This doesn't seem to be a terribly unique problem, so here's my version of it: I can't get Firefox to load under SuSE 9.1. The "loading' icon appears, yet nothing happens. I've tried installing Firforx using both the installer and turnkey tarballs, as well as an RPM floating around out there. All three versions exhibit the same behaviour.

I've found several threads on the subject of "How to make Firefox work," almost all of which make suggestions like "run as root the first time" or "execute + xhost first." None of this has worked for me

Help, please? What am I missing? I don't recall Red Hat being nearly so difficult...

What file of Firefox are you trying to load and how? Is it installed in your home dir?

Firefox and Mozilla are very easy to install. Just download the file to whatever directory you want, then browse to that directory, right click the file and 'extract here'. In firefox, that will create a file called Firefox-Installer. Open it and look for the 'firefox' file. Click on that and you're browsing!!! You can then create a link and drag it to the desktop. You're also going to want to tackle linking Java and Flashplayer to Firefox. Flash is an easy install, but Java can sometimes be a pain. If the plugin finder doesn't work (mine never did, in spite of it claiming 'success'), go to the Sun Java site and carefully follow the instructions. Have fun!

I can install it fine in [at least] two of three cases, but I can't load it in any case. SuSE sits and thinks for awhile, then nothing happens.

To answer the first reply: I've tried installing all three versions, and I've tried loading anything that looked remotely like the proper file (just about anything starting with "firefox"). The turnkey tarball I installed in the home directory (unzipped, rather) and the RPM installed itself somewhere else (/opt or some such--I'm not in SuSE right now, modem troubles). I don't think the installer tarball ever went off properly.

I've got it installed on two computers here. On one it opens from
~/firefox-installer/firefox and on the other comp it opens from
~/firefox/firefox
It depends upon which file you used and how you installed it. The
first one is from the file firefox-0.9.1-i686-linux-gtk2+xft-installer.tar.gz
and the second one was from firefox-0.9.1-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz
which I compiled from source. Either way, you want to use the file
firefox and not firefox-bin to launch the app. Whenever you use the
firefox-bin file what you're describing happens.

I don't think you're missing anything C38368. I'm running Suse 9.1 on one of my boxen and experienced exactly the same problem as you: neither 0.9 nor 0.9.1 seems to want to install under Suse.

I've been using Firefox ever since it was released, using the instructions Chinaman has outlined (and which are completely accurate) and the installation on my Slack boxes went flawlessly. Naturally I was expecting the the Firefox installation in Suse to be a 2 minute job. Instead, it repeatedly just seemed to hang for no apparent reason just as you describe. I'm not exactly sure what the issue is/was, but I gotta have my Firefox, and after spending about 45 minutes screwing around with it, I took a different route.

My solution (which is pretty lame) is to get Firefox 0.8 and install that. That worked just fine. -- J.W.

Hey, Firefox-0.8 was great for me with one exception - it crashed when
running a javascript history at my bank's website. Not acceptable at all,
for what good is online banking if you can't see your transactions? No
other browser did this, and 0.8 did it no matter what version of java I
had installed. Not so with 0.9 or 0.9.1.

Did you guys see the notes on this page? I'm sure you did J.W.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/fire....9.html#issues

I put firefox in my /home/user folder. in suse 9.1 you can then go to start menu - preferences - menu editor and make an entry for firefox using /home/yourusername/firefox/firefox as the target.

The known issues that I am having I looked up on the link that Chinaman posted. It stated

"Users of nightly builds between 0.8 and 0.9, including the Release Candidate are advised to delete the extensions folder in their profile folder if the application enters an infinite restart loop on startup."

This sounds like it is the problem. But where the heck is the extensions folder?? There isn't anything like that under the Default User directory.

Here we go...
/home/username/firefox/extensions

Edit: Also for you guys who can't get firefox to install, in that
/home/username/firefox directory look at the file named
install.log

This is the problem. There is no directory under my home directory called firefox.

We have .phoenix and .mozilla but no firefox directory.

