How can one install Firefox on Debian 64-Bit?
 

Hi.

So we downloaded and untarred Firefox on one of our 64-bit Debian machines. But when I attempt to run it, I get errors like

"XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /home/kumari/firefox-16/firefox/libxpcom.so:
libxul.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Couldn't load XPCOM."

So, after getting that error, I decided to add /usr/lib32 to my LD_LIBRARY_PATH and also /home/kumari/firefox-16/firefox (the directory where the Firefox has been untarred to) as well. This changes the error to

"XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /home/kumari/firefox-16/firefox/libxpcom.so:
libdbus-glib-1.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Couldn't load XPCOM."

Then, I added /usr/lib. Then the error became (apparently it found the file, but...)

"XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /home/kumari/firefox-16/firefox/libxpcom.so:
libdbus-glib-1.so.2: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
Couldn't load XPCOM."

This last error appears to be a 32-bit/64-bit incompatibility issue. What should I do? If I need 32-bit versions of the libraries, does this mean I'll have to download and compile a whole lot from source, or can I install Debian 32-bit packages on Debian 64-bit (precompiled)?

download the 64bit version
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla....16.0.2.tar.bz2

or just use Iceweasel
$ apt-cache policy iceweasel
iceweasel:
Installed: 16.0.2-1
Candidate: 16.0.2-1
Version table:
*** 16.0.2-1 0
1 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ experimental/main i386 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
10.0.10esr-1 0
500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable/main i386 Packages

if you are on Stable use backports for the ESR version and mozilla.debian.net for the current release.

Hi,

why are you trying to install 32 bit binaries on a 64 system? Where did you get the tar file from?

Please also note that although some people really do want the firefox binaries provided by mozilla, for most uses, the rebranded version of firefox that comes with Debian is fine. Have you tried using "iceweasel" instead?

Evo2.

Getting the 64-bit version worked. Wonder why the main download link didn't give it...