Setting 32bit Firefox to default on RHEL5 x86_64 ?

hollywoodb · 04-30-2007, 02:25 PM

I'm setting up an RHEL5 x86_64 for a client who needs certain plugins to work with Firefox, and these plugins only work with 32-bit Firefox.

Now I'm aware of nspluginwrapper, but it isn't part of the "official" package set, and this client will be doing their own updates via yum.

So the workaround I came up with is to set /usr/bin/firefox to launch the 32-bit version of Firefox rather than the 64-bit. I decided to do this, because anything that launches Firefox will surely do so via /usr/bin/firefox.

The steps:

Code:

cp /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox.64bit
sed 's/lib64/lib/g' /usr/bin/firefox.64bit /usr/bin/firefox.32bit
ln -s /usr/bin/firefox.32bit /usr/bin/firefox

Add the line "exclude=firefox" (w/o quotes) to /etc/yum.conf.

Now this works, but it also stops the client from getting security updates for Firefox, so it isn't optimal.

Any better suggestions or ideas? I really don't care to start enabling 3rd-party repos to use nspluginwrapper. I also have zero experience with nspluginwrapper. I'm also very open to suggestions here

Lenard · 04-30-2007, 04:06 PM

Yes, the simple way.....remove the 64bit version of firefox and leave the 32bit version in place.

rpm -e firefox-<version number>.x86_64

I done this myself for the past year and a half with no problems. One needs to specify in the /etc/yum.conf file only to exclude the 64bit version of firefox, for example;

exclude=firefox.x86_64

vtel57 · 04-30-2007, 04:09 PM

I run 32 bit FF in all my distros. No troubles at all.

hollywoodb · 04-30-2007, 04:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lenard

Yes, the simple way.....remove the 64bit version of firefox and leave the 32bit version in place.

rpm -e firefox-<version number>.x86_64

I done this myself for the past year and a half with no problems. One needs to specify in the /etc/yum.conf file only to exclude the 64bit version of firefox, for example;

exclude=firefox.x86_64

Ah, cool... I didn't know I could specify 'exclude' by version. I'll play with it Wednesday. Thanks for the info.