[SOLVED] Firefox does not start with no error

ario · 08-24-2016, 02:49 AM

Linux is open source but browsers are not. And nowadays everything happens in browsers! If you ever tried to compile recent versions of Firefox, you may noticed that there are some binary files you HAVE to download and you have no access to the source code and no idea what is inside them.

Anyway, tried to install firefox through Debian 8 repositories on an updated Debian 8.5.0, by installing iceweasel which then installed firefox-esr as a dependency and then started firefox from both graphical environment (DWM) and command line, Firefox keeps running but nothing happens. No error message, no log message, nothing in terminal, absolutely nothing. Just like a Microsoft product. It scans your hard disk (possibly), uploads them to a central server, doesn't work, doesn't tell you what it is doing!

Tried downloading firefox-48.0.1.tar.bz2, untar it, running it, same results. No error, nothing. Nothing happens.

It is sad to ask this question after decades of opensource, but: Any idea how to run firefox on Linux? :-(

ferrari · 08-24-2016, 03:01 AM

Maybe strace can help here

Code:

strace firefox

For more info

Code:

man strace

This might be useful with respect to a diagnostic approach
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=134938

seasons · 08-24-2016, 04:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ario

there are some binary files you HAVE to download and you have no access to the source code and no idea what is inside them.
...
Just like a Microsoft product. It scans your hard disk (possibly), uploads them to a central server, doesn't work, doesn't tell you what it is doing!

If you really distrust FF that much, then why don't you use a different browser instead of trying harder to make FF run (or making slanderous claims that you have no proof of)?
With the nonsense in your post, I wouldn't help you if I could...

rtmistler · 08-24-2016, 07:36 AM

Something's wrong here because Firefox ESR is the default browser for the Debian 8 install. Why would you need to install the browser? How did you install Debian? Did you highly customize it or something? You should be able to either re-install full Debian 8 or be able to use the package manager to install Firefox.

Perhaps a bit more information because it seems unclear what the conditions here are. I'm assuming you've installed full Debian on a desktop. Did you perform some form of custom?

And when you extract a tar.bz2 file, you don't just "run" it, you would configure, make, and make install it; what you said didn't make sense there either.

ferrari · 08-24-2016, 02:05 PM

Quote:

And when you extract a tar.bz2 file, you don't just "run" it, you would configure, make, and make install it; what you said didn't make sense there either.

Yes, the OP left us to guess too many of the details. Re-reading the their post, I'm inclined to agree that they haven't undertaken/understood all the steps required to install from the tarball, and why they didn't simply install using the package manager.

273 · 08-24-2016, 02:36 PM

I've both Firefox installed from the repositories and Firefox (Nightly, but same thing) binary installed from a gz file from Mozilla's website on one install and Firefox from the repositories on another with no issues (apart from a spurious errors regarding GTK which can be safely ignored).
If you're not seeing any errors when you run Firefox from the command line, or seeing Firefox running, then you're doing something wrong.

Just install Chromium and forget Firefox, seems you don't want to install it anyhow.

ario · 08-25-2016, 01:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seasons

If you really distrust FF that much, then why don't you use a different browser instead of trying harder to make FF run (or making slanderous claims that you have no proof of)?
With the nonsense in your post, I wouldn't help you if I could...

Once I tried compiling an OS from scratch. I went once with LFS and once with Sabotage (https://github.com/aario/sabotage). I couldn't find any fully opensource browser that supports all the websites FF supports. Regarding the fact that almost all web services are centralized and non-opensource, I gave up and returned to Debian with it's huge number of packages! So I want to use FF anyway. Now to consider the phrase "slanderous claims": Try installing debian, DWM, Firefox. Firefox doesn't work. Doesn't show error message. When a software with opensource and Linux philosophy doesn't work, it should have an option to show at least verbose logs in terminal! It doesn't even show a blue screen of death!

ario · 08-25-2016, 01:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rtmistler

Something's wrong here because Firefox ESR is the default browser for the Debian 8 install. Why would you need to install the browser? How did you install Debian? Did you highly customize it or something? You should be able to either re-install full Debian 8 or be able to use the package manager to install Firefox.

Perhaps a bit more information because it seems unclear what the conditions here are. I'm assuming you've installed full Debian on a desktop. Did you perform some form of custom?

And when you extract a tar.bz2 file, you don't just "run" it, you would configure, make, and make install it; what you said didn't make sense there either.

I didn't modify anything special in Debian. I installed it via Minimal CD. Then installed NVidida driver (Closed source one). Then installed Xserver and DWM. And I downloaded firefox binary from website which comes in form of a .tar.bz2 and I ran run-firefox.sh shell script to execute it and like the repository version nothing happened.

ario · 08-25-2016, 01:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ferrari

Yes, the OP left us to guess too many of the details. Re-reading the their post, I'm inclined to agree that they haven't undertaken/understood all the steps required to install from the tarball, and why they didn't simply install using the package manager.

