Can't open local .swf in any browser

[jmb-tux]

I have the same problem after a fresh Xubuntu 14.04 installation (separate partition).
Neither Firefox (28 like 29) nor Chrome are able to play local SWF files - but playing them from Internet sources is no problem.
I used thunar to make the appropriate browser the standard application for SWFs but than both react in recursion of opening new tabs/`downloading' (i.e. copying local find in the Download directory ... no comment for that functionality of Chrome).
I also had a hint with a mime type problem:
(from another thread I just tried: "sudo rm /usr/share/mime/packages/kde.xml", but without result, but the 2nd command yield the following errors):

sudo update-mime-database /usr/share/mime
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-alchemy'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-cache'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-cactvs-ascii'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-cactvs-binary'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-cactvs-table'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-cdx'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-cdxml'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-chem3d'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-cif'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-cml'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-daylight-smiles'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-dmol'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-gamess-input'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-gamess-output'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-gaussian-input'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-gaussian-log'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-genbank'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-gulp'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-hin'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-inchi'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-inchi-xml'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-jcamp-dx'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-macromodel-input'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-mdl-molfile'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-mdl-rdfile'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-mdl-rxnfile'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-mdl-sdfile'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-mdl-tgf'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-mmcif'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-mol2'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-mopac-graph'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-mopac-input'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-mopac-out'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-msi-car'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-msi-hessian'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-msi-mdf'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-msi-msi'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-ncbi-asn1'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-ncbi-asn1-binary'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-ncbi-asn1-xml'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-pdb'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-shelx'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-vmd'
Unknown media type in type 'chemical/x-xyz'

But after removing
/usr/share/mime/packages/chemtool.xml
/usr/share/mime/packages/chemical-mime-data.xml
No error message is shown but still no local file got be used inside a browser.

I never saw that problem before and I don't have any clue ...

I would appreciate any hint how to solve this problem or
at least how to clearly identify the reason for the problem.
What may be the relevant package to open a bug report?

Small update: clean installation of browsers/plugins and removing personal settings does not change anything.
Xubuntu 13.10 has no problem running local files, 14.04 LTS denies it ...

[lucasnye]

Still no solution to me. I guess it's fine to report the problem to Canonical. I found a temporary solution to the problem: Crutziplayer. It works and requires Adobe's plugin to work, but out of 10 .swf, 3 didn't work/worked poorly. It performs really bad on heavy files, such as 50Mb .swf. That will work for now, but I hope to get this problem fixed to get back to performance and total fonctionnality in browsers.

[someonestoleallmyhandles]

This was driving me nuts.

Now I'm not a fantastic person at understanding Ubuntu, but I do have some good google-fu.
And this is what I found at:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=173295&p=2

So the workaround for this is to edit /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml and change
<mime-type type="application/vnd.adobe.flash.movie">
to
<mime-type type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
and then run
update-mime-database /usr/share/mime

I did this, reinstalled flash player a couple of times and hey-presto it started working.

<3

[Drowz0r]

Hello there

I did the same thing:

So the workaround for this is to edit /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml and change
<mime-type type="application/vnd.adobe.flash.movie">
to
<mime-type type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
and then run
update-mime-database /usr/share/mime

And reinstalled flash player.

Worked perfectly

[lucasnye]

That mime modification actually worked! Thank you very much!

[professordenis]

I just made the changes in freedesktop.org.xml file.

Since I need change that in many PCs, I made a patch.sh script:

#!/bin/bash
clear
echo "Update file freedesktop.org.xml...";
sed  -e "s/<mime-type  type=\"application\/vnd.adobe.flash.movie\">/<mime-type  type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\">/g"  /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml >  /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml.new
mv /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml.original
mv /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml.new /usr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml
echo "File updated successfully!";
echo "Update mime database...";
update-mime-database /usr/share/mime
echo "Mime database updated successfully! ALL DONE!";

Run it as root!

[upcroft]

This worked for me on Ubuntu 14.04 and chrome. Thanks for the info.