Firefox has, for me 9and on FreeBSD) always exhibited some amount
of quirky behavior... occasionally freezing for several second or
more, for no apparently good reason, during which time, clicking
on *anything* within any of the open firefox windows simply produces
no response whatsoever.

Since I last updated my ports a couple of weeks ago, the problem
has gotten DRAMATICALLY worse.  Now Firefox is choking up frequently,
and for perhaps 10-20 second each time, on virutally every web site
that I visit.

This is slowly driving me insane.

I suspect that this may perhaps have something to do with my attempt
to update the flash plugin, and related things like the associated
wrapper.

Can anyone (please) help to to unsnarl this mess?

To begin with, here are some things that seem to be present on my
system at the present time, and I do believe there is something
that just isn't right here:


% cd /usr/local/lib
% find . -name libflashplayer.so | xargs ls -l
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel        60 Feb 19  2013 
./browser_plugins/libflashplayer.so -> 
/usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  17422820 May 16 08:50 
./browser_plugins/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel        49 May 16 08:50 
./browser_plugins/symlinks/linux-firefox/libflashplayer.so -> 
/usr/local/lib/browser_plugins//libflashplayer.so
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel        49 May 16 08:50 
./browser_plugins/symlinks/linux-opera-devel/libflashplayer.so -> 
/usr/local/lib/browser_plugins//libflashplayer.so
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel        49 May 16 08:50 
./browser_plugins/symlinks/linux-opera/libflashplayer.so -> 
/usr/local/lib/browser_plugins//libflashplayer.so
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel        49 May 16 08:50 
./browser_plugins/symlinks/linux-seamonkey/libflashplayer.so -> 
/usr/local/lib/browser_plugins//libflashplayer.so


To begin with, my system does not seem to have any such
directory as /usr/local/lib/npapi/ even though this handbook
page make clear reference to such a thing, as does one of the
symlinks mentioned above:

 http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/desktop-browsers.html

So what is the story, please?  Should I indeed have a directory called
/usr/local/lib/npapi/ on my system?  If so, how did I manage to install
all of this stuff *without* such a directory having been created, you
know, as part of the install process?  Do the rest of you have such a
directory on YOUR systems?  If so, what does it contain, exactly?

In section 7.2.1.2. (Firefox and Adobe® Flash® Plugin) of
the above Handbook page, Step #3 says:

# ln -s /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so \
  /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins/

This clearly indicates to me that the file libflashplayer.so is really
*supposed* to be located in the /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/
directory, and that the libflashplayer.so that is contained within the
/usr/local/lib/browser_plugins/ directory should really only be a symlink
to that.  Is that correct?  If so, I will make it so, but I am still
utterly baffled by how my system came to be like it is, with this file
actually having been installed in what appears to be the Wrong Place.

If anybody can explain to me how that happened, I sure would appreciate
it.

Anyway, in the xterm window where I've started Firefrox I have noticed
that during those times when it appears to be choked up, I am getting
errors like these:

(process:33557): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
        Using the fallback 'C' locale.
*** NSPlugin Wrapper *** ERROR: failed to initialize plugin-side RPC client 
connection
NOTE: child process received `Goodbye', closing down


I Think that the one about the unsupported locale has always been
generated, ad infinitum, by Firefox, and that this is just another
bug that nobody actually wants to fix.  But the error relating to
NSPlugin Wrapper seems to be new, and I guess this is being caused by
the fact that my libflashplayer.so is in the Wrong Place.


Humm... Well, I created the following (previously non-existant) directories:

        /usr/local/lib/npapi/
        /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/

and I moved my libflashplayer.so file to the latter directory.  Then,
I found that I needed to re-run this command from the handbook:

   nspluginwrapper -v -a -i

in order to get *something* to show up in my ~/.mozilla/plugins/
directory.  (Now that contains a file npwrapper.libflashplayer.so.)

so after all of the above, I ran firefox.  It *did* come up, but in
the xterm window where it was started, I got these errors immediately:

(process:34140): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion `sys_page_size 
== 0' failed
LoadPlugin: failed to initialize shared library 
/usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so 
[/usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so: unsupported file 
layout]

My guess is that the "GLib-CRITICAL" error is, contrary, to its ominous
sound, actually unimportant, however the LoadPlugin: error looks very very
bad indeed.

Apparently, I'm not the first person to have received that cryptic error
message:

   https://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?&t=13294

So, what the bleep does it mean??  "unsupported file layout" ??

And perhaps more to the point, I ask again... Is there *anybody* who
is taking rsponsibility for the care and feeding of the FreeBSD Firefox
port these days?

If nobody is going to take responsibility for it, then perhaps it should
be removed from the ports tree.

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