configure Firefox activity to share system plug-ins

[skierpage]

I let Software update install Firefox-6.activity on 8.2-760. Firefox works fine but the Gnash and Totem plug-ins for swf and ogg mime types aren't available even though they're pre-installed and work in Browse.

These plugins are installed in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins , so the Firefox activity should look there as well.

Workaround
The FF activity has its own ~olpc/Activities/Firefox-6.activity/plugins directory, containing just the null plugin. So one workaround is to rename this and link to the xulrunner plug-ns directory:

cd ~olpc/Activities/Firefox-6.activity
mv -i plugins plugins_FF_moved
ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins .

I confirmed this works by viewing .swfs in HTML pages, but this workaround hides the Firefox activity's null plug-in. There's probably a better workaround by symlinking some other directory that Firefox checks; however, I don't know what other directories it looks in.

[cscott]

I believe you can set some environment variable to get firefox to check the system plugin dir, but I haven't spent the time to figure out which one exactly, yet. Help wanted!

[skierpage]

From reading http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/guide/get-started.html I tried

export MOZ_PLUGINS_DIR=/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins >> /home/olpc/.xsession

and that seemed to work like a champ: about:plugins listed Gnash and various Totem sets; http://www.skierpage.com/olpc/flash_tests/ works (and a URL ending in .swf plays, unlike bug # 8497 in Browse); a .ogg URL played a sound. I got the approach of modifying .xsession from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Attaching_Sugar_Logs_to_Tickets ).

Seems release-note worthy; I added it to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Firefox

FYI, the third directory that Firefox seems to scan for plugins is ~olpc/.sugar/default/org.laptop.FirefoxActivity/data/.mozilla/plugins, I guess that's the isolation equivalent of ~/.mozilla/plugins. BTW I had to cd ~/Activities/Firefox-6.activity before I could run strace -f -o ff.log sugar-launch Firefox .