Plugins for Fedora Core 1

Flash

Flash is probably the most common plugin used on the web these days. The plugin itself is just a shared library that you can install in your home directory (~/.mozilla/plugins/) or you can install it in the system-wide directory so all users of your machine can use it.

If you are installing the plugin into a system-wide directory you should install it into /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins. Recent Mozilla releases include the version number in the directory name, but the directory above should be looked in by all Mozilla versions for plugins. In theory a generic plugin should be able to work with many different versions of Mozilla, so it's important that you make sure that it's in that directory instead of the version-specific one.

If you're looking for an RPM of the player, please visit the following site:

You should be able to download and install the RPM relatively easily.

There are some additional things that you should know about the flash player:

You must make sure that the compat-libstdc++ package is installed otherwise the flash plugin will not load properly. This appears to be the most common problem that people experience when using Flash on Fedora Core 1.

Some people experience crashes with the Flash plugin. If you load a page that includes a flash animation and Mozilla suddenly vanishes, odds are it's the Flash plugin. Since we don't have the source, we can't do anything about it. Sorry.

Some people have reported hangs in Mozilla that are actually hangs in the plugin. The most common problem is that the plugin is blocked trying to play a sound and will wait until it becomes available. If you happen to have xmms paused, or some sound app in use, try shutting it down. If the browser suddenly unfreezes, it was blocked trying to play a sound.

Java

Java isn't used on the web quite as widely as Flash is, but when it is it's usually used as a pretty intensive application platform. Quite a few problems have been reported in the past with the JVMs from the various vendors, sometimes due to bugs in the JVM or compatibility problems between the various implementations that are out there.

Once you download and install the JVM on your machine you need to create a symlink from the Java installation directory into Mozilla's plugin directory or your personal directory (see the information about system wide and local directories above.)

Finding and choosing the right version of the plugin as shipped with the JVM can be the most challenging part of installing a JVM plugin. In this example I'm using the Java 1.4.2_03 from Sun's Java Site. It installs the Java runtime into /usr/java/j2re1.4.2_03. In that directory is a directory called plugin. This directory contains the plugin that you need to teach Mozilla about.

There are a couple of different options included. These include:

Filename	Description
`i386/ns4/libjavaplugin.so`	This is the plugin for Netscape 4.x. You don't want this
`i386/ns610/libjavaplugin_oji.so`	This is the plugin for Netscape 6.1 (which is the same as an older, but still usable Mozilla version). However, this is still not the version you want since it's compiled with the wrong compiler (see below.)
`i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so`	This is the version that you want to use with the Mozilla that was shipped with Fedora Core 1. The Mozilla that was shipped with Fedora Core 1 was built using gcc 3.x. In between gcc 3.x and 2.9x, the name mangling and ABI changed meaning that a plugin that was built using that old compiler will not work with the Mozilla version we have shipped.

Once you have made the correct choice for your JVM, you should create a symbolic link from the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory to the path to your Java installation. This can be accomplished like so:

[root@natalie root]# ln -s /usr/java/j2re1.4.2_03/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ [root@natalie root]# ls -l /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 67 Feb 3 16:52 libjavaplugin_oji.so -> /usr/java/j2re1.4.2_03/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so [root@natalie root]#

Once that's in place you should be able to reload your plugins by typing about:plugins in your url bar and Mozilla will re-scan your plugins directories.

Some things to consider when using the Java plugin include:

Sometimes the JVM will block on the sound card just like the flash plugin. In fact, sometimes the JVM will block on the sound card that's being held by the flash plugin. When that happens it's best to just give up and go home or complain to the various vendors about the problem.

If you've installed the wrong compiler version of the plugin it usually doesn't cause crashes, it just doesn't show up in the plugins list. Either that or else your link is pointing to the right place.

There are some strange focus problems with Java applets in the browser. If you need to give keyboard focus to the JVM you have to move the mouse over the applet window. Similarly, if you want to give keyboard focus back to the browser you need to move the mouse out of the applet area. This is due to the interaction between the out-of-process Xt-based JVM and Mozilla which is based on gtk2.

If you're using a Mozilla Extension that changes the user agent of the browser, some versions of the java plugin will exit on startup. This is because it reads the user agent on startup and if it doesn't recognize it exits ungracefully, taking the browser with it.