Flash 10 on FreeBSD works better than on linux

davidgurvich · #1 February 3rd, 2010, 06:09

I've installed the linux flash 10 plugin on an older thinkpad X30. Strangely, flash works better in compatibility mode under FreeBSD than running natively on Linux.

The X30 uses integrated intel i830 graphics and matching sound. All of the components should be well supported on both Linux and FreeBSD. On Linux the graphics used to work well but recent changes to Xorg have caused serious problems. The problems are bad enough that I've given up using Linux on the X30 and installed FreeBSD.

Has anyone else noticed flash10 working better in compatibility mode than under Linux and with what hardware and distributions? I suspect that ALSA/Pulseaudio plus xorg are the main culprits in Linux.

winstonw · #2 February 7th, 2010, 22:10

Flash works better than most 64bit linuxes and OpenSolaris -- www.hulu.com recently made a big boo-boo and 64bit OSes running 64bit flash do not receive streams at all.

Flash works impressively in the linux compat layer. I am running linux32 flash on freebsd amd64 btw

davidgurvich · #3 February 8th, 2010, 08:10

There's clearly some issue with flash on linux with intel graphics. I haven't liked the responsiveness of FreeBSD on this laptop and have now installed Arch Linux.

Arch is much more responsive but flash still cause problems. The clearest indication is changing to/from fullscreen. Many times the browser seems to have locked up but is simply slow in changing under Linux. On FreeBSD that particular latency issue doesn't occur.

Graaf_van_Vlaanderen · #4 February 8th, 2010, 13:17

For me flash works great in OpenSolaris. I can't say the same about the Linux Flashplayer. I'm just wondering, would it be technically possible to use the Solaris Flashplayer in BSD without any 'emulation' layer in between?

davidgurvich · #5 February 9th, 2010, 15:21

I think it would be technically feasible and may be relatively trivial to implement, but why? There doesn't seem to be any sign that adobe is supporting opensolaris with any updates while there are new versions of the player for Linux.

The linux emulation layer works for flashplugin10. I don't think anyone has noticed that working worse than on linux and, in fact, this thread is concerning the strange fact that it works better on freebsd.

**DutchDaemon** · #6 February 9th, 2010, 15:31

(except for the hanging npviewer.bin instances which seem to be a recurring phenomenon; easily killed, but still)

winstonw · #7 February 9th, 2010, 21:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by DutchDaemon

(except for the hanging npviewer.bin instances which seem to be a recurring phenomenon; easily killed, but still)

Speaking of npviewer.bin, it seems to crash regularly for me (Firefox becomes unresponsive and doesn't refresh its windows until it realizes what happened, and there is a npviewer.core in my $HOME.

It seems to restart readily though (on visiting a new page OR pag refresh.)

**lme@** · #8 February 9th, 2010, 21:58

Having a keyboard shortcut for $ killall npviewer.bin is very useful.

vermaden · #9 February 9th, 2010, 22:05

@lme

I use that if I need to start/stop firefox with flash (openbox menu config):

Code:

% grep -B 1 -A 2 firefox ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml

  <item label="firefox">
    <action name="Execute">
      <command>firefox3</command>
    </action>
  </item>
   
  <item label="firefox: kill">
    <action name="Execute">
      <command>killall -9 npviewer.bin firefox-bin</command>
    </action>
  </item>

**lme@** · #10 February 10th, 2010, 10:15

But normally it is sufficient to kill npviewer.bin alone. No need to kill firefox-bin also.

vermaden · #11 February 10th, 2010, 10:18

@lme

Sometimes whtn I close firefox by [x] on window manager, it hangs and I need to kill it anyway, so that solves all firefox related problem.

davidgurvich · #12 February 10th, 2010, 16:28

I haven't used freebsd to watch enough flash video to get one of these, just enough to see that playback is smoother than on linux. I've reinstalled freebsd and will look for these core dumps.

Perhaps an automatic kill script that looks for npviewer.bin taking over 90% of resources might work. Start firefox with a wrapper that also starts the kill script.

**DutchDaemon** · #13 February 10th, 2010, 16:35

The 90% usage trigger is a no-go:

Code:

15386 user      1  44    0   146M 25300K select  1   0:56  0.10% npviewer.bin

This one will happily sit there for hours.

davidgurvich · #14 February 10th, 2010, 17:22

I'm looking now and have 4 running that should not be. They seem to get bigger over time. Guess that would run you out of memory eventually. Perhaps a memory size trigger would work better? Kill the npviewer.bin process when it get's over a certain size?

