Old Netscape on New OS

xiaodown · 09-07-2006, 01:49 PM

I have had one of my people that I do support for declare that he absolutely must have Netscape 7.02 in order for some simulation he's running to work. His machine is running Fedora Core 4.

Let's (much to my chagrin) put aside the comments about Netscape sucks, and why the old version, and tell him to use something else. I've already tried those, and I understand that netscape is not preferable to Mozilla and Firefox (both of which he has already), and that I can't POSSIBLY FATHOM what he would have to have netscape for that mozilla won't do, since they're the same damn thing.

Anyway.

I'm having the infamous "Fatal Error: [-618]: Couldn't open xpistub library" problem.

I've been googling and searching this forum. I've tried many of the common fixes: I've copied libxpistub.so from the mozilla install into /usr/lib and run ldconfig, I've symlinked it to the root of the drive (someone suggested that the installer can't find the lib directory and is looking in the root directory... okay...). I've tried symlinking libxpistub.so in the ~/netscape-installer/xpi/ directory. I've even gone into the xpi directory and unzipped all the *.xpi files (they're really just zipped, and /usr/bin/unzip will unzip them) looking for the other libxpistub.so to do all the same things with.

I've tried poking around in the config.ini script, and adding /usr/lib explicitly in the netscape-installer script (LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH)

Thinking it might be a problem with glibc, since this version of netscape requires glibc-2.1 and fedora is obviously running 2.3, I went to install some "compat" packages, only to find they were already installed (see below)

I even unzipped the .xpi files and tried sticking them all in /usr/lib/netscape, and then symlinking all the library files in the newly extracted stuff to /usr/lib, then running netscape from in there, which gave me a netscape-branded error message window, with no text in it (or, alternatively, sometimes segfaulted).

Nothing has worked.

I've basically told the guy "sorry charlie, you want netscape 7.02, I got some nice RedHat 6.2 CD's in my attic for ya, or you can use Windows 98". But, can anyone think of anything else I haven't tried?

Quasi-useful info

Code:

# rpm -qa | grep glibc
glibc-headers-2.3.6-3
glibc-common-2.3.6-3
glibc-kernheaders-2.4-9.1.94
glibc-2.3.6-3
glibc-devel-2.3.6-3

Code:

# rpm -qa | grep compat
java-1.4.2-gcj-compat-1.4.2.0-40jpp_31rh.FC4.2
compat-gcc-32-3.2.3-47.fc4
compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-132.fc4
java-1.4.2-gcj-compat-devel-1.4.2.0-40jpp_31rh.FC4.2
compat-libgcc-296-2.96-132.fc4

~Wx

whishkah · 09-07-2006, 02:38 PM

How did you try to install it? From a rpm you downloaded from netscape, package manager or 3rd party site? Have you tried to get it from another source?

There is a site I believe it is called rpmbone, though I'm not sure it has been a while. That site will give you packages for specific versions of linux distros and list the depends. -It will even check your computer to see if you matched the depends already...

If none of this works, then I'm sorry I couldn't be more help. It has been a long time since I used Fedora Core 4. I think I did have Netscape though from netscape's site...

jlo_sandog · 09-08-2006, 12:40 AM

install this extension
http://chrispederick.com/work/useragentswitcher/

Then add or edit one of the strings with the one you need
http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/view...agent-strings/

http://www.pgts.com.au/pgtsj/pgtsj0208m.html

xiaodown · 09-08-2006, 02:22 AM

Netscape was downloaded from ftp.netscape.com (/pub/netscape7/7.02/unix/linux22/ or whatever, i'm going from memory). It's an installer tarball, which untars into a config file and a shell script which calls a binary installer.

As in, like, it's a graphical installer. *sigh*

Anyway, after clicking "next" 12 times (clickthru licenses, blah blah blah), the installer proceeds to download the xpi packages from ftp.netscape.com into a directory it creates, and presumably attempts to install from there. That's when I get the error message.

AFAIK, there isn't any rpm for installing netscape. Probably something with license restrictions, etc. There certainly isn't anything in the yum repository.

Useragent won't fix the root of the problem - the local user wants to use netscape to test something. What, and why he can't use moz or FF is beyond me, but changing the useragent is only going to report the browser as different to remote sites, locally it will still be mozilla.

~X

bathory · 09-08-2006, 03:14 AM

Being just curious I've downloaded the whole netscape 7.02 and not just the installer from: ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape7...gnu-sea.tar.gz
and it installed and worked just fine in my Slack box with glibc 2.3.6. Take a look at the output of ldd to see what library you're maybe missing:

Code:

ldd netscape-bin
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
        libgkgfx.so => not found
        libjsj.so => not found
        libmozjs.so => not found
        libxpcom.so => not found
        libplds4.so => not found
        libplc4.so => not found
        libnspr4.so => not found
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7f0e000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/libdl.so.2 (0xb7f0a000)
        libgtk-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-1.2.so.0 (0xb7dec000)
        libgdk-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk-1.2.so.0 (0xb7dba000)
        libgmodule-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-1.2.so.0 (0xb7db7000)
        libglib-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0 (0xb7d96000)
        libXi.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXi.so.6 (0xb7d8e000)
        libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xb7d80000)
        libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb7cb3000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/libm.so.6 (0xb7c8f000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0xb7b60000)
        libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 => /usr/i486-slackware-linux/lib/libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 (0xb7b1e000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7f39000)

Regards

TheExtreme · 03-28-2007, 06:34 PM

cd /path/to/netscape-installer
ln -s /usr/lib/firefox/*.so .
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./netscape-installer-bin