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Tag: pipelight (Page 1 of 2)

Pipelight update

July 29, 2016 / / 11 Comments

pipelight-logoI decided to do an update of my “pipelight” package. I had not looked at it for a long time, basically because I do not use it anymore, but after I upgraded my “wine” package someone asked if I could please write up what could be done for wine-pipelight.

As you know, pipelight is a Linux plugin wrapper for Mozilla-compatible browsers which lets you install and use Windows plugins on Linux. This configuration enables you to access online services which would otherwise be unavailable to you on a Linux platform. The pipelight plugin wrapper uses wine to load the Windows software.
The pipelight developers created a series of patches for Wine which made all of this possible. They called this patch set “wine-compholio” which was later renamed to “wine-staging” and eventually was absorbed into the Wine developer community. Nowadays, wine-staging is the testing ground for Wine – stuff which has not yet been approved for inclusion into the main repository but looks promising.
Together with my “pipelight” package I offered a “wine-pipelight” package which contained a version of wine that had been patched with the “wine-staging” patch set and installed into a non-standard location so that only the pipelight plugin would find it.

Since then, my regular “wine” package has also been enhanced with the wine-staging patch set. In addition, I am applying the d3d9 (wine-nine) patch set which uses the gallium-nine state tracker in Mesa for added performance on some graphics cards.

Therefore a separate “wine-pipelight” package is no longer required. My regular wine package is sufficient.

I have reconfigured and rebuilt my pipelight packages (for Slackware 14.1 and newer) so that you can remove the old “wine-pipelight” package. Pipelight uses my regular wine package now. The “wine-pipelight” packages (for Slackware 14.1 and newer) have been removed from my repository.

That simplifies things a lot. I used to have a warning that you should not try to run programs simultaneously that use the wine and wine-pipelight programs – the two would interfere. That warning has become obsolete now that there is only one version of wine left on your system.

If you want to use someone else’s wine package instead of mine, you need to ensure that that wine package applies the wine-staging patches or else your pipelight will not work!

Good to know: you can always get the latest Windows plugin releases (an important feature in case of security fixes) without having to wait for me creating a new package. Just run the command “pipelight-plugin –update” as root. After doing that, the next time your browser loads the pipelight plugin, it will automatically download the newest version of your installed Windows plugin(s).
This feature depends on the pipelight developers updating their “install-dependency” script, so if they forget or are too busy, the above command will not give you the latest Windows plugin releases unfortunately…

 

In my original post about pipelight, you will find full installation and configuration instructions, as well as a troubleshooting section. That blog article is also referred to on the pipelight.net support page. Let me remind you that you need to go multilib if you want to use pipelight on 64-bit Slackware.

Packages can be downloaded from these locations:

Have fun! Eric

 

Monthly Flash Player security updates

January 13, 2015 / / 3 Comments

Pepper Flash for Chromium:

chromium_iconChrome was updated because of a Flash security bulletin from Adobe. The new Slackware package for chromium-pepperflash-plugin has version 16.0.0.257.

 

 

Linux Flash for Mozilla-compatibles:

adobe_flash_8s600x600_2 The “legacy” Linux NPAPI plugin for Mozilla-compatible browsers was updated as well – never leaving version 11. My Slackware package for the flashplayer-plugin went “up” to 11.2.202.429 (micro version update).

 

 

Windows Flash for Mozilla-compatibles provided by Pipelight:

pipelight-logoFor my pipelight package, you can easily update the Windows plugins it installed for you earlier (including the Windows Flash player if you use that) by running (as root) the script:

# pipelight-plugin --update

A new package is not required therefore.

Eric

(Wine-) Pipelight update – careful upgrade

December 23, 2014 / / 7 Comments

pipelight-logo After a long time of silence (but ongoing development as shown in their git repository) the Pipelight developers released a new stable pipelight a few weeks ago. I created Slackware packages for this (Slackware 14.0 and newer) but before you upgrade, please read the words of caution at the end of this post, they will save you some frustration.