**DutchDaemon** · #15 February 10th, 2010, 18:28

It seems that playing Flash will start 4-7 npviewer.bin processes. When the video is done (and you navigate away from the page it was played from), there appears to be one npviewer.bin left that won't die voluntarily. When you don't kill that one and play another Flash video, there will still be only one npviewer.bin hanging around.

I'd say that something like this should work:

Code:

#!/bin/sh

while true

do

flashcount=$(/bin/pgrep npviewer.bin | /usr/bin/wc -l)

if [ $flashcount = 1 ]
then
/usr/bin/killall npviewer.bin
fi

/bin/sleep 10

done

When I ran this in the background and went to YouTube for a Flash video, it played fine. As soon as the video was done and I closed the page ... it killed the lone npviewer.bin immediately:

Run:

Code:

YouTube video playing
$ sh -x bla
+ true
+ /bin/pgrep npviewer.bin
+ /usr/bin/wc -l
+ flashcount='       7'
+ [ 7 = 1 ]
+ /bin/sleep 10
+ true
+ /bin/pgrep npviewer.bin
+ /usr/bin/wc -l
+ flashcount='       7'
+ [ 7 = 1 ]
+ /bin/sleep 10
+ true
+ /bin/pgrep npviewer.bin
+ /usr/bin/wc -l
+ flashcount='       7'
+ [ 7 = 1 ]
+ /bin/sleep 10
+ true
+ /bin/pgrep npviewer.bin
+ /usr/bin/wc -l
+ flashcount='       7'
+ [ 7 = 1 ]
+ /bin/sleep 10
+ true
+ /bin/pgrep npviewer.bin
+ /usr/bin/wc -l
+ flashcount='       7'
+ [ 7 = 1 ]
+ /bin/sleep 10
+ true
+ /bin/pgrep npviewer.bin
+ /usr/bin/wc -l
+ flashcount='       7'
+ [ 7 = 1 ]
+ /bin/sleep 10
+ true
+ /bin/pgrep npviewer.bin
+ /usr/bin/wc -l
+ flashcount='       7'
+ [ 7 = 1 ]
+ /bin/sleep 10
YouTube video stopped and page closed
+ true
+ /bin/pgrep npviewer.bin
+ /usr/bin/wc -l
+ flashcount='       1'
+ [ 1 = 1 ]
+ /usr/bin/killall npviewer.bin
+ /bin/sleep 10
+ true
+ /bin/pgrep npviewer.bin
+ /usr/bin/wc -l
+ flashcount='       0'
+ [ 0 = 1 ]
+ /bin/sleep 10
^C

So that appears to work. Running it in a while loop is a bit much, so putting the stuff below in a script, putting it in cron and running it every 5 minutes or so should be enough. Too bad there's no 'pgrep -c' though, pity about the extra call to 'wc -l' .. oh well.

Code:

#!/bin/sh

flashcount=$(/bin/pgrep npviewer.bin | /usr/bin/wc -l)

if [ $flashcount = 1 ]
then
/usr/bin/killall npviewer.bin
fi

**DutchDaemon** · #16 February 10th, 2010, 18:42

Update: the above works quite nicely for me. So long as you play Flash or are on Flash-enabled pages, the script will leave npviewer.bin alone. But when you navigate away from anything containing Flash, npviewer.bin is gone within 5 minutes.

mdg583 · #17 February 10th, 2010, 19:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graaf_van_Vlaanderen

For me flash works great in OpenSolaris. I can't say the same about the Linux Flashplayer. I'm just wondering, would it be technically possible to use the Solaris Flashplayer in BSD without any 'emulation' layer in between?

How about with an emulation layer? Does freebsd also have a solaris alternative to the linuxulator which could run the solaris binary? Just curious.

Graaf_van_Vlaanderen · #18 February 11th, 2010, 15:43

I just checked the load activity while watching something on Youtube. The first one is OpenSolaris (built131) on my desktop and the second one is on a server running FreeBSD 8.0 AMD64, hence a lot of ssh activity. In case of FreeBSD you see a lot of
'npviewers' active.

