May 2, 2010 will

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 “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.

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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.
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mr
same thing happened to me. I didn't file a bug either. The multi billion $ Adobe can do that I think.
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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!
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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.
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disperso
Thanks, after one day reading forums and trying out every solution suggested, finally someone stumbled on yours and… it works! Grazie grazie grazie!
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Johnny
Thanks! Removing all instances of libflashplayer.so and reinstalling flash 10 worked like a charm.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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jans
Hello.
Thank you for tip. I tried reinstalled flashplugin. However, none worked. Its worked for me.

jans
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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
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Budgieboy
Thanks for all the help. Just needed to purge flash plugin and re-install; now everything working.
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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!
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Dave Harris
Thank you-thank you. Nice clear instructions of where to find things and what to do.All working sweet.
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Christian
Thanks, works great
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Ross
Heno's solution worked for me. Thanks!
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Paolo
good
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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!
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Peter Bengtsson
Yay! That actually worked!
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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.
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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.
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JKO
THANK YOU! Tried everything else and your solution worked perfectly. Genius!
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Jérôme
Thanks a lot for that: I had first tried

 sudo aptitude purge adobe-flashplugin

then

 sudo aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree

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

All sorted now.
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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
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Chris
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.
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andres
Many thanks! I tried several “solutions” but the only one that worked was yours.
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yuanjin
Thank you so much, this solution works fine for me. I am finally able to play flash video with sound. ^^
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Joe Sauer
rm ~/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so did it for me!
This was too easy! :o)
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Blimundus
Yep, this solved the sound problem for me as well!
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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
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Tom
thanks for this - fixed my problem.
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Laura
Thank you SO MUCH! The headache is gone.
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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.
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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….
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ubuntuflash
great check out i resolve new ubuntu flash flicker prob
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Pedro
It worked for me too! Thanks for the tip.
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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. :)