Firefox wont start
 

Hello again I've installed Mozilla firefox 1.0 on my Mandrake 10.1 system . Everything went fine a short cut on the desktop perfect but when I doubleclick the icon to start the app. it looks like it's starting (hour glass turning) but then nothing happens no browser at all. I'm using KDE 3.2 originally I was using the default Konquer browser which still works fine. I must need to change a setting of modify a file somewhere but I dont know how? Any ideas?:newbie:

currently, i m not using Mandrake, but you may try with following command.

login as root user.

open console (konsole)

# firefox [enter]

Also, you can check the PATH with the following command.

# whereis firefox

if you get any error, just put on board. this will help for other user to slove this problem.

-/Hitesh

don't start firefox as root !!!!

Will firefox start from a GUI ie KDE? just like Konquer? ( I'm not sure how thats spelled) If so what could be wrong?

Yeah, I would suggest not running firefox as root either. Try just running firefox from the command line - open up a console and type in "firefox", or "mozilla-firefox", it's probably one of those two. It'll output some stuff to the command line as it tries to start up, tell us what it says!

I've found if you did something quirky with your .firefox folder (in your home folder), sometimes it will have trouble starting. Especially if you modified any of the files under home yourself. You can see if that's the problem by going to the command line and typing "mv ~/.firefox ~/.firefox~". This will rename your "~/.firefox" folder to "~/.firefox~". Then try and run firefox, see if you get a different reaction. Your old firefox settings will be stored in "~/.firefox~" (that is, the ".firefox~" directory in your home directory). If you want your old settings back, you'll have to remove the newly-created .firefox directory and rename your "~/.firefox~" directory back to "~/.firefox" (use the mv command again).

By the way, the reason it's a bad idea to run firefox as root, is because if you somehow run into a security hole in firefox and someone is able to remotely make it do something (e.g. with a buffer overflow), or if firefox itself just does something quirky, the system won't let it do anything your regular user wouldn't be able to do. So no formatting drives, erasing kernels, all that crazy stuff. The odds are low, but still, it's a good idea to always maintain good security, if at least for practice and principle.

I've also had a problem in that if you install firefox say in the /usr/local/firefox directory you have to worry about permissions because by default on Mandrake 10.1 a general user does not have full access to that directory. So you have to chmod 755 the directory where you put it to make sure the user has access to it.

A few days ago I had a similar issue with a java plugin that I was installing. With Firefox 1.0 you need to use the ns610-gcc<whatever> plugin, if you use anything else it will hang like that.

So far the help is great . I used an rpm for the installation and here is what I get from the shell
whereis firefox
firefox: /usr/bin/firefox /usr/lib/firefox
I think this is the correctl locations for installation but if I type firefox nothing again happens it just returns me one line down back to the prompt?? Is there any other modifications I need to do in any of these directories ? In both of these locations I don't see an executable icon?:newbie:

Have you checked the binarie its excuting you may have to change it to firefox-bin or something if it using firefox as a binarie, try that.

I don't know about the Mandrake RPM, but I know with the reqular installed, it is requested that you startup firefox as root, as this will create nescesary files that a reqular user cannot. Of course, once this is done, firefox, or any browser, should not be used to surf with. That is very very bad.

How do I check binaries and what do I look for? How does Konqueror start up? I just click the icon by the k-menu button and it loads right away. Will firefox start this way also from a GUI?:newbie: :scratch:

Try this open up a termnal and type:

And what does that tell you? Oh and the systems binaries are stored in /usr/bin. And when you execute the command and if it gives some output try opening a terminal and executing the binarie from there. Example :

Let me know how it works out.

You may try wtih following things.

I prefred to start Firefox or other applicaiton as root user. bec'z some time it will create some files or install configuration file when launching the application that you do not know.

Rigth click on Desktop >> Create New >> Link to Applicaiton >> Execute >> type this path /usr/bin/firefox >> select Icon if it's prompt you to select. >> click on OK and try launching again.

this way u can create icon to Desktop to launch Firefox. try with this and if you get any error then paste it here.

Also, you can do one thing, just download Firefox[RPM] Mandrake base and try installing again.

For that you will need to unistall existing installed Firefox. you can uninstall fire fox with ' rpm -e firefox' command. I presonaly never try this. but i think if you do not uninstall the it will give some conflit while installing Mandrake base RPM.

However, you can download/install firefox RPM for Mandrake by visiting the following link,

ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/www.mandr...cnl.x86_64.rpm

Hope this helps.

-/Hitesh

Hello and many thanks for all the input. After so many years of working with windows using Linux brings a whole new meaning to personal computing albiet frustrating at times I think it's worth it.
Now back to my Firefrox problem I believe I did download and install a Mandrake rpm and the installlation was incredibly easy. I might have made my mistake right in the beginning. I downloaded the rpm to my /home/rpm's directory ( I created a directory called rpm's) from there I just double clicked the rpm to install and everything appeared perfect there is a shortcut on my desktop and when I check the properties the Application command is /usr/bin/firefox which appears correct to me? One thing I noticed on the permissions tab under the ownership heading it states user root and Group root Is this my problem ? I only have root permissions and that's why the App hangs when I try to launch it from my GUI as a user? Yes Yes Yes if I launch firefox from the shell as root the browser works . Great so now how do I change the permissiions to user so I can launch from my GUI ?:study:

AFAIK, "firefox" is a shell script which called the actual binary (firefox-bin is it?). Therefore you can do the following:

1. From command prompt enter:
slocate firefox-bin
Then run the binary using full path retuned by the above command.

or

2. Run "vi /usr/bin/firefox" & check which binary it is running. You can try running that binary from the command line & observe any errors etc.

HTH.

I am also a new linux user, recently changed from windows to mandrake then suse. I tried installing firefox in both distros but it wont start unless I run it as root with ./firefox
I tried installing it in home/tim/Documents/... I assume this shouldn't be requiring any root permission. I tried creating a soft link to the desktop and opening it there, but no luck. I get this nice bouncing cursor for about 5 seconds and nothing loads up.
Tried installing it using YaST, installed to /opt/MozillaFirefox/ and has a soft link at /usr/bin/firefox so I followed the direction above and created this link application thing in desktop which is pointed to /usr/bin/firefox, but no luck, same thing with the bouncing cursor and nothing loads after 5 seconds. I also tried setting the permission of the MozillaFirefox folder to 777, but still no luck. The only way I can open it is through root. I read around the forum and seems several people are having the same problem and probably tried most of the solution people offered, yet firefox still doesn't start up.
Oh, I tried loading up the firefox-bin file using ./firefox-bin, but no luck and got the following error.
./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libmozjs.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

please help, thanks for everyone's time!!