicked on the content a second time and it worked fine! (Computers eh? - I'll never understand them!) So, maybe this will do the trick -- but I would be interested to hear of any more elegant solutions, especially one that doesn't require a script so long!

Cheers,

Rob.

[Jason W]

It should work, if you first boot with cheatcode "Knoppix 2" to boot as root so you can install RealPlayer 10 to directory /mnt/sda1/RealPlayer10. Sudo su when needed should do the same, though, but is less convenient. Place a script in on the same drive like this for RP10 -

#!/bin/bash

ln -s /mnt/sda1/RealPlayer10/realplay /UNIONFS/usr/bin/realplay
ln -s /mnt/sda1/RealPlayer10/realplay /ramdisk/home/knoppix/Desktop/RealPlayer10
ln -s /mnt/sda1/RealPlayer10/mozilla/nphelix.so /UNIONFS/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/nphelix.so
ln -s /mnt/sda1/RealPlayer10/mozilla/nphelix.xpt /UNIONFS/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/components/nphelix.xpt

When you reboot as user, do at a terminal:

$sudo su
#mount /mnt/sda1
#cd /mnt/sda1
#./ScriptName

and the executable script will activate the final gui portion of the RealPlayer10 install as well as symlink the Firefox plugins for the embedded audio/video stuff, which has worked well for me with Firefox.