upgradepkg worked; now Firefox won't start
 

Edit: This problem started when I accidentally used a 64-bit package to upgrade my 32-bit system.



Hi, all. Thanks in advance for your help!

I upgraded Firefox, and now it won't start. I don't know where to find any relevant error messages. How do I figure out what's wrong?

I downloaded the Firefox update from ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackwar..._slack13.0.txz and installed it with the command The result was as follows:

I started up fluxbox and selected firefox from the menu, and there was no response. I have attached a capture of the command entered in xterm. Here is the output for

I'm going to guess that something got hosed either on the download or the install. If I were in your shoes, I'd use removepkg to uninstall firefox and then install a newly downloaded version. Be sure to check the md5sum to see that the download didn't get garbled. By the way, you may want to consider using slackpkg to do your updates. It automatically checks that the download is good.

Thanks for your quick response, Hangdog.

Summary: I uninstalled the updated version, installed an older version, and I'm still having the same problem -- Firefox doesn't start.

Hopefully it's irrelevant, but before I updated Firefox, I also updated bind with the file at ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackwar..._slack13.0.txz



The details on what I've done since my last post:

I checked the md5sum on the aforementioned file mozilla-firefox-3.6.4-x86_64-1_slack13.0.txz as well as on the install file for a previous version, downloaded from http://slackware.cs.utah.edu/pub/sla...5.2-i686-1.txz. All the md5sums look good.

I used the command su -c "removepkg mozilla-firefox-3.6.4-x86_64-1_slack13.0.txz" and got the following output:

Then I used the command su -c "installpkg mozilla-firefox-3.5.2-i686-1.txz" and got the following output:

I'm still getting the same lack of response when I try to start Firefox from within fluxbox. I've tried opening it in blackbox as well -- same lack of response.

Hmm, that's embarrassing, and likely how this mess started...

The file I used for the initial upgradepkg was mozilla-firefox-3.6.4-x86_64-1_slack13.0.txz. I'm running on 32-bit Slackware 13.0.

I tried updating Firefox with slackpkg. The upgrade command found that I had "a broken /var/log/packages - with two versions of the same package" -- I had two versions of Adobe acrobat installed. After removing the older version, slackpkg updated firefox.

Firefox still doesn't open.

Well, that would certainly would explain why Firefox wasn't running.


I'd take a look at your packages and make sure you don't have any other 64 bit packages installed by mistake (ls /var/log/packages | grep 64). I'd also try starting firefox from the command line and see if it complains about anything.

That's odd. I believe you should get some kind of error when you tried to run a 64bit program on a 32bit system. I'm sure I recall correctly, but I tried something similar and thought I got some executable error of some sort.

Dinithion:

I guess it's subject to the package one is installing. I'm happy to hear that at least some of the packages warn about this. But I expect I won't have the chance to make the same mistake if I use slackpkg from here on out.


Hangdog:

That's the only 64-bit package that I've installed. ls /var/log/packages|grep 64 yielded only xf86-video-mach64-6.8.2-i486-1.

I tried the commands firefox and /usr/bin/firefox in an xterm window within fluxbox, with no response. I have attached a screencap of that. Afterward, I typed ps -e, which shows that there aren't any instances of firefox running as a result:

I tried typing firefox into the terminal, and it didn't complain, either. No "Error: no display specified" or anything.

Thanks so much for the help you've already given!


I've been playing with slackpkg to see if updating the system might help.

First, I blacklisted kernel-modules, kernel-modules-smp, kernel-source, kernel-headers, kernel-generic, kernel-generic-smp, kernel-huge, kernel-huge-smp, openoffice.org, and lyx.

Then I used the command slackpkg remove firefox.

Then I used the command slackpkg clean-system, which didn't find anything to remove.

Then I ran slackpkg upgrade-all and chose to overwrite the old configuration files with the new ones.

Then I used slackpkg install-new, which installed Firefox.

Firefox still doesn't work, though.

That isn't a 64 bit package, it just has 64 in the name. All of Slackware's 64 bit packages have x86_64 at the end of the package name.

Hm. Time to do a little fishing.

Look in ~/.mozilla/firefox and see if there are any crash reports.
In fact, you might just move or delete ~/.mozilla and see if that helps. It could be trying to start 64 bit firefox hosed something up. Be aware this would affect the customizations you did on all mozilla programs, so maybe renaming it is the safest thing for now.
If you enter which firefox in the console, what is returned?
If you start firefox by using that path (so use /path/to/firefox instead of just firefox) does anything change?
Did you do a full install of Slackware? Was it a clean install or an upgrade?
Is /usr/lib64 a directory on your system? If so, delete it and try again.

Ha! Success! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Hangdog!


In case anyone else makes this silly mistake, here's what fixed it:

I used userdel to delete a user account I don't use and deleted that account's folder from /home/. There is now only one user account remaining that I created on my system.

slocate shows that the only occurrence of '.mozilla/firefox' is within my user account.

I renamed ~/.mozilla/firefox/ to ~/.mozilla/firefox.bak/

I typed slackpkg remove firefox, then slackpkg update, then slackpkg install firefox, which installed version 3.6.6 (rather than 3.6.5, which was the current version a few days ago).


And in case anyone's interested, here are the answers to the other questions Hangdog posed:

The CrashReports folder offered up a txt file with a cryptic number. which firefox returned /usr/bin/firefox, and typing that into xterm got the usual lack of response. It was a full, clean install of Slackware 13.0, and I have not upgraded the kernel. /usr/lib64 was not on my system.