OpenSolaris & Flash:

Code:

  
PID USERNAME  SIZE   RSS STATE  PRI NICE      TIME  CPU PROCESS/NLWP       
  1038 depaepe   289M  107M sleep   55    0   0:01:01 9.0% firefox-bin/21
   647 depaepe    88M   55M sleep   59    0   0:01:13 1.5% Xorg/3
  1050 depaepe   135M   48M sleep   49    0   0:00:23 1.1% rhythmbox/7
   832 depaepe   174M   55M sleep   59    0   0:00:15 0.3% compiz-bin/1
   820 depaepe   111M   38M cpu2    59    0   0:00:12 0.1% gnome-terminal/2
   879 depaepe    90M   18M sleep   59    0   0:00:01 0.0% gnome-netstatus/2
  1093 depaepe  9716K 3100K cpu0    59    0   0:00:00 0.0% prstat/1
   895 root     1660K 1084K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% gnome-netstatus/1
     5 root        0K    0K sleep   99  -20   0:00:01 0.0% zpool-rpool/43
  1060 depaepe    94M   21M sleep   49    0   0:00:00 0.0% gnome-volume-co/2
   881 depaepe    79M   17M sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% clock-applet/1
   876 depaepe    93M   20M sleep   49    0   0:00:00 0.0% mixer_applet2/2
   809 depaepe    28M   17M sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% gnome-settings-/2
   818 depaepe   100M   29M sleep   59    0   0:00:01 0.0% gnome-panel/1
   819 depaepe   114M   42M sleep   49    0   0:00:01 0.0% nautilus/1
   511 root       28M   13M sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% fmd/19
   365 root     4336K 3208K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% console-kit-dae/2
   633 root     2916K 2056K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% hald-addon-stor/3
   363 root     3740K 2120K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% hald-runner/1
   551 smmsp    6568K 1788K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% sendmail/1
   790 depaepe  3592K 1100K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% ssh-agent/1
   362 root     6740K 5340K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% hald/3
   557 root     3460K 2020K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% hald-addon-acpi/1
   453 root       10M 3452K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% inetd/3
   357 root     3340K 2104K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% dbus-daemon/1
   583 root       12M 6056K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% intrd/1
   434 root     2264K 1348K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% sac/1
   683 gdm      3552K 1376K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% dbus-launch/1
   750 depaepe  3596K 2328K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% dbus-daemon/1
   930 depaepe    15M 5740K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% ssh/1
   465 root     1664K  888K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% utmpd/1
   128 root       11M 2868K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% syseventd/17
   309 root     7400K 1368K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% cron/1
   219 root       11M 4232K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% nscd/30
   210 root     9028K 2656K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% picld/4
   646 root       11M 4080K sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% gdm-simple-slav/1
 NPROC USERNAME  SWAP   RSS MEMORY      TIME  CPU                             
    56 depaepe   545M  539M    13%   0:04:48  12%
    40 root       71M   81M   2.0%   0:00:07 0.0%
     1 smmsp    1768K 5112K   0.1%   0:00:00 0.0%
     1 gdm       288K 3552K   0.1%   0:00:00 0.0%
     1 noaccess  420K 2600K   0.1%   0:00:00 0.0%
     5 daemon   4988K   15M   0.4%   0:00:00 0.0%







Total: 104 processes, 333 lwps, load averages: 0.56, 0.46, 0.25

FreeBSD & Linux Flash

Code:

last pid: 79401;  load averages:  0.79,  0.86,  0.61       up 0+00:22:35  15:31:21
51 processes:  2 running, 49 sleeping
CPU 0: 18.8% user,  0.0% nice,  6.0% system,  1.9% interrupt, 73.3% idle
CPU 1: 25.6% user,  0.0% nice,  6.4% system,  0.4% interrupt, 67.7% idle
CPU 2: 11.7% user,  0.0% nice,  1.5% system, 13.9% interrupt, 72.9% idle
CPU 3: 15.4% user,  0.0% nice,  3.4% system,  3.4% interrupt, 77.8% idle
Mem: 135M Active, 89M Inact, 500M Wired, 9296K Cache, 583M Buf, 7127M Free
Swap: 4096M Total, 4096M Free

