Grey box in place of flash playback (with temp fix)

[Gödel]

When I play a flash video in x86_64 with the latest 64bit flashplayer I will often get a grey rectangle after a few secs rather than playback. This is 100% reproducible if I restart firefox after playing a flash video and try to replay it.

If I start firefox from a terminal I can see "invoke_NPP_Destroy: assertion failed:" type errors. Logging off and logging back on fixes, so I investigated which process needs to be restarted.

Turns out to be gvfsd, so if you get a grey box do this in a terminal (as a normal user NOT as root)

killall gvfsd
/usr/libexec/gvfsd &

then refresh the page and all should be fine. (In fact the problem does not recur for an entire session until I login again)

If others could report whether this fixes the same problem I can submit a bug report.

EDIT: I am using libflashplayer-10.0.32.18.linux-x86_64.so from here

[Evil_Bert]

I'm using the same architecture and same flash version and am having a similar problem with often getting a grey box where the flash video should be.

Starting firefox in a terminal gives the following errors when this occurs:

*** NSPlugin Wrapper *** ERROR: NPP_Write() wait for reply: Connection closed
*** NSPlugin Wrapper *** WARNING:(../src/npw-wrapper.c:2239):invoke_NPP_DestroyStream: assertion failed: (rpc_method_invoke_possible(plugin->connection))
*** NSPlugin Wrapper *** ERROR: NPObject 0x3e67b80 is no longer valid!
*** NSPlugin Wrapper *** ERROR: NPObject 0x3e67b80 is no longer valid!
*** NSPlugin Wrapper *** ERROR: NPObject 0x3e67b80 is no longer valid!
*** NSPlugin Wrapper *** ERROR: NPObject 0x3e67b80 is no longer valid!

Also, /var/log/messages has something like:

Nov  7 02:16:56 localhost kernel: npviewer.bin[2717] trap invalid opcode ip:7f310dd40812 sp:7fff5761aac0 error:0
Nov  7 02:17:03 localhost kernel: npviewer.bin[2732] trap invalid opcode ip:7fa98edc1812 sp:7fff7e03bbd0 error:0
Nov  7 02:17:13 localhost kernel: npviewer.bin[2746] trap invalid opcode ip:7f666920c812 sp:7fff848f8aa0 error:0
Nov  7 02:17:21 localhost kernel: npviewer.bin[2760] trap invalid opcode ip:7fafc3ea08c2 sp:7fff67feb9f0 error:0
Nov  7 02:17:30 localhost kernel: npviewer.bin[2774] trap invalid opcode ip:7f1936a488c2 sp:7fff3e96c340 error:0

I tried your fix, but it had no effect. Actually, logging out/in or even rebooting doesn't fix it for me, either. Some flash videos play OK, but some just won't - it's not a case of some working then ceasing to work, they just don't work, full stop.

I'm still looking into it, but if you have any other tips, that'd be handy.

[Evil_Bert]

Looks like it may be the LAHF thing (reading through Leigh's thread). I'll try that fix and see how it goes.

[Gödel]

The suggested "fix" doesn't work for me any more either, I'm not sure if it stopped working after an update or I just had a peculiar system that day! (I probably over-tinkered and did something else which I can't now repeat)

Still, logging out and back in does fix it for me, I don't recall a flash site that didn't play even after doing that.

This only affects my x86_64 installs, I don't see it in 32bit.

Don't have much idea what else to suggest other than wait for the upcoming release of flash 10.1 which is supposed to be super-dooper and cross-platform friendly (but still won't do full-screen acceleration on intel graphics)

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/f.../features.html
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/05/f...a-screen-webo/
http://gizmodo.com/5374115/flash-101...ayable-hd-vids

[leigh123linux]

Originally Posted by Evil_Bert

Looks like it may be the LAHF thing (reading through Leigh's thread). I'll try that fix and see how it goes.

If you use my rpm (it has the fix included) , run ldconfig after installing.

[Gödel]

LAHF? I must have missed that, can you link the thread so I can try it too.

[Evil_Bert]

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=205642

Starts around Page 14 or 15.

[leigh123linux]

Originally Posted by Gödel

LAHF? I must have missed that, can you link the thread so I can try it too.

Post #233 and on

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpo...&postcount=233



http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showth...205642&page=24

[Evil_Bert]

Is it actually necessary to uninstall nspluginwrapper when applying the LAHF fix?

(I guess I'll find out shortly, anyway, but I was wondering if this is a known fact already).

[leigh123linux]

Originally Posted by Evil_Bert

Is it actually necessary to uninstall nspluginwrapper when applying the LAHF fix?

(I guess I'll find out shortly, anyway, but I was wondering if this is a known fact already).

I'm not sure.

[Gödel]

Ah ok, I'm not sure I can tinker with removing nspluginwrapper atm, I have weird stuff like 32bit & 64bit veetle plugins (yeah, pointless I know, but I'm trying to debug that in x86_64 too).

Also, lahf does show in 'cat /proc/cpuinfo' flags, so I assume I woudn't be affected by that instruction. I don't have the invalid opcode messages the Evil Bert sees, which does look more like the lahf issue.

Still, if anyone can report no problems with grey boxes in flash using leigh's rpm please let me know, I'll definitely give it a go if it fixes that.

[Evil_Bert]

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer:

The LAHF fix works. It is indeed necessary to remove nspluginwrapper, otherwise, the fix does nothing (and nspluginwrapper crashes just the same as without the fix).

With nspluginwrapper removed, and without the LAHF fix, offending flash content crashes the whole browser.

With nspluginwrapper removed and with the LAHF fix, all flash content that's failed on me recently is working again.

Interestingly, I found that a mozplugger issue was also fixed by removing nspluginwrapper - the config and binary files were "undefined" previously, and that was on my list of things to fix, but removing nspluginwrapper seems to have fixed that up.

I checked the SELinux booleans and it seems they would not have had any effect on the above issues. I'm testing on a default F10 install, and all SELinux booleans were as loose as they were going to get with respect to nspluginwrapper, firefox and so on.

Edit: BTW, I didn't use the rpm that Leigh made - I extracted the .so files and manually placed them in /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins.

[Evil_Bert]

Before I forget ...

Thanks, Leigh and James, for your help. It made for a relatively quick fix to a complex problem.

[Gödel]

Ok, then removing nspluginwrapper looks like the way to go. (I'll pass on the veetle plugin - can't get it to work in x86_64 anyway). I wonder why it is installed, maybe it came in with some dependencies.

Looks good so far, If I don't report further issues then you can assume the grey box problem is also solved for me.

[Gödel]

er, oops, removing nspluginwrapper wasn't so successful, many flash sites wouldn't load. Ok, back to square one for me