PAYE Anytime on Linux

Hotblack Desiato

Has anyone had any luck with this. Won't work for me in Opera, Firefox or Konqueror. The 'loading' progress bar appears but then the whole window just goes grey, when it should be prompting for login.

Flash 10 is installed. (flash-player-10.2.153.1-0.2.1.i586) on openSUSE11.4 64-bit on KDE4

Last time I tried it on OSX 10.4 it didn't work on that, either.

They claim it is the world's first accessible Adobe Flex application, fat lot of use that is if due to sloppy programming it's tied to the world's worst OS :mad: bad enough when private enterprise does stuff like this but it is totally unacceptable for the public sector to do so.

pickarooney

Where exactly on the site is the problem? I don't have a valid tax number so can't view beyond any login screens but what I looked at so far seemed to display fine.

matrim

ninja900 wrote: »

Has anyone had any luck with this. Won't work for me in Opera, Firefox or Konqueror. The 'loading' progress bar appears but then the whole window just goes grey, when it should be prompting for login.

Flash 10 is installed. (flash-player-10.2.153.1-0.2.1.i586) on openSUSE11.4 64-bit on KDE4

Last time I tried it on OSX 10.4 it didn't work on that, either.

They claim it is the world's first accessible Adobe Flex application, fat lot of use that is if due to sloppy programming it's tied to the world's worst OS :mad: bad enough when private enterprise does stuff like this but it is totally unacceptable for the public sector to do so.

I've used it on Ubuntu 10.10 and 9.04 without any problems. I've also just checked it on XUbuntu 10.04 and it's working fine for me.

Those are all 32bit, in case that makes a difference.

Hotblack Desiato

Which browser were you using? (and Pickarooney, which distro?)

I'll downgrade Firefox to 32-bit and give it a go.

Edit: no change with 32-bit Firefox.

matrim

ninja900 wrote: »

Which browser were you using? (and Pickarooney, which distro?)

I'll downgrade Firefox to 32-bit and give it a go.

Firefox. The current version 3.6.15 and flash is 10.2 r152

Hotblack Desiato

OK. I have Firefox 4.0.0, although when I still had Firefox 3 on an older distro version it didn't work on that either

pickarooney

Firefox 4 on xubuntu 10.10

big_show

Working fine on google chrome, 10.10

Naikon

You could use user agent switcher for firefox as a workaround. Tricks it into thinking the browser is IE or whatever. I use it for my banking website which insists on IE:(

Hotblack Desiato

I don't think that's the problem Naikon, after all they say it's an accessible Flash application, and having to fake IE is so last century :pac:

I tried again in OSX 10.4 using Safari: no go. Not that I want to boot into that POS if I can avoid it...

But an openSUSE 11.4 32-bit VM in VirtualBox on my work PC (Windows XP) worked - got to the login screen, at least - didn't have a login with me to try.

Still no go on openSUSE 11.4 64-bit. I think it's a 32-vs-64 thing. Flash is only available from the openSUSE repos in 32-bit, and I've already tried downgrading Firefox to 32-bit with no success. I don't think PAYE Anytime uses Java and I dont' really want to mess with that as my somewhat fussy online banking is working as it stands.

Would really like to get to the bottom of this, but am stumped as to what to try next. They don't list technical requirements for this and to be honest, I doubt their tech support would know or care about Linux users

Naikon

ninja900 wrote: »

I don't think that's the problem Naikon, after all they say it's an accessible Flash application, and having to fake IE is so last century :pac:

I tried again in OSX 10.4 using Safari: no go. Not that I want to boot into that POS if I can avoid it...

But an openSUSE 11.4 32-bit VM in VirtualBox on my work PC (Windows XP) worked - got to the login screen, at least - didn't have a login with me to try.

Still no go on openSUSE 11.4 64-bit. I think it's a 32-vs-64 thing. Flash is only available from the openSUSE repos in 32-bit, and I've already tried downgrading Firefox to 32-bit with no success. I don't think PAYE Anytime uses Java and I dont' really want to mess with that as my somewhat fussy online banking is working as it stands.

Would really like to get to the bottom of this, but am stumped as to what to try next. They don't list technical requirements for this and to be honest, I doubt their tech support would know or care about Linux users

Porting/Compiling for 64 bit isn't trivial in some cases, as structures may have realignment issues due to the increased address space for pointers and what not. It's a hunch, but I suspect the 64 bit build just isn't up to scratch. Would explain their reluctance to release new 64 bit builds. I wish I had a solution, but due to the closed nature of flash, your best bet is to:

1: Complain to adobe. The revenue guys could say "only tested on 32 bit IE".
2: Just stick with the VBox method.
3: It's a longshot, but have you tried Gnash/Lightspark? I am pretty sure Gnash supports SWF up to version 9.

Stuxnet

best addon for sorting flash in FF, (ubuntu fix)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flash-aid/

Hotblack Desiato

... in an openSUSE 11.4-32bit VM under KVM running on my openSUSE11.4-64bit install. Bit of a palaver but it proves that the problem is some 64-bit package somewhere. CBA to investigate any further as I don't expect to be using this more than 3 or 4 times a year, I can keep a VM snapshot on my external hard drive to avoid cluttering up my HDD, and I don't want to mess with my Java install etc. as it works nicely with my online banking as-is and I had a lot of trouble with that in previous distro versions.

Hotblack Desiato

Found the real reason for it not working. I'd previously added symbolic links:

~/.adobe -> /dev/null
~/.macromedia -> /dev/null

to prevent Flash cookies from being stored... Once the symbolic links were deleted (allowing Flash to recreate the directories and store stuff in them) PAYE Anytime works on my 64-bit installation.

Will just have to remember to clear out those directories from time to time (or put it in a script )