  PID    UID    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
  974   1001      1 104    0 36912K  5352K CPU1    1   1:39 40.97% sshd
79388   1001      1  53    0   395M 49184K select  0   0:42  9.47% npviewer.bin
79396   1001      1  48    0   395M 49184K futex   0   0:21  7.18% npviewer.bin
79391   1001      1  47    0   395M 49184K futex   1   0:13  4.69% npviewer.bin
79393   1001      1  47    0   395M 49184K futex   2   0:12  4.30% npviewer.bin
79392   1001      1  47    0   395M 49184K futex   3   0:12  2.29% npviewer.bin
11233   1001     11  44    0   182M 84876K ucond   1   0:32  0.00% firefox-bin
79395   1001      1  44    0   395M 49184K futex   1   0:03  0.00% npviewer.bin
  846      0      1  44    0  5864K  1272K select  2   0:01  0.00% powerd
  983   1001      1  44    0 36912K  5156K select  1   0:01  0.00% sshd
  989   1001      1  44    0  8304K  2632K CPU2    2   0:01  0.00% top
  971      0      1  50    0 36912K  5096K sbwait  2   0:00  0.00% sshd
  962      0      1  49    0 36912K  5068K sbwait  2   0:00  0.00% sshd
  965   1001      1  44    0 36912K  5152K select  0   0:00  0.00% sshd
  980      0      1  47    0 36912K  5096K sbwait  3   0:00  0.00% sshd
  975   1001      1  44    0 10276K  2808K ttyin   0   0:00  0.00% csh
  966   1001      1  44    0 10276K  2716K pause   2   0:00  0.00% csh
  984   1001      1  44    0 10276K  2808K ttyin   2   0:00  0.00% csh
11779   1001      1  44    0 21644K  4504K select  0   0:00  0.00% gconfd-2
  611      0      1  44    0  5864K  1508K select  2   0:00  0.00% syslogd
  878      0      1  44    0 24980K  4232K select  0   0:00  0.00% sshd
  887      0      1  44    0  6920K  1592K nanslp  0   0:00  0.00% cron
  477      0      1  44    0  2180K   652K select  2   0:00  0.00% devd
11214   1001      1  67    0  7232K  1852K wait    0   0:00  0.00% sh
11775   1001      1  50    0  7064K  2044K select  1   0:00  0.00% dbus-daemon
  937      0      1  76    0  5860K  1284K ttyin   1   0:00  0.00% getty
11229   1001      1  76    0  7232K  1888K wait    1   0:00  0.00% sh
  936      0      1  76    0  5860K  1284K ttyin   1   0:00  0.00% getty
  938      0      1  76    0  5860K  1284K ttyin   2   0:00  0.00% getty
  940      0      1  76    0  5860K  1284K ttyin   2   0:00  0.00% getty
  941      0      1  76    0  5860K  1284K ttyin   0   0:00  0.00% getty
  939      0      1  76    0  5860K  1284K ttyin   1   0:00  0.00% getty
  943      0      1  76    0  5860K  1284K ttyin   0   0:00  0.00% getty
  942      0      1  76    0  5860K  1284K ttyin   3   0:00  0.00% getty
  911      0      1  76    0  7976K  1640K select  1   0:00  0.00% inetd
11763   1001      1  54    0 15612K  2396K select  3   0:00  0.00% dbus-launch
  149      0      1  76    0  2736K  1044K pause   2   0:00  0.00% adjkerntz
79399   1001      1  64    0   395M 49184K futex   2   0:00  0.00% npviewer.bin
79397   1001      1  64    0   395M 49184K futex   2   0:00  0.00% npviewer.bin
79398   1001      1  64    0   395M 49184K futex   2   0:00  0.00% npviewer.bin
79394   1001      1  71    0   395M 49184K futex   2   0:00  0.00% npviewer.bin

davidgurvich · #19 February 12th, 2010, 15:00

That looks like using flash on freebsd over opensolaris requires about 5 times as much in the way of resources.

I've actually tried to watch a lengthy flash video on freebsd and everything came to a standstill after about 20 minutes until 'killall npviewer.bin'. Looks like flash on freebsd is not feasible on older systems with limited resources.

