Sunday, January 31, 2016

opera and flash, other issues

Links: Opera flash ::

After a software update with Flash implications, pages were not displayed in the Opera browser. If I entered, say, the URL "www.google.com", normal loading statements flashed as the page loaded, but the webpage appeared as a blank white page once it completed loading. Internal to Opera, no error notices were displayed; the pages apparently loaded correctly as far as Opera's internal checks were concerned. However, to the user, nothing but white was displayed for the webpage. I found no information or similar complaints in Internet forums, etc. What was going on?

the cursor

On the blank page, all the pieces were apparently there, just not visible to me. So, I could move the cursor around the blank white page and I would see various link URL's appear at the bottom of the blank page, just as they do when one hovers over visible links on a normally displayed page. Nevertheless, the page would otherwise appear blank. I wanted to look at my Opera settings, but entering, say, opera://settings, loaded a blank page.

early progress - local html file

While this was going on, I happened to click on a local html file. For this local file, ie, loaded off the HDD, Opera opened and displayed html normally. Also, any links clicked from this local page loaded normally. Also, any bookmarks could then be used normally, from that page. But if I opened a new tab during that session, all would be blank again, and even back-buttoning to the locally stored file would turn it blank. Could the blank page problem be some sort of security setting?

progress - private mode

Thinking "security", I let a page load blank. I selected a bookmark in the bookmark bar and R clicked, then selected the option "Open in New Private Window". The page loaded and displayed normally. Perhaps the blank pages were part of a misconfigured security policy.

progress - flash

I continued to browse normally in "Private Window", looking for clues. Another abnormality: Adobe Flash seemed to need updating. Some YouTube videos would show, some would not. Could this also be affecting the regular appearance of pages?
The paths for libpepflashplayer.so should be available to Opera in its .json-coded resource file:
/usr/lib/opera/resources/pepper_flash_config.json
"Cat" the file to verify it's in there, eg, one of its lines should typically be:
"/usr/lib/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so",
That's a very common place for it to have been installed, but you can verify with "find". Some others believe that the player should also be in the Mozilla plugins folder, /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins, whether or not Firefox is installed. Create another one for Opera.
# mkdir /usr/lib/opera/plugins

flash working, but still must be private

  1. clear all cache and cookies
  2. download latest libflashplayer.so
  3. $ chmod 775 libflashplayer.so
  4. # cp /home/foo/downloads/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/opera/plugins/libflashplayer.so
  5. # cp /home/foo/downloads/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
Hopefully, more will be revealed, but the problem has not been solved.

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