The new pipelight is a bugfix release: after Google deprecated NPAPI plugins, the focus for Pipelight team has been better support for Firefox. As stated in the release notes, most of the remaining bugs should now be in Wine, not in pipelight. That has also lead to more focus on what used to be called “wine-compholio”. the team’s patch-set for wine that implements the Windows browser plugin support. The name “wine-compholio” has changed to “Wine Staging” which is now even used as the default wine version on Fedora. I am not willing to go that far, so there is still a separate wine-pipelight package that you have to install on Slackware in order to use my pipelight package.

Remember that you can always get the latest Windows plugin releases (an important feature in case of security fixes) without having to wait for me creating a new package. Just run the command “pipelight-plugin –update” as root. After doing that, the next time your browser loads the pipelight plugin, it will automatically download the newest version of your installed Windows plugin(s).

I know that some people are grumbling whenever someone develops a program for Linux that enables the use of Windows software (emulated or otherwise), such as wine or pipelight. The fact is, if you want to watch Netflix on your Slackware computer, and you do not want to install Google Chrome, then Mozilla Firefox combined with pipelight and MS SilverLight is still the only way to achieve this. Chromium does not support NPAPI either and the Widevine CDM can not be made to work as it does in Chrome. Also, software using Silverlight is still widespread in school systems. I will welcome the future implementation of EME in Firefox that will allow separate download and use of Content Decryption Modules (CDM) like Widevine which is used by Chrome for streaming Netflix. Then, Google Chrome nor pipelight/silverlight will be necessary any longer. Accepting that DRM is here to stay and can still be made compatible to Open Source and Free Choice is the start and I am glad that Mozilla thought hard and long about the apparent clash and came up with a sane solution.

Anyway, enough of the ranting.

In my original post about pipelight, you will find full installation and configuration instructions, as well as a troubleshooting section. That blog article is also referred to on the pipelight.net support page. Let me remind you that you need to go multilib if you want to use pipelight on 64-bit Slackware.

Package location (uploads expected later today, I thought it was more important to have this blog page up first):

A note of caution when upgrading to my pipelight-0.2.8 package:

This only applies to 64-bit Slackware!!!

I have made one important change to the file locations of the 64-bit pipelight package. The file “libpipelight.so” is a 64-bit shared library, but the previous 64-bit pipelight packages would install this file into “/usr/lib/pipelight/libpipelight.so”. That is not the correct location for 64-bit libraries, so the new package installs this file as “/usr/lib64/pipelight/libpipelight.so”.

This has the side effect that your pipelight stops working. The error message(if you start firefox in a terminal) will be something like “pluginInitOkay(): incompatible version of pluginloader.exe“. Don’t worry, you can remedy this.

These are the steps you have to take in order to fix this (it’s a one-time action):

As root user: remove all old copies of the library created by earlier pipelight versions:

# rm -r /usr/lib/pipelight

As your own user account, list all plugins you have currently enabled (copy that command’s output because you have to re-enable them in a later step):

$ pipelight-plugin --list-enabled

That command basically checks your “~/.mozilla/plugins/” directory for symlinks named “libpipelight*.so”. If you look inside that directory, you will notice that all these symlinks are pointing to the no longer existing location “/usr/lib/pipelight”. So, you first remove those symlinks:

$ pipelight-plugin --disable-all

And re-create them properly (still as your own user account):

$ pipelight-plugin --enable <your previously enabled plugin(s)>

That’s all. Have fun! Eric

 

Adobe Flash update time – december

December 9, 2014 / / 8 Comments

A quick notice about the latest Flash updates released by Adobe today:

I updated my chromium-pepperflash-plugin package for Slackware 14.1 and -current. I’ll start working on an updated Chromium package for Slackware as soon as the new sources come online. You can read more on Google’s Chrome blog. The new version of the PepperFlash plugin (binaries extracted from the Google Chrome 39.0.2171.95 RPMs) is 16.0.0.235.