So then, there's some problems with the Fedora nightly builds, apparently.

Just for kicks, why don't you go here
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o...eleases/0.9.1/
and get
firefox-0.9.1-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz
and move it to your
/home/username/ directory
and then open a terminal and as user issue
bash-2.05b$ tar zxvf firefox-0.9.1-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz
and then issue
bash-2.05b$ cd firefox
and watch Firefox launch?

It's as easy as falling off a horse. If I can do it, anybody can...

Then wherever you make your shortcuts, just create
/home/username/firefox/firefox
and use that from then on instead of launching from a term.

Forgive me if this offends you, but if that fails, try another distribution. I'm a
complete and total idiot when it comes to *nix, but my Slackware-10.0 system
"just works" really well right out of the box. The one from which I'm typing to
you was installed last night on a brand new hard drive. I've got Firefox running,
got a shortcut in Fluxbox to launch it, installed Flash player 7 by issuing
bash-2.05b$ tar zxvf install_flash_player_7_linux.tar.gz
and then
bash-2.05b$ cd install_flash_player_7_linux
and then
bash-2.05b$ pico Readme.txt
and then
bash-2.05b$ ./flashplayer-installer
just so I could see the new Linspire song (it's a must view) and I could also
hear it! First time I've seen and heard Flash in Linux!

Sound just work after I issued
bash-2.05b$ alsamixer
and then
bash-2.05b# alsactl store

Man, I've been copying and pasting commands to you from my bash history.
It's easy, I tell you! If Fedora does things differently, then you'll need to learn
Fedora. As someone once told me, "If you run RedHat you'll learn how RedHat
works, cause it does things unique to RedHat. If you run Slackware, you'll learn
how Linux works."

NB: With Firefox there are two files you can use to install from the link I gave you.
firefox-0.9.1-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz
and
firefox-0.9.1-i686-linux-gtk2+xft-installer.tar.gz
Either one should be untarred the same way, and then read the Readme file.

I tell you, it's as easy as falling off a horse.

When I tried to run RedHat a little over a year ago I had similar problems.

I don't really want to get a TarBall version of Mozilla. I just switched from Fedora to SuSE just because SuSE follows the KDE project more so that RH.

I also have a lot of stuff saved as well from running the FireFox RPM. It just so happens that when I upgraded to 9.1 things went to heck.

First off,

Don't feel bad C38368. I've been beat up by this too. I've done some digging around on it and mucked around a bit myself. Here's what I came up with. I think it will help you understand what's going on better (though I don't get it all myself).

It looks like something changed in FireFox .9 and Thunderbird .7 with regards to a) profiles and b) X-Windows security. So, if the following conditions all are met by (not so) happy coincidence, you end up with a very frustrating but fixable problem. The conditions are:

1.) You are running SuSE Linux 9.1
2.) You install FF .9.x or TB .7.x
3.) You are upgrading from a previous FF or TB install.


It looks like this is the case with you. I've put together some instructions; they assume you are using both FireFox and ThunderBird. Anyway, here's what I found:

1.) Remove SuSE 9.1 FF and TB packages (if they are on at all). They will only cause you grief. This will not delete your profile(s). Nothing depends on them, so you won't break anything by removing these packages.

2.) Install FF & TB someplace other than the SuSE package directory. I used /opt/Mozilla/firefox and /opt/Mozilla/thunderbird. For FireFox, using the installer is fine. For Thunderbird, you will have to use the .tar.gz; there is no installer for TB on Linux yet.

3.) Run 'xhost +' (leave out the ticks) from a command prompt. Root access is not necessary.

4.) Run firefox and thunderbird from the directories where you installed them. If you want to be able to run them from the search path, put sym links to them in /usr/bin. They should run fine now.

5.) Close both apps.

6.) Run 'xhost -'.

7.) Rerun both and they should be fine.


If that doesn't help, try renaming the profile directories (.phoenix and .thunderbird) and repeat steps 3-7. Then remove any new profiles created, and put the old ones back in and repeat 3-7 again. Let us know if you still have trouble.