installing firefox 2.0 on RHEL4
 

Hi,

i downloaded the firefox tar file and untarred. In the extracted folder there no info regarding the installation of it. no "install" file or no ".configure" files (as generally may happen). readme.txt guides me to some url where there is also no info where to start its installation.It only specifies that new version overwrites the old version. but nothing like that also happens and when i start firefox it only opens the old version.

how can i install and configure firefox 2.0

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Nature and wisdom never are at strife

I remember running into the same problem. For some unknown reason, they did not post any install instructions. Since the tar files are compiled binaries, I followed the instructions for an earlier release. Here is a sample.

Change the above to match the tar file you downloaded.

Things to consider, they do recommend deleting your old install. It is up to you, I did, and I did not loose any bookmarks. I believe they are stored in your /home/user directory.

Copy the tar file to the area of the file system you want to install to. I put mine in /usr and installed as root. If you install it to your home directory, only your user can access firefox. That is O.K. if it is a single suer system. I have several user, so I put it in /usr.

Running the tar command there will create a directory structure. Last thing I did was create a desktop icon to launch. It will launch form the command line also, but you will have to specify the path to firefox.

The other thing I forget, is changing the symlink to java. If you don't, you will get messages about plugins not being installed.

Add what ever add-ons you like. The ones for older versions probably won't work.

That is about it.

[edit]

Linux



First, download the latest release to your home directory with your browser or download manager.

bash$ cd ~
bash$ wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/.../firefox-<version>.tar.gz


Next, extract the contents with an archiving utility such as Ark or tar.

bash$ tar zxf firefox-<version>.tar.gz


Now you must select the installation directory. If you are the only user, the extracted files could stay where they are, but If this is a multi-user system, the firefox directory must be moved to a publicly accessible location such as /usr/local or /opt.

bash$ su
<password>
bash# mv firefox /usr/local
bash# chown -R root:root /usr/local/firefox


The installation is more or less complete, but it's recommended that the firefox script be available somewhere in your path to avoid the inconvenience of having to enter the full path. This can be accomplished by creating a symbolic link in the relative 'bin' directory.


For the personal installation:

bash$ mkdir bin
bash$ cd bin
bash$ ln -s ../firefox/firefox .


Or the mult-user installation (as root):

bash# cd /usr/local/bin
bash# ln -s ../firefox/firefox .


Many Linux distributions already include /usr/local/bin and ~/bin in their global environment variable path, which can easily be verified by running 'firefox' from the shell or the desktop environment's (run) menu. If execution fails (command not found), you can adjust the path by appending "/usr/local/bin:$HOME/bin" to the existing PATH variable in /etc/profile and/or /etc/bashrc.