Extreme Newbie here
 

Greetings all -

I am a very new newbie, having worked with Windows for years and now branching into Linux for a broader experience of computers and OSs. I downloaded an update file for the latest version of Firefox browser and am unable to open it. It is a .tar.gz file - I found a few places online with some basic instructions but nothing has worked so far.

Can anyone here assist?

Thanks in advance!

Hawkeye

Can we back up here a minute? It would be very helpful to know the distro you're using. The reason is that most distros have a package manager that helps users to keep the software on the machine updated. A .tar.gz file is most likely either a generic binary or the source code. Both of those are perfectly acceptable ways to install software, but it is likely that if you use your distros "official" Firefox package, it will make upgrading Firefox easier in the future. Software you install from generic binaries or source code usually fall outside of the package system and means you have to track and deal with it.

Right---package manager first.

Also, FF has an automatic update feature---you might want to check if it's enabled: Edit --> Preferences --> Advanced --> Update (Mine is enabled (PCLOS2007) but FF is still stuck at 2.0.0.7---Hmmmmmm,need to investigate...)

To install from the tar.gz
Move it somewhere logical (I use /opt for all non-packagemanager stuff)
extract with tar -xzvf filename
cd to the folder created
./firefox
change menus, shortcuts, etc. to point to this version
Installing this way may not pick up your settings, bookmarks, etc. This is fixable---let us know if you wind up going this route.

Version info
 

I've got Fedoria 7 installed on an old laptop I got at a yard sale. I am new to this and for me the best way to learn is to jump right in and work with it as I learn it. SO I got a used system and bought a Linux For Dummies book (they seem to be written at my level most times :) and it had a copy of Fedora 7 with it).

I am going to hopefully learn about the OS for a month or so before going to update to Fedora 8 (or whatever is most recent when I feel ready).

OK I did the tar -xzvf filename and it extracted all the files, cd'd to firefox directory everything was created in then I tried the ./firefox and came up with an error message. Here is the ls-al listing after the tar command completed, followed by the ./firefox attempt and error it returned me...


$ls -al
total 13888
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 2007-11-28 03:57 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 Hawkeye Hawkeye 4096 2007-12-01 14:44 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2007-11-28 03:57 .autoreg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 232 2007-11-28 03:57 browserconfig.properties
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2007-11-28 03:57 chrome
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-28 03:57 components
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2007-11-28 03:57 defaults
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-28 03:57 dictionaries
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 2007-11-28 03:57 extensions
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5286 2007-11-28 03:57 firefox
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10562084 2007-11-28 03:57 firefox-bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-28 03:57 greprefs
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-28 03:57 icons
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 476 2007-11-28 03:57 libfreebl3.chk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 231468 2007-11-28 03:57 libfreebl3.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 628924 2007-11-28 03:57 libmozjs.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 176716 2007-11-28 03:57 libnspr4.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 430608 2007-11-28 03:57 libnss3.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 276064 2007-11-28 03:57 libnssckbi.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 15304 2007-11-28 03:57 libplc4.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8240 2007-11-28 03:57 libplds4.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 138316 2007-11-28 03:57 libsmime3.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 476 2007-11-28 03:57 libsoftokn3.chk
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 309624 2007-11-28 03:57 libsoftokn3.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 155560 2007-11-28 03:57 libssl3.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 94924 2007-11-28 03:57 libxpcom_compat.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 699056 2007-11-28 03:57 libxpcom_core.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 9240 2007-11-28 03:57 libxpcom.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8284 2007-11-28 03:57 libxpistub.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10336 2007-11-28 03:57 mozilla-xremote-client
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 112 2007-11-28 03:57 old-homepage-default.properties
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-28 03:57 plugins
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 177 2007-11-28 03:57 readme.txt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 13062 2007-11-28 03:57 removed-files
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 2007-11-28 03:57 res
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10492 2007-11-28 03:57 run-mozilla.sh
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-11-28 03:57 searchplugins
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 67496 2007-11-28 03:57 updater
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 145 2007-11-28 03:57 updater.ini
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 21368 2007-11-28 03:57 xpicleanup
$ ./firefox
./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
$

You REALLY want to install this thing with Fedora's package manager. That looks like a binary tarball you unpacked, and Firefox would probably run if you got into that directory and ran ./firefox, however it wouldn't be generally available.

Since you've got the book, try reading up on using RPMs and if they have a chapter on yum, that would be even better.

OK on the DVD that came with the book there is some software for RPM and Yum. I know I have to use the mount command to be able to use the CD drive. This is where my newness kicks in - I have no idea how to do that or how to determine my CD type.

First I tried running a basic mount command I found in an online article. Here's what I got:

# mount /dev/hda /mnt/cdrom
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

I found another article online that said I could type in dmesg |more and get a bunch of system info, and the CD info would be in there. So I tried that and browsed through the many pages of info it returned. The only things I could find relating to my CD drive:

scsi 1:0:0:0: CD-ROM HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4241N 1.04 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 24x/24x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
sr 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0

Fedora 7 should mount cds automatically. You can use Yum to download software off the internet, not just off of the dvd

As best as I can tell nothing mounted automatically. No CD icon appeared on my desktop and nothing appeared in any file I've been to (/mnt, /media, etc)

Is there another way to tell if the drive mounted and I am just not seeing it?

open up nautilus and look on the side bar and see if it lists the cd drive

WOO HOO! I got it! Apparently the system was seeing the drive and was listing it in /dev as cdrom so when I typed

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

it worked perfectly! So now I can use my CD drive.

Now, back to my original issue...

Now that the drive is accessible, how do I get the RPM and Yum files from CD to system and get them up and working so I can use them?

Why don't you just use yum to install programs over the internet?

How do I do that?

If you did a full install of Fedora, it is highly likely Yum is already installed. Have a look through your menus and see if it is there. There is a good tutorial on using Yum here.

SUCCESS! I browsed through the tutorial you included and found a command that worked. I was able to update my Firefox browser to the latest version. Still don't completely understand how I did it or what the command attributes mean, but I am glad it worked.

Thank you for your help! It is greatly appreciated!!