If you go here from a Linux:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/?scene=2
It gives you a tar.gz archive. Listing of contents:

Code:

root@debian-pc:/opt/firefox# ls -lhtr
total 90M
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8.8K Aug 23 21:27 run-mozilla.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  10M Aug 23 21:27 icudt56l.dat
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4.0K Aug 23 21:27 crashreporter.ini
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  825 Aug 23 21:27 Throbber-small.gif
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K Aug 23 22:07 gmp-clearkey
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K Aug 23 22:07 defaults
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Aug 23 22:07 dictionaries
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  707 Aug 23 22:07 removed-files
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Aug 23 22:07 icons
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4.0K Aug 23 22:07 browser
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  695 Aug 23 22:09 application.ini
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  140 Aug 23 22:36 dependentlibs.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  132 Aug 23 22:36 update-settings.ini
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  166 Aug 23 22:37 platform.ini
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  681 Aug 23 22:37 updater.ini
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9.3M Aug 23 22:47 omni.ja
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  21K Aug 23 22:47 libplc4.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 222K Aug 23 22:47 libnspr4.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  18K Aug 23 22:47 libplds4.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 218K Aug 23 22:47 updater
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 419K Aug 23 22:47 plugin-container
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  63M Aug 23 22:47 libxul.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 220K Aug 23 22:47 libssl3.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 213K Aug 23 22:47 libsoftokn3.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  899 Aug 23 22:47 libsoftokn3.chk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 137K Aug 23 22:47 libsmime3.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 144K Aug 23 22:47 libnssutil3.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 117K Aug 23 22:47 libnssdbm3.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 514K Aug 23 22:47 libnssckbi.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 956K Aug 23 22:47 libnss3.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.1M Aug 23 22:47 libmozsqlite3.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8.9K Aug 23 22:47 libmozgtk.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 276K Aug 23 22:47 libmozavutil.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2.1M Aug 23 22:47 libmozavcodec.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  61K Aug 23 22:47 liblgpllibs.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 484K Aug 23 22:47 libfreeblpriv3.so
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K Aug 23 22:47 gtk2
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 145K Aug 23 22:47 firefox-bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 145K Aug 23 22:47 firefox
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 109K Aug 23 22:47 crashreporter
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  899 Aug 23 22:47 libnssdbm3.chk
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  899 Aug 23 22:47 libfreeblpriv3.chk
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.0K Aug 23 22:47 precomplete

I ran run-mozilla.sh
Nothing happened. My graphics driver is NVidia closed source version. I can run glxgears with no error message and flawless. My window manager is DWM (I firefox able to run on this window manager?). Also maybe related, my java is:

Code:

java version "1.8.0_101"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_101-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.101-b13, mixed mode)

ario · 08-25-2016, 01:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 273

I've both Firefox installed from the repositories and Firefox (Nightly, but same thing) binary installed from a gz file from Mozilla's website on one install and Firefox from the repositories on another with no issues (apart from a spurious errors regarding GTK which can be safely ignored).
If you're not seeing any errors when you run Firefox from the command line, or seeing Firefox running, then you're doing something wrong.

Just install Chromium and forget Firefox, seems you don't want to install it anyhow.

Have some other problem with Chromium and that is sometimes it doesn't open a specific website until I restart it. But that is related to another topic. Which window manager were you using? Mine is DWM.

ario · 08-25-2016, 01:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ferrari

Maybe strace can help here

Code:

strace firefox

For more info

Code:

man strace

This might be useful with respect to a diagnostic approach
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=134938

Thank you. I really appreciate it that finally someone came with a step toward solving the problem and not questioning the question!
when running the binary archive downloaded from the website it shows:

Code:

write(1, "firefox.real: Cannot execute .\n", 31firefox.real: Cannot execute .
) = 31

Then:

Code:

root@debian-pc:~# which firefox.real
/usr/bin/firefox.real
root@debian-pc:~# file /usr/bin/firefox.real
/usr/bin/firefox.real: symbolic link to /opt/firefox/run-mozilla.sh
root@debian-pc:~# /usr/bin/firefox.real

firefox.real: Cannot execute .

root@debian-pc:~# /opt/firefox/run-mozilla.sh

run-mozilla.sh: Cannot execute .

root@debian-pc:~# bash /opt/firefox/run-mozilla.sh

run-mozilla.sh: Cannot execute .

root@debian-pc:~# ls -l /opt/firefox/run-mozilla.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8915 Aug 23 21:27 /opt/firefox/run-mozilla.sh
root@debian-pc:~# file /opt/firefox/run-mozilla.sh
/opt/firefox/run-mozilla.sh: POSIX shell script, ASCII text executable
root@debian-pc:~# head /opt/firefox/run-mozilla.sh
#!/bin/sh
#
# This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
# License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
# file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/.
cmdname=`basename "$0"`
MOZ_DIST_BIN=`dirname "$0"`
MOZ_DEFAULT_NAME="./${cmdname}-bin"
MOZ_APPRUNNER_NAME="./mozilla-bin"
MOZ_PROGRAM=""
root@debian-pc:~# sh /opt/firefox/run-mozilla.sh

run-mozilla.sh: Cannot execute .

Run as root just to avoid permission problems when accessing other things. Same results as a normal user.

ario · 08-25-2016, 02:05 AM

Now I started getting something in terminal:

Code:

root@debian-pc:/opt/firefox# ./firefox-bin 

(firefox:26832): GConf-WARNING **: Client failed to connect to the D-BUS daemon:
Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

Which is normal as I don't have/want DBus. But anyways, I found a workaround and that's to run /opt/firefox/firefox-bin
And here is the detailed solution:
Installed not from the repos (There should also be a solution for that version as well) but from the binary .tar.bz2 archive.
run-mozilla.sh doesn't work. I don't know why. Posted the brief error message above.
firefox command doesn't also work. With no error message.
/opt/firefox/firefox-bin works (In extraction path of the archive). But as the window manager is dwm it creates a window in tag #9 of DWM which is default hard coded value for this browser.

ferrari · 08-25-2016, 05:03 AM

You did things the hard way... 'run-mozilla.sh' is an internal script, not for starting firefox. The correct way to start it is by the binary executable eg

Code:

/opt/firefox/firefox