I use ubuntu 8.04. I had firefox that came with the original installation. On 21 Jan I did some updates and then on 22 Jan (today), the launcher for firefox on the panel has disappeared. I am unable to find another way of launching firefox. Firefox is not listed in Applications > Internet.

I tried typing firefox in the Konsole and got this message:

"The program firefox is not currently installed. You can install it by typing sudo apt-get install firefox-3.0. "

When I did that, I get a message:

"firefox-3.0 is already the latest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed,0 to remove and 2 not upgraded."

What do I do now?

A few things to try:

1) run updatedb. when it's finished updating the database of installed files, run 'locate -i firefox' to see if firefox is still installed.

2) run 'which firefox'. if it's installed, the return should be the path to the firefox executable.

3) try 'apt-get remove --purge firefox' to completely remove it if it is installed, then re-install.

4) If you find that firefox is indeed installed, right click on the tray, and click on 'Add application to panel' and add firefox to the panel.

These suggestions are exclusive of one another, or you can take them in order. The end result should be the same.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you. I tried locate i-firefox; it returned a long list of firefox files:


I tried "which firefox" without the quotes, I get nothing in reply.

When I search File system> etc> I see a folder named firefox. How to find which is the executable, and its path?

Right click on the tray> add application to the panel: Firefox is not seen in the list.

If I really need to remove and reinstall, can you please give more detailed instructions, please?

ok, I downloaded Firefox 3.6 and followed the installation instructions. Then I could launch firefox from the terminal. Later, I was able to create the launcher by following instructions from Ubuntu online help.
Thanks.

your advice helped me. Thanks so much!

what worked or me was

This completely removed it

I then ran
The locate, updatedb, and which commands all failed to help me.

I had the same problem. My Ubuntu system is a bit custom. I started by installing the text only server, then added the desktop. I then set my pc to avoid booting into the X graphics environment. I'm still a bit rusty with linux so I cheat by logging in, then using startx from time to time. I guess my updates broke firefox. It used to work.

I found this post by searching google with my error message:
The result is only one page, this one, yea!