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!!

WanabeLinus,

it seems there is some issue with firefox.. i m looking into the issue and try to solve this issue.

just u do one thing, paste the permissions detail of firefox. we will try to trouble shoot this issue.

binki39

if you have installed firefox through tar.gz file, why don't you try with RPM and check. by default it set the path with /usr/bin/firefox.just try to install mandrake base RPM if possible.

Just to inform to you guys that i have try to launch as normal user on my RHEL 3 box and it working fine.

Also, i m using OPERA as my defaults browser, i presonaly prefer OPERA it store it's own cache and cookies and much faster then firefox. Of course firefox also, but i have compare both the browser and I would prefere OPERA. you may try with that also. it works fine for both the user(as normal user and root)

-/Hitesh

In the shell script /usr/bin/firefox (or wherever that file is on your system), there is a line:

#set -x

Uncomment that line by removing the leading "#" for debugging & run firefox from a terminal. You should see the commands scrolling in the terminal. That might give you some clue.

HTH

WanabeLinus might consider installing with urpmi? In short, bring up the terminal, su to root and type - I your mirrors are setup correctly, you should download Firefox - maybe not the latest version, but certainly the way the Mandrake guys wanted it installed.
If your package mirrors aren't set up correctly, you should do this with the instructions from EasyURPMI.

Hi again everyone the help is really great. I did install Firefox 1.0 from a rpm for Mandrake 10.1 but I installed it as user through X see my previious posts. The browser will run fom a terminal but only as root. I wanted to launch the browser form my desktop just the same way I used to start Konqueror. When I try urpmi firefox I get the message package not found. Also it seens that the easy urpmi site is down or at least not responing at this moment I suspect urpmi is not set up properly on my box.

I had a similar problem to that described above. When I tried to run the 'firefox' binary, it just quit, with no error message (just returned the next line of a shell). When running the firefox-bin binary. it gave the error about libmozjs.so. I altered the permissions on my firefox directory (/usr/local/firefox is where I installed it), and it still had this problem. I tried to find root's .mozilla directory, because it worked when executed as root. There was no such directory /root/.mozilla. So I looked in my home directory, and sure enough, there was a folder .mozilla there, owned by root and with permissions not enabling me to descend it. So I chowned it to myself, and bingo - it worked.

Hope this helps some folks out there.

this hs happened to me in the past..... When i open firefox in a terminal it just fails silently. It does run as root however..... I just end up being stupid and SUIDing Firefox.

That was the problem!!!!!

Hey guys thanks for all the input the help is really great. I don't have a .mozzila folder in my home directory? and when I find the directory how do I quote "chowned " the permissions? Is this done in shell only or can it be done using the GUI KDE?:study: :newbie:

Hi guys,

I am using gnome on Debian Sarge and I had the same problem with firefox. I installed it had an icon to click on did and nothing happened. But when I right-clicked on the icon and went in to settings I could specify the name but also the path. The path was /usr/bin/firefox it should have been /usr/bin/mozilla-firefox. Strange because both of the files really exist.

Hope I could help.

Yeah I've been struggling with this problem for the past couple days. I want to be able to launch Firefox from the Kmenu just like Konqueror. Firefox only runs as root. I looked in the home folder as suggested above and found the .mozilla folder. To find it, I had to open the view menu and select Show hidden files.

The .mozilla folder is only accessible as root. So if this was the problem for others, I'd bet that this is the problem for me.

So I changed the permissions so that everyone can view and modify content in that folder. Then I tried lauching Firefox through Konsole as a regular user. When I did, this is what I got:And that just went on forever.

I see above that this is how someone else fixed the problem, but it didn't seem to work for me. What does the above mean? Did I do something wrong?

Has anyone gotten Forefox 1.0 to work as a regular user in Mandrake 10.1?

Toonses82

How do you start firefox?
What are the settings in the icon? (command to start firefox?)

I think it doesn't have to do anything with the permissions because firefox creates a directory called .mozilla in the home dir of the user starting firefox and that user has permission to access files in his or her directory.

You would think so but it doesn't seem to work that way. I'm no expert but I do know that Firefox runs when I start it as root and does not run when I start it as a regular user. And the .mozilla folder was only accessible as root like the other guy mentioned above. When I changed it to be accessible by all users, as suggested, and started it as regular user, I got the "loading extensions" deal.

To start Firefox after it was installed, I opened a Konsole and logged in as super user. Then I navigated the Konsole to the firefox folder that the install created and typed ./firefox. That worked, but only as a super user.

As I understand you you tried to access the the /root/.mozilla folder. It doesn't make sense though to access that folder with a user-account (not root) because firefox creates an own folder under /home/username/.mozilla/ which is called "firefox". If you want to look for that folder in your home directory then you have to enable "show hidden files" as well.

