I'm on my freshly installed Gentoo on my amd athlon 64 system :-)... and I've found a strange behaviour of Firefox. It fails to load "libflashplayer" plugin with this message: LoadPlugin: failed to initialize shared library/opt/netscape/plugins/libflashpl ayer.so [/opt/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory] The file itself looks ok, and I can open it: bash-2.05b$ ls -l /opt/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1617848 Feb 14 17:20 /opt/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so To see why Firefox fails I've done this: $ strace -f firefox 2>&1 | grep libflashplayer [pid 13328] lstat("/usr/lib/nsbrowser/plugins/libflashplayer.so", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=39, ...}) = 0 [pid 13328] readlink("/usr/lib/nsbrowser/plugins/libflashplayer.so", "/opt/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so", 4096) = 39 [pid 13328] lstat("/opt/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1617848, ...}) = 0 [pid 13328] stat("/opt/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1617848, ...}) = 0 [pid 13328] access("/opt/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so", F_OK) = 0 [pid 13328] open("/opt/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so", O_RDONLY) = 21 [pid 13328] open("/opt/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so", O_RDONLY) = 21 [pid 13328] write(2, "LoadPlugin: failed to initialize"..., 189LoadPlugin: failed to initialize shared library /opt/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so [/opt/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory] [pid 13328] stat("/usr/lib/MozillaFirefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1617848, ...}) = 0 Error 21 means EISDIR... how can "libflashplayer.so" be a directory?!? And again, according to "man open": EISDIR pathname refers to a directory and the access requested involved writing (that is, O_WRONLY or O_RDWR is set). But Firefox is trying to open it read-only! This error makes no sense. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16 Portage 2.0.51-r15 (default-linux/amd64/2004.3, gcc-3.4.3, glibc-2.3.4.20041102-r0, 2.6.10-gentoo-r7 x86_64) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.10-gentoo-r7 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+ Python: dev-lang/python-2.3.4-r1 [2.3.4 (#1, Feb 13 2005, 15:49:06)] ccache version 2.3 [enabled] dev-lang/python: 2.3.4-r1 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.59-r6, 2.13 sys-devel/automake: 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.5, 1.4_p6, 1.6.3, 1.9.4 sys-devel/binutils: 2.15.92.0.2-r1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.10-r4 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.8.1-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs autoconfig ccache distlocks sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.inode.at" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="amd64 16bit X a52 aac acpi acpi4linux alsa asm audiofile avi bash-completion bitmap-fonts blender-game bzip2 ccache cdda cdparanoia cdr codecs cscope css cups dpms dv dvd dvdr dvdread emacs emul-linux encode esd fam fame ffmpeg flac font-server freetype ftp gif gimp gimpprint glut gnome gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 imlib java jp2 jpeg lm_sensors lzw lzw-tiff mp3 mpeg mpeg4 mplayer multilib ncurses nls nptl nptlonly opengl pam perl png python readline rtc sdl ssl tcltk tcpd tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts unicode usb userlocales utf8 xml2 xmms xpm xrandr xv zlib" Unset: ASFLAGS, CBUILD, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
There are two firefox ebuilds on amd64: - mozilla-firefox - mozilla-firefox-bin The first "mozilla-firefox" compiles as a 64-bit application and can't load the 32-bit libflashplayer.so (Proprietary, binary only...) If you really want "flash" support, then emerge mozilla-firefox-bin (32-bit app) or e.g. emerge opera (So two browsers co-existing on your system). Currently, if you decide to emerge mozilla-firefox-bin, please have a look at comment 2 in Bug #80720 to get it to run....
ok, firefox-bin works...