Re: EOL adobe-flash-plugin11

[Chuck Silvers <chuq%chuq.com@localhost>]

On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 12:54:58AM +0900, Izumi Tsutsui wrote:
> Adobe Flashplayer 11.x seems EOL as previously announced and
> we no longer can download the latest 11.2.202.644 binary.
> 
> Adobe still releases Flashplayer 24.x for Linux,
> but it fails on NetBSD, at least on NetBSD/i386 7.1_RC1.
> (npviewer.bin in nspluginwrapper dumps core immediately)
> 
> On the other hand, FreeBSD ports seems to support flashplayer 24
> with nspluginwrapper:
>  https://www.freshports.org/www/linux-c6-flashplugin24/
> 
> It looks something wrong in NetBSD's compat_linux, but
> I don't know how to debug Linux binary on NetBSD with compat_linux.
> (NetBSD gdb doesn't recognize Linux binary, and
>  Linux gdb doesn't recognize NetBSD's core)
> 
> 
> I have two questions:
> 
> 1) Is there any good way to debug Linux binary using compat_linux on NetBSD?

I think the short answer is "no".  :-(

I'm trying to remember what all I did when I was working on
updating the linux emulation to support flashplayer 11.
I recall that there was no one thing that was the best way
to figure out what was going on, I used a variety of techniques.
enabling TRAP_SIGDEBUG in amd64/trap.c was helpful.
I think I used the kernel debugger to examine user process
memory too... maybe by setting a breakpoint on coredump()?  not sure.

I think I did use netbsd's gdb at times, and it was sometimes
helpful even though it didn't recognize the linux executable format.
I spent a little time trying to make linux gdb work
but gave up before I got it working.

alas, I'm not remembering a lot of details,
I think I blocked out the memory because it was so painful.
also, probably most of what I'm remembering is from making
the ltp test suite work rather than flashplayer itself.

if you send me a pkg tarball of flashplayer 24,
I'll try to fix the emulation.


> 2) How should we treat current pkgsrc/multimedia/adobe-flash-plugin11? 

if the distfile is gone, is there any point in keeping it?

-Chuck


> Thanks,
> 
> P.S. any comments like "don't use flash" will be ignored ;-p
> ---
> Izumi Tsutsui