Firefox won't install extensions
 

I'm having a problem with installing extensions in Firefox. Tried to find solution to this problem from web searches and searched the forums here for a post about this problem, and couldn't find a similar post or anything on the web.

I know that Firefox should install extensions because when it first started one of the tabs was for the firefox addons or extensions page. One of the featured apps is VideoDownloadHelper and I saw it there, so I clicked on 'add to firefox' and it did add it. Then I restarted when that little popup showed up.

But after I did this, I keep getting download error messages any time I try to install another extension. I searched the web and found a suggestion to uninstall Firefox and reinstall it because it could be a corrupt install. This was the install right off of the live CD but I figured 'what the hey?' and uninstalled and reinstalled. I again installed VideoDownloadHelper after it started up. And again, I started getting these messages, Firefox doesn't seem to want to install extensions from the addons page at mozilla or from the add-ons manager itself.

Example : Searched for Adblock Plus in add-ons manager. Clicked the install button. "Error downloading" replaced the install button, and a message at the top says "There was an error downloading Adblock Plus" and next to it is a Try Again link.
When I go to the add ons page for firefox and click on "+Add to Firefox" button for Adblock Plus I get a little pop-down window from the address bar that says "The add-on could not be downloaded due to a connection error on addons.mozilla.org."

So I am wondering what's going wrong here? I know that Adblock Plus should be fine for Firefox 10.0 because it is still running fine over on Firefox 10.0 under Win 7. I tried a few other extensions I have on Firefox 10.0 over on Win 7 and the same thing keeps happening.

While doing a DuckDuckGo search, and I even tried Google Search, about the problem, I saw on one message board where they were saying something about you had to download the xpi package and put it into some directory in a subdirectory of it's own for each extension. I tried to save the xpi file so I could try to do this, and I got the message "The download could not be saved because of an unknown error. Please try again." And I figured that this downloading a package to a subdirectory shouldn't (but I could be wrong) necessary because you would think if nothing else the Firefox people would have set things up to work right from the add-ons manager when you click on the install button - not to mention the fact that I DID get one extension to install, as I said before VideoDownloadHelper.

Yes indeed, but there are times an add-on is not offered as an available automated install, if the add-on says download and build you are dealing with a source to build and install.

Those offered at Add-Ons firefox site should automatically install by clicks, except---

a) When the author/download site is down for the moment;
b) When your firefox version does not match with the add-on you want to get;
c) When the add-on is obsolete, no longer available, or abandoned.

To check what add-on is currently installed try see your folder:

~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/extensions

you should see if it is there.

While installing from automated sites, upon warning to install "only trusted" ones, you must insist to install it otherwise download session is ended.

Hope this helps. Goodluck.

Do you have enough free space?
Try to increase the firefox cache settings

Kind regards

Thanks malekmustaq, I'm thinking it's got to be something to do with Linux Mint (KDE) (based on Ubuntu) or Firefox. As I said, I was able to install one extension, so I know it was working right at one point. And the other extensions I tried were ones I know work in Firefox 10.0 because they are installed and working on the Win 7 side of my system. I'm wondering if it isn't a problem with Firefox needing to be run under root, or some other system setting not being right.

Thanks repo, I have over 100 GB of free space so I don't think that's the problem. I cleared my cache and I checked "override automatic management of cache" and set my cach limit at 1 GB, but this didn't help either.

What happens if you downgrade firefox to a previous version?

Kind regards

repo, how would I do that? The Software Manager isn't showing any previous versions of it, and I went to the Firefox site and couldn't find any way to get to previous versions. In the Dolphin file manager I did see directories on the system that had names of earlier Firefox versions though. I'm a total Linux newbie here :D

You can download the older versions from
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.or.../releases/9.0/
install it as user in your
directory, and lauch it from here
Kind regards

You could also try to install the latest release from ppa, instead of the live CD
Fist remove firefox
Another thing that comes to mind, are the user rights correct in your /home directory?
replace user with your username

Kind regards

it is odd that "Add block plus " is not working in 10
yesterday FF 9 auto updated to 10 and Add block AND No-script both work


SteveH_66 you are ?? running Firefox 10 ? right
to check click on " help / about Firefox"

then IN FIREFOX and NOT from a google search
FF had a add on manager -- use it!
" tools / add ons"
click on " get add ons "
then in the handy ( provided by firefox )plugin search bar search for " add block"
then click INSTALL

there is NO need to even use google

steveh,
whilst sorting the firefox install out,woud recommend installing icecat-
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ it is a fully free GNU version of firefox and from own experience has worked with all the firefox addons tried with it so far including adblock plus.

Everyone, thank you so much for your kind efforts and VERY useful assistance on this problem. I think I may have solved the problem, I deleted the firefox profile and then uninstalled firefox. Then, I reinstalled Firefox. After that, I followed repo's advice and used the chown command to make sure that my user owns my home directory. I don't know if that helped or not, as I didn't take the time to try the process with ownership of /home/user still set to whatever it was before, and then if it didn't help do the process again after chown on my /home/user directory. Wish I had thought to try that, for someone else possibly having this problem in the future :redface:. Thanks repo, you have given some very useful information for me and other Linux newbies :D

John VV, I was looking on google and DuckDuckGo for forum posts about how to solve the problem, not looking for packages to install :D Although a newbie, I have read enough to know that an important part of the security of Linux is trying to stick to trusted repositories if at ALL possible. The only site I tried to install extensions from was a trusted site addons.mozilla.org. But I do thank you for pointing out this VERY important security measure for any other newbies that might read this post later, stick to the repositories and trusted sites! It helps keep the security of your Linux install strong. :D

Aut/Geek I appreciate the information about IceCat and I plan to take a look at it, sounds cool to have a GNU version of Firefox and I appreciate the people at that project putting in the time and effort to develop and maintain that project, it sounds like an asset to the Linux community. :D

Once again, thanks to everyone for the efforts they have invested on my behalf and that of other people who might run into this situation in the future :D