But try this: type as a normal user "/usr/bin/mozilla-firefox" into a console in KDE.

p.s.: do you have a normal user owning a home directory?

I am having a very similar issue, Could it be because the RPM is installed at root in MDK 10.1?( I installed T-bird the same way but it works) When I try the commands in a console I get no error as other users, the .mozilla directory in my home folder is 755. are there any other options?

Hello,

I have similar problems with Firefox under debian-based Libranet 2.8.1. It is a puzzling issue. I think it'd be worth going to the bottom of it. Here's the story.

This isn't my first install of Mozilla products on Linux -- I have been an enduring Mozilla fan... Installation of Mozilla 1.7.5 through apt-get, of thunderbird-1.0.tar.gz, and of Firefox-1.0 through apt-get have all succeeded.

I don't understand what's wrong with my install of the Firefox-1.0.tar.gz file. The installation went smoothly, except that the terminal diplayed the following lines:
Firefox launched all right : but then I was root as it should be (didn't connect to the internet of course). I installed in /usr/local/firefox.

Impossible to launch FF as user: this is what the terminal had to say after my typing /usr/local/firefox/firefox
And so on until I kill the job pressing Ctrl+C.
I tried installing in /usr/firefox with no better success.

My Linux distro is rather old but that doesn't seem to be the problem -- the DEB install works fine. Not to mention that I installed Firefox again after the Deb install -- same problem. So it isn't a question of missing libraries and the like. i checked permisions too. On a former Libranet version I had no problem installing tar.gz in /usr/local/, and then running Firefox or Thunderbird as user.
No permission problem on profile folders either, except if the user doesn't get all the necessary permissions -- but then that would be a bug in Firefox, wouldn't it?

let's hope the problem can be solved or explained--

Someone say "have opera" -- well it isn't GNU/GPL and I'd rather stick to free (freedom) software when possible -- and isn't "free" Opera adorned with ads?

Cheers,





:study:

Firefox opens with a blank screen

I turned debug on this is what I got

./firefox
+ moz_libdir=/usr/local/lib/firefox-1.0
+ MRE_HOME=/usr/local/lib/mre/mre-1.0
+ found=0
+ progname=./firefox
++ dirname ./firefox
+ curdir=.
++ basename ./firefox
+ progbase=firefox
+ run_moz=./run-mozilla.sh
+ test -x ./run-mozilla.sh
+ dist_bin=.
+ found=1
+ '[' 1 = 0 ']'
+ script_args=
+ moreargs=
+ debugging=0
+ MOZILLA_BIN=firefox-bin
+ MOZ_CLIENT_PROGRAM=./mozilla-xremote-client
+ '[' linux-gnu = beos ']'
++ check_running
++ ./run-mozilla.sh ./mozilla-xremote-client -a firefox 'ping()'
++ RETURN_VAL=2
++ '[' 2 -eq 0 ']'
++ echo 0
++ return 0
+ ALREADY_RUNNING=0
+ _USE_EXIST=0
+ _optOne=
+ _USE_EXIST=1
+ _optLast=
++ expr '' : '.*:/.*'
+ '[' 0 -eq 0 -a '(' -f '' -o -d '' ')' ']'
+ '[' 0 -eq 1 ']'
+ '[' 0 -gt 0 ']'
+ export MRE_HOME
+ eval 'set -- '
++ set --
+ moz_pis_startstop_scripts start
+ MOZ_USER_DIR=.mozilla/firefox
+ MOZ_PIS_API=2
+ MOZ_PIS_MOZBINDIR=.
+ MOZ_PIS_SESSION_PID=24709
+ MOZ_PIS_USER_DIR=.mozilla/firefox
+ export MOZ_PIS_API MOZ_PIS_MOZBINDIR MOZ_PIS_SESSION_PID MOZ_PIS_USER_DIR
+ '[' -x './init.d/S*' ']'
+ '[' -x '/home/chrisb/.mozilla/firefox/init.d/S*' ']'
+ '[' 0 = 1 ']'
+ ./run-mozilla.sh ./firefox-bin
*** Failed to load overlay chrome://preferential/content/preferential-phn-overlay.xul
*** Failed to load overlay chrome://allinonegest/content/allinonegestOverlay.xul

Solved for me!!
 

The trick was to install asl root and logged in as root on the root account.

Simply su from the user account didn't work.

Now it's working at last.

Hope this can help others

Cheers,

Same Problem...
 

I am having the same problem with Firefox on Mandrake 10.1...I have installed all the pathces, updates, and software that could possibly be needed.

At this point I open konsole and type nohup /path/firefox

Firefox starts and I can close konsole since I started it with nohup...

I am not any kind of a guru who can help you fix it...but this does let me run it.

:)