An update for the “legacy” Flash player plugin for Linux, aka the NPAPI plugin for Mozilla-compatible browsers is available as well. The updated flashplayer-plugin package bears the version 11.2.202.425.

For my pipelight package, you can easily update the Windows plugins it installed for you earlier (including the Windows Flash player if you use that) by running (as root) the script:

# pipelight-plugin --update

A new package is not required therefore.

Adobe’s monthly security bulletin has all the information about this Flash update.

Eric

New pipelight release, accompanied by wine-pipelight. And what about chromium?

June 5, 2014 / / 5 Comments

You are of course subscribed to my repository’s RSS feed and/or you are using slackpkg+ . Then you certainly noticed the update of Chromium to the new major version 35 two weeks ago. I really should have written about this update earlier, because Chromium 35 brings some unfortunate side effects to the table.

Chromium

chromium_iconChrome and Chromium were updated to version 35.0.1916.114, with “fixes for 23 security issues“. The most important fixes (for high-risk vulnerabilities) are:

  • [$3000][356653] High CVE-2014-1743: Use-after-free in styles. Credit to cloudfuzzer.
  • [$3000][359454] High CVE-2014-1744: Integer overflow in audio. Credit to Aaron Staple.
  • [$1000][346192] High CVE-2014-1745: Use-after-free in SVG. Credit to Atte Kettunen of OUSPG.
  • [$1000][364065] Medium CVE-2014-1746: Out-of-bounds read in media filters. Credit to Holger Fuhrmannek.
  • [$1000][330663] Medium CVE-2014-1747: UXSS with local MHTML file. Credit to packagesu.
  • [$500][331168] Medium CVE-2014-1748: UI spoofing with scrollbar. Credit to Jordan Milne.

I also updated the accompanying package for chromium-pepperflash-plugin (extracted from the official Chrome binaries) to 13.0.0.214. This is a security update.

The version 35 of Chromium has a major side effect that many people are not going to like. The support for browser plugins that use Mozilla’s NPAPI protocol to communicate with the browser has been removed and only Google’s own PPAPI protocol is supported as of now (MS Windows users still have a bit of time before the same happens to their Chrome browser – removal of NPAPI support in Windows is scheduled for the end of 2014). This step was of course announced long time ago and many reminders were posted, but if you need Java support in your browser, or want to watch Netflix using pipelight, then you are out of luck. PPAPI versions for these browser plugins do not exist and in the case of pipelight, are very hard to create.

You’re forced to switch (back) to Firefox in these cases.

Pipelight

pipelight-logo Speaking of Pipelight… there was a new pipelight release a couple of days back, and this is accompanied by a new web site: pipelight.net. These guys really like writing their own CMS-es! The source code to the new CMS is available on github by the way. With the new release of pipelight you’ll get more supported browser plugins, security updates for all relevant plugins such as Flash, and many bug fixes. Also, for people with an AMD graphics card the good news is that hardware acceleration is now supported and enabled by default.Also note that I have enabled support for WoW64 (meaning that apart from the regular 32-bit applications, 64-bit Windows plugins are also supported on Slackware 64-bit)

Luckily this all still works on Slackware-current’s kernel – there were fears that 32-bit Wine applications would stop working on the 3.14.4 and newer kernels.

Remember that you can always get the latest Windows plugin releases (an important feature in case of security fixes) without having to wait for me creating a new package. Just run the command “pipelight-plugin –update” as root. After doing that, the next time your browser loads the pipelight plugin, it will automatically download the newest version of your installed Windows plugin(s).

Together with this pipelight release, the pipelight developers released their latest “wine-compholio patches“, a set of patches for the official Wine sources which are needed for proper Windows plugin support in your Linux browser. Naturally I created new wine-pipelight packages for you, based on Wine 1.7.19.

In my original post about pipelight, you will find full installation and configuration instructions, as well as a troubleshooting section. That blog article is also referred to on the pipelight.net support page.

Package location:

 

Have fun! Eric

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