It's not good with linux but I can generally get through an entire show without bringing the system to a standstill. Perhaps the initial smoothness is because freebsd allocates more and more resources to npviewer.bin until the system crashes?

dalfish · #20 March 10th, 2010, 16:24

Do you have npviewer. bin problem in opera. I m currently using linux opera on freebsd. i am quite satisfied with the Browser .NO hanging problems so far. i too had hanging problems with firefox. Regarding the main topic about linux flash. It works better in freebsd than on linux distros. I personally use ubuntu along with Freebsd. i can feel the difference. linux flash in freebsd is faster than ubuntu. Still i have no audio while playing youtube videos in freebsd.That s the only thing that is to be done. I feel Freebsd forums will definitely help me to solve it.

Oko · #21 March 10th, 2010, 18:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graaf_van_Vlaanderen

For me flash works great in OpenSolaris. I can't say the same about the Linux Flashplayer. I'm just wondering, would it be technically possible to use the Solaris Flashplayer in BSD without any 'emulation' layer in between?

NO!!! Are you kidding?

Oko · #22 March 10th, 2010, 18:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdg583

How about with an emulation layer? Does freebsd also have a solaris alternative to the linuxulator which could run the solaris binary? Just curious.

Used to have http://people.freebsd.org/~newton/freebsd-svr4/
but it is long dead. The same is true for OpenBSD. The only BSD which actively support Solaris emulation is NetBSD.

kpedersen · #23 March 10th, 2010, 20:32

If you don't like watching flash videos in fullscreen, and you like bugs. This may be prefect for you :p

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=11386

If a virtual desktop is used (change in winecfg) then fullscreen mode can be made to work.

If you manage to get this working with firefox 3 (rather than 2) please share

atomicplayboy · #24 March 11th, 2010, 02:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by dalfish

Do you have npviewer. bin problem in opera. I m currently using linux opera on freebsd. i am quite satisfied with the Browser .NO hanging problems so far. i too had hanging problems with firefox. Regarding the main topic about linux flash. It works better in freebsd than on linux distros. I personally use ubuntu along with Freebsd. i can feel the difference. linux flash in freebsd is faster than ubuntu. Still i have no audio while playing youtube videos in freebsd.That s the only thing that is to be done. I feel Freebsd forums will definitely help me to solve it.

I don't know about linux-opera, but I've been using native Opera with the www/opera-linuxplugins port to run flash10 without issues.

The no audio problem has been addressed a few times on the forum and mailing lists, though I can't remember the procedure. I seem to recall it has something to do with unlinked libraries. Search the forum and you should be able to find a fix.

calande · #25 March 28th, 2010, 15:24

Flash is such a nightmare, even more on FreeBSD

I have tried to stay away from it, using alternatives such as Gnash and swdec, but I either get a grey placeholder, or nothing at all when the Flash videos/animations are recent

I also tried Aragon's tutorial but ndiswrapper won't install (and maybe that's not that bad, reading the above comments!).
Of course, it's always better to run a native browser, especially that browser manufacturors take the time and effort to provide a FreeBSD version of their browsers, while they don't have to, after all. So it hurts me to have to run Opera Linux on FreeBSD, it would hurt even more to have to run Opera WiNE, just to have the latest version of Flash working flawlessly, as my wife likes to spend time on YouTube, to play Flash games and to send Flash christmas cards to her friends…
Some hardcore advocates might say "Don't use Flash, install FlashBlock, etc…" but it's not a solution in my case. How can I convince my wife FreeBSD is better because she can't have fun sending and reading Flash christmas/birthday cards anymore?

Code:

kill -9 wife

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Can FreeBSD reads contents of usb flash when it works in Virtual PC?	anti	Peripheral Hardware	6	February 6th, 2010 03:41
Sockets tutorial, datagram sockets example works under Linux but not FreeBSD	caesius	Userland Programming & Scripting	5	December 21st, 2009 11:37
[Solved] [PC-BSD] Errors while installing linux opera and Linux flash 7	dalfish	Installation and Maintenance of FreeBSD Ports or Packages	7	November 27th, 2009 19:11
linux flash 9 no audio	ericturgeon	Multimedia	2	January 15th, 2009 00:53
64bit Linux Flash	safekali	Multimedia	2	November 18th, 2008 20:13

The Following User Says Thank You to lme@ For This Useful Post:
ZappyDaemon (March 12th, 2010)

The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to DutchDaemon For This Useful Post:
AxelBSD (March 23rd, 2010), bjs (March 19th, 2010), copypaiste (February 12th, 2010)

The Following User Says Thank You to calande For This Useful Post:
ligregni (June 17th, 2010)