Mozilla Firefox crashing in 2mins
 

Hi,
Firefox 3.6.8 on Ubuntu 9.04 crashing every 2mins
Tried sudo apt-get remove firefox
and then sudo apt-get autoremove
and finally sudo apt-get install firefox
Maybe the same packages again get installed
Deleted most of the bookmarks
But still my firefox crashes
Kindly help
Regards
Aarav

In my experience, firefox crashes are most of the time (of course not always) caused by plugins. What plugins does your "about:plugins" show?

Move or rename .mozilla and restart Firefox

Uninstall plugins. If the problem persists, run firefox on a terminal window and carefully look at the output. If nothing else works, move ~/.mozilla/ elsewhere and try again.

hi
should I move the entire folder /usr/share/mozilla
and also 2-3 other files like vnd.mozilla.webapp.xml & vnd.mozilla.xul+xml.xml which appears in usr/share/mime/application and couple of similar files

In Firefox under the tab Tools - Manage Content Plugins, I dont find any under "show plugins in use" but find several in "show all plugins". How do I delete/uninstall them if at all they are installed.

regards
Aarav

don't touch that, only try moving ~/.mozilla (the directory ".mozilla" in YOUR home directory) out of the way. This way, all your personal settings, bookmarks, extensions etc will be gone, but maybe also the problem. You can then try restoring part of that by copying individual files back to ~/.mozilla.

You can see plugins by typing "about:plugins" in your location bar. you can remove them by removing files/links from /usr/share/mozilla/plugins and/or ~/.mozilla/plugins.

No.

When I say that you should move ~/.mozilla/ elsewhere I really mean that you should take that foldes off the firefox scope so the old config files are not read. Because the problem might be in your user profile and not in firefox itself (well, arguably).

You should never ever put user files on your main system unless you know what you are doing, and if you have to ask then you don't.

Firefox should provide an option to uninstall them if they are user plugins. If they are installed system wide then they should be fine there.

hi
Tried running firefox using terminal, after it crashed, the msg which appeared in the terminal was "segmentation fault"
I was able to install few plugins that were installed using "Tools - AddOns"
But it still crashes
I cant find mozilla in my home folder, unless it is the same /usr/share/mozilla folder that we are referring to. I didnt install it in /usr/share on purpose.

How do I get a folder off the firefox scope and which folder should I get off the scope cos I cant find mozilla in my home folder

It's called .mozilla, a dot in front of a filename means it is "hidden", you need to use e.g. ls -a to see it.

At this point, I'd suggest you google for beginners tuts with the linux/unix shell and filesystem. You will need a LITTLE basic knowledge on this before you are able to solve any kind of issue.

It's not "mozilla", it's ".mozilla", with a dot in front of its name. And you will usually not see it because the so-called dot-files are considered "hidden". So, most applications won't show them by default, you will have to turn an option or pass a command line parameter to see them. In nautilus there's an option somewhere in the menus. In dolphin and konqueror it's similar.

In command line, to see hidden files using ls you use "ls -a" or "ls -A" (very subtle difference).

If you can't manage to do it on your regular file manager just open a terminal and type this inside (make sure firefox is not open first):

All your old firefox files will still be under ~/firefox_backup/ in your home folder. The next time you start firefox it will run with default settings.

hi
File Manager has option of viewing hidden files, renamed the folder .Mozilla and I think it is working now as it is almost 5mins and Firefox has not crashed yet.
Thanks
Aarav

If you don't need anything from the old profile, once some time has passed you can remove the folder you just renamed.