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Troubleshooting Plugger

Q: These questions and answers are OLD! Where can I get some more recent advice?
A: Check out the forum
Q: When viewing some things I have a window shows up but after I place it it disappears into netscape.
A: This is normal, unfortunately your window-manager doesn't do automatic window placement. Either upgrade/reconfigure your window manager, or delete all lines which has 'swallow' in them in your pluggerrc.
Q: A window appears very briefly outside of netscape and then disappears into netscape when viewing certain types.
A: This is also normal, this is the only way I know of that Plugger can inline applications without using $window.
Q: It doesn't work with Netscape 6!
A: I'm not surprised, Netscape 6 doesn't work on my computer, so I have not tried Plugger with Netscape 6.
Q: It doesn't work with Mozilla!
A: Mozilla handles Netscape plugins, but the handling is not always identical to netscape and sometimes varies from version to version. Please try and see if it works with Netscape before reporting a bug to me. (If it works with Netscape but not mozilla, it is probably a bug in Mozilla.)
Q: I've added/removed some mime types from my pluggerrc, but Mozilla doesn't care!
A: Mozilla has a cache which tells it which plugin handles what mime-type. Unfortunately, Mozilla doesn't recognize that some plugins may be configurable, so there is no way to clear the cache. The solution is to do the following steps:
  1. Edit your pluggerrc
  2. Exit Mozilla (if running)
  3. Uninstall plugger (or move plugger.so to some other dir)
  4. Start Mozilla
  5. Stop Mozilla
  6. Re-install/move back plugger, make sure you don't overwrite your edited pluggerrc.
  7. Done, next time you start Mozilla, it will recognize the changes.
If uninstalling plugger is not possible, you can achive the same thing by deleting ~/.mozilla/appreg, but this will also deletes a bunch of other Mozilla settings.
Q: I've added/removed some mime types from my pluggerrc, but Netscape 6/7 doesn't care!
A: Netscape 6/7 is based on Mozilla, see answer above.
Q: Streaming doesn't work with Opera!
A: I know. I am fairly certain this is a bug in Opera. The Opera team has been notified.
Q: It works fine if I use file:// but it doesn't play the sound/animation when I download it from a WWW server.
A: Check your disk cache setting, many Plugger features requires that the file can be downloaded into the disk cache. It is enough to set your disk cache to 1 Kb, netscape will then use the disk cache only while you are displaying a page which requires the file to be saved to disk.
Q: Sound 'skips' on my Linux machine. (obsolete)
A: This is because the sound generating process does not get enough CPU at critical times. Currently there is no perfect solution to this problem. If necessary, I will make wrappers available that may or may not fix this problem on your machine.
Q: My Netscape crashes! (obsolete)
A: If you are running Redhat 5.x (or any other glibc/libc6 based system) you need to check what libc version your Netscape uses. If your Netscape uses libc5, you should use the libc5 version of Netscape. If your Netscape uses libc6, you should use the libc6 version of Plugger. To check this type: ldd `type -p netscape`. If your Netscape is using libc5, I would recommend downloading a new version which uses libc6 from ftp://ftp.netscape.com.

It may also be needed to do
ln -s /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libc.so.5 /lib/libc.so.5'
to depending on what Netscape and other plug-ins you have on your system.

Q: It doesn't compile, I get lots of 'errno undeclared' errors.
A: Add #include <errno> to the top of plugger.c when compiling.
Q: My Netscape still crashes!
A: In my experience, this is because of Java or Javascript code. Try disabling Java and/or Javascript in Options->Security preferences->Languages. If you want Java and Javascript on, you can try downloading this: netscape-hack.tar.gz.
Q: It doesn't play my embedded audio/video.
A: There was a bug in Plugger 2.1 which would cause Plugger not to play sounds if you used loop=number.
Q: It doesn't play the embedded midi/soundtracker/wav file.
A: Netscape 3.x for Unix does not play embedded audio files if you use hidden=true. As far as I can tell, this is a bug in Netscape 3.x for Unix.
Q: It doesn't play animations / video.
A: Make sure you have the latest version of xanim.
Q: It plays some videos, but the Quicktime video in the Plugger testing grounds doesn't work.
A: You probably have an xanim binary without radius cinepack support. (You will see a message about this in the shell you started netscape from.) Re-compile xanim or download a better binary.
Q: It doesn't play Quicktime videos/trailers!
A: Xanim does not support Quicktime4 and the Sorensen codec, this is because Apple is keeping that codec a secret. Please write Apple and complain.
Q: It doesn't stream!
A: Not everything is possible to stream, the following things are streamed if you have the correct applications:
video/mpegMpegTV, this is a commercial product, but the demo version is quite enough for most animations
audio/mpegFor this you need mpg123 or splay
audio/wavFor this you need splay or bplay
As soon as there is a version of xanim that handles streaming data better, AVI, Quicktime, FLI, etc. etc. will also be streaming.
Q: Colors become funny when watching video/mpeg animations with Plugger.
A: Current version of MpegTV does not display colors correctly if you have an 8-bit display and start Netscape with the -install option.
Q: It still doesn't work!
A:
  • Check Help->About Plugins to see that Plugger is installed and recognized by netscape. (You need to have JavaScript enabled to do this.)
  • Start by checking Options->General Preferences->Helpers to see that Plugger is used for the mime types.
  • Mail me about it. :)
  • Compile Plugger from source.

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Last modified: June 26th, 2004 - Design by Monica & Fredrik Hübinette