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raj
Asked: 2020-10-01 11:12:27 +0800 CST

What possibilities to use Flash will be there after EOL?

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As probably everybody knows, Flash is EOL after end of 2020. However, there are still many websites on the Net that contain Flash content. Most of them are Flash games, which are highly unlikely to be rewritten by their authors to use another technology (and I would still like to play them :)), however, just recently I accidentally stumbled upon a website that had menu in Flash (!) and was completely un-navigable without Flash turned on.

What will be the best approach to keep the possibility to use Flash? Personally I plan to make a copy of my current Firefox installation with Flash plugin before end of 2020 and keep it aside for accessing sites with Flash content, but what to do if I ever need to reinstall the OS (or replace the computer)? How to keep the actual binary that is downloaded by flashplugin-installer package for future use as it certainly won't be available for download anymore after end of 2020?

Also Adobe's Flash EOL page contains some wording that worries me a bit. It says "Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date". Could it mean that Flash Player software is "time-bombed" in some way and will just stop function after December 31st, 2020?

Does anybody of you have any strategy or thoughts regarding approach to Flash EOL that you can share?

flash firefox adobe

1 Answers

  1. So, using the link provided by @wraith3690-001 I am able to answer my own question :)

    According to this guide (I recommend to download it for reference before Flash EOL), the Flash player itself will block content after EOL date. To work around this, one needs to create a file /etc/adobe/mms.cfg. Right now, if you put a line EnableAllowList=1 into that file, you can basically get a simulation of what will happen after EOL date (as according to the guide, this setting will be enforced automatically after EOL). What will happen is that instead of Flash content, the Flash player displays an icon which, when clicked, leads to the Adobe Flash EOL information page.

    To allow Flash content to run, you need to put in the /etc/adobe/mms.cfg file lines specifying which sites Flash player is allowed to access, in the following form:

    AllowListUrlPattern=http[s]://site.domain/

    If you want to specify both https and http for a site, you may put two lines for https and http, or you can use the following shortcut:

    AllowListUrlPattern=*://site.domain/

    You may also specify something like AllowListUrlPattern=file:/// for local files, although it looks superfluous because Firefox does not support playing local Flash files via Flash plugin anymore, and standalone Flash player (I also suggest to download it from Adobe while it's available) seems to always run file specified by command line or menu option regardless of EnableAllowList setting.

    You can also put EOLUninstallDisable=1 into /etc/adobe/mms.cfg file to suppress prompts to uninstall Flash that are mentioned on the Flash EOL page.

    To keep Flash software for later reinstallation there are two options:

    a) the flashplugin-installer package which probably most of us use now:

    The package can be downloaded from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/multiverse/f/flashplugin-nonfree/ (the current version as of this writing is flashplugin-installer_32.0.0.414ubuntu0.20.04.1_amd64.deb). However, this package contains actually (according to it's name) only the script that installs the plugin. The actual Flash software is downloaded during installation of the package from http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/. As of this writing, the current filename downloaded is adobe-flashplugin_20200811.1.orig.tar.gz.

    If the latter won't be available for download, the installation of the package will likely fail. I suppose, however, that if you put the (previously saved) .tar.gz file into a correct directory before installing the package, the installation may succeed. However, I don't know what that correct directory is - I'm still investigating...

    b) the alternative is to use adobe-flashplugin DEB package, which may be downloaded from the same location http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/ (current filename is adobe-flashplugin_20200811.1-0ubuntu0.20.04.1_amd64.deb). Looking at it's contents, it installs the plugin without downloading any external files.

    For running local .swf files, I also strongly suggest to download the standalone Flash player from Adobe as said above.

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