Mozilla will only start as root.
 

I installed Mozilla 1.5 on my Mandrake 9.2 using the mozilla-installer. I installed it as root (which was required I believe).

As soon as the installer completes installation, mozilla opens automaticall and runs fine.

After that, in order to use Mozilla, the README states that I should go to the mozilla install directory (in this case /usr/local/mozilla) and run ./mozilla

When I do that, nothing happens. Nothing at all.

After playing around a little, I found out that if I su to root and then type ./mozilla (from within /usr/local/mozilla), mozilla opens and works fine, just like when I installed it.

Any ideas?

check the permissions of the mozilla script command and chmod accordingly. to be safe that the permissions are going to be correct, i'd use:

chmod -R 755 /usr/local/mozilla

Nah, that didn't work.

Before trying that, I deleted everything in the /usr/local/mozilla directory, then changed the ownership and group of the directory to my user account. Then I installed mozilla again without switching to root first. All to no avail. Even when it is installed from my user account, I need to switch to root in order to use it.

Someone please help!

you said you ran the command in a shell terminal. did you get any error output? if so, post what was output.

No there was no output at all, just:

$ ./mozilla <Enter>
$

Hmm...

I figured it out.

For some reason, the .mozilla directory (for storing all my preferences) was created as root, and needed to be owned by my user account. Easily fixed.

Thanks for your help megaspaz, and I hope this can be used by someone else later.

what do you get if you use this command?

ls -l /usr/local/mozilla/mozilla*

i basically get this:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2926 Oct 7 20:49 /usr/local/mozilla/mozilla
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1785484 Oct 7 20:49 /usr/local/mozilla/mozilla-bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 125806 Oct 7 20:49 /usr/local/mozilla/mozilla-xremote

the first 2 are the important ones, since ./mozilla just calls the mozilla-bin script.

anyway, when running the mozilla script, does the prompt immediately show up in the shell terminal?

Cricket, I have this exact same problem - I can only get mozilla to run as root - where is the .mozilla directory that your preferences are stored in? I take it that you just changed the group to users? I'm quite new to linux and am only just getting to grips with file permissions, and this has been one of my nagging problems!

Thanks

You install using root login.

The best way to do it would be using this command

su -


Then when you use mozilla as a normal user the user will own their files that will be created.

If you use su instead of su - there coud be a problem.

If you have this problem then as root run this

chown -R david.david /home/david/.mozilla