I installed firefox as a regular user to a folder in my home directory (on a gnome desktop in Fedora), then extracted it to a new folder in the home directory which I named Firefox. When I opened the Firefox folder I clicked on the firefox shell which opened the browser. The browser opened and seems to be working fine.

The first question is would it be better to move it from my home to a /usr/local type location? How can I do that now that the contents of the download have been extracted to the Firefox folder in my home directory?

After that, how do you make a menu link that can be located at : Main menu> internet> Firefox? Thanks.

I have tried using Firefox in both my home directory and in /usr/opt or /usr/local. I find that it performs best in my home directory and, if you are the only user of the computer, there is no benefit from putting anywhere else. If however, you wish to share the same binary between several users then it will have to live elsewhere and be installed by 'root'. No particular problem, but if you are happy with it in your home directory why change it?

bscbrit

Nick1104

Sorry, I cannot help with the Gnome menu question - I'm a dedicated KDE man......


bscbrit

Well, I moved it to /usr/local so now Firefox is /usr/local/Firefox. I guess I can always move it back if I need to.

For now I'll give it a try from that location. Still, if anyone has a good method of creating a link in the main menu, I'd like to hear it.

I'm not sure about putting it on the menu, but in mandrake 9.1 you can put a firefox button on the taskbar by right-clicking on the taskbar, add to panel -> launcher... and fill in 'command' with [location of firefox folder]/firefox. Maybe you could do something similar in RH?

Well I managed to place it on the desktop with the Firefox icon. Still I need to click once then click run before it opens (as I get a box that opens and it says: "firefox is an executable text file. Do you want to run it or display its contents?) So I have to click "run" and then the web browser opes. However, it still allows me to use Firefox. I am also using the Mozilla that came with fedora. Both browsers seem to work just fine.

In any event, if after reading this anyone has an idea of what, if anything can be modified to eliminate the two step clicking process please let me know.

I am running FC1 w/Gnome. I just did a left click on the desktop and chose "create launcher", gave it a name, browsed to "/usr/share/firefox" (or wherever), selected the text script "firefox", slapped on an icon, and it's good to go. Just double click on the desktop icon and hello Firefox.

Thanks. I'll have to check over it again. I must have missed something the first time.

I have a question along the same lines. I am using Fedora Core 1 with Gnome and I am also installing Firefox. I put the firefox folder in /usr/lib/ (that looked to be where all the other applications were). I have created a launcher on the Gnome panel with the command set to '/usr/lib/firefox/firefox'

When I click the launcher, my beloved Firefox window pops up. Hurray. When I click the launcher again (to open a new browser window), it pops up a window asking me to create a new profile. I don't want to do that. I can create a new window from within Firefox, but I want it to behave as bundled mozilla does, click the launcher and a new window comes up.

Looking at the properties for the Mozilla launcher, it's command is 'Mozilla %u'. When I punch 'mozilla' into a terminal window (regardless of directory), it opens a new Mozilla window, but with firefox I need to be in the program's directory.

So, my question(s):
How do I make Firefox behave as Mozilla described above?

Here is my work-around as there seems to be no setting to change (I did a bunch of research on this when I had the same issue.)

Create a shell script with the content below (firefox.sh) and put it in your home directory then point your launcher to it instead of '/usr/lib/firefox/firefox'.

#!/bin/sh

# find pid of running firefox, if any
PID=`ps -ef | grep $UID | grep /usr/local/firefox/firefox-bin | grep -v "grep" | awk '{print $2}'`

# if firefox is not running, start normally
if [ $PID="" ]; then
/usr/lib/firefox/firefox $1
else
/usr/lib/firefox/firefox -remote "openurl( $1, new-window )"
fi

Ok, I took a swing at that. Got a little practice with vi too, good deal.

I'm getting 'permission denied' errors though, even if I try to run it as root.

[root@localhost paulg]# ./firefox.sh
-bash: ./firefox.sh: Permission denied

on line 4, I changed /usr/local/firefox/ to match my install of /usr/lib/firefox/

otherwise it's exaclty as posted.

I noticed that there is a shell script called run-mozilla.sh in the firefox directory. I tried to run it with no success. No error, but nothing happens.

---
Correction, running as root I get this error running 'run-mozilla.sh'

[root@localhost firefox]# ./run-mozilla.sh

run-mozilla.sh: Cannot execute .

Did you make the script executable? (Sorry, I forgot to mention that.)

chmod 755 firefox.sh

I chmod'ed it and it excecutes now, but it does the same as going directly to /usr/lib/firefox/firefox, pops up the window requesting me to create a new profile.

so what is the difference between firefox and firefox-bin anyway?

Does it do that when all of your browsers are closed and you're trying to open the initial one? If so, you may have a lock file in your profile:

~/.phoenix/default/5a9ty20i.slt/lock (the 5a9ty20i.slt is different for you)

Delete it manually and try again.

If the error is happening only on your second browser window attempt, try running the one line by itself and see what results it returns:

ps -ef | grep $UID | grep /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin | grep -v "grep" | awk '{print $2}'

I just noticed that the piece you changed should be /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin not /usr/lib/firefox/firefox. Use my line above when you test it.

Yes, it occurs only on the second attempt, it launches the inital browser window just fine (but so does ./usr/lib/firefox/firefox). And I wouldn't really call the profile prompt an 'error', but it's not the way it should be working, right?

I checked and the script over here has firefox-bin, I must have just typed it here wrong.