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firefox only runs as root...


miemens
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Okay I've installed firefox by unzipping the tar to /usr/share/firefox as root. I made an icon on my desktop for it and at first it worked but I went to install the Nvidia drivers (which didnt work....I just installed 10 OE ....I never had any problems before) and when I restarted X it decided to die for some reason. It will run fine as root from the console but if I try to run it as a normal user I get this error-

 

$ /usr/share/firefox/firefox

INTERNAL ERROR on Browser End: Expected a version > 5! Version = 4

 

System error?:: No such file or directory

 

I should probably mention that right before I tried installing the Nvidia drivers I had installed the java plug-in and it worked fine. Is this a problem with permissions or something that the plug-in did? I have no idea.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

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I can tell you without a doubt that the problem is in the Java plugin, as to fixing it, if I recall correctly the problem is the wrong version of Java is installed; but it's been a while since I went through this.

Do check out Mozilla's faq's and help sites, I believe that is where I found the fix.

 

Capn

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I've read all the stuff at the mozilla site but still can't seem to get this working right. The version of java I installed was j2re1.4.2_04. After I ln -s the plug-ins I can restart the browser and it runs fine and java works perfect. However after a logout I can't even get firefox to launch. I've never had this before... should I try an older version of java or maybe go back to firefox 0.7?

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I should expect that you have the correct java, and clearly it is linked correctly since you said it does work. If I understood, it works if you re-link it up and will continue to work until you log out. Do you have the user agent plug in installed? And if yes, do you set it to show your browser as being Internet Exploiter?

I seem to remember that it does not like to start up when it is in Internet Exploiter mode...

 

Capn

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You have installed the user agent switcher havent you?

 

There are 2 lines in ~/.phoenix/{useraccount}/prefs.js that will need to be changed

 

Those lines are:

user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)");

user_pref("useragentswitcher.1.description", "Internet Explorer 6 (Windows XP)");
user_pref("useragentswitcher.1.useragent", "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)");

 

Find them and make sure it is not "Mozilla/4.*" Change it to 5.0.

Edited by iphitus
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Iphitus , you were right on the money. That was the problem. Thanks for the help, I was really starting to get frustrated. If it wasn't for this board I would probably give up linux and go buy a mac lol.

Not a problem, the same thing puzzled me for a while too!

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and why did this need to be done? I've never heard of it. What causes its need? :unsure:

 

:woops:

There is a bug in the User Agent Switcher, where one of the Agents is set to IE6, Win XP(Mozilla 4.8 Compatible.)

 

Firefox for some unknown reason *really* dislikes this and will not startup until the user agent string is Mozilla 5.0 or higher.

 

Those lines in the config file I gave him to change, changed all references of 4.8 to 5 so that firefox would be happy again. This does not affect the identification on a site and it still will successfully identify as Internet Explorer.

 

The reason it worked for root is that root either did not have the plugin installed or had not changed the ID.

Edited by iphitus
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