coverup Posted September 19, 2006 Report Share Posted September 19, 2006 Out of curiousity, I let firefox update itself automatically. The update went seemlessly, which first surprised me a lot. But then I checked permissions, and it turned out that the whole bundle had user read/write permissions. I can see why - when I unstalled firefox for the first time, I used the tarball from mozilla, uncompressed it in my home directory, then, as root, moved the whole firefox directory to /usr/local/. Aparently, permissions did not change. I am not comfortable with having loads of user editable files in/usr/local/. My question is, if I make the firefox directory owned by root, will the autoupdate continue to work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted September 19, 2006 Report Share Posted September 19, 2006 No, unless of course you run FF as root. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted September 19, 2006 Author Report Share Posted September 19, 2006 No, unless of course you run FF as root. What is the point of having autoupdate enabled then? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daniewicz Posted September 19, 2006 Report Share Posted September 19, 2006 (edited) coverup: When I installed firefox I downloaded the 1.5.07 tarball and uncompressed it in my home directory. Then, as root, moved the whole firefox directory to /opt. I did not select the automatic update option, and I have never used it in the past. When I check permissions of various folders and files in the directory firefox, root is the owner for all. I did run firefox as root the very first time it was started as instructed by a google search. I recall getting a chrome related warning message if I didn't (this was a long time ago). Edited September 19, 2006 by daniewicz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted September 19, 2006 Report Share Posted September 19, 2006 Why bother moving it out of your home directory? Unless you have multiple users that need to use firefox, I see no reason to move the firefox directory anywhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonEberger Posted September 19, 2006 Report Share Posted September 19, 2006 i agree. i see no point in moving it from your /home partition if you're the only one using the entire machine. in many ways, isn't this more security for your computer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daniewicz Posted September 19, 2006 Report Share Posted September 19, 2006 When I first started using linux several years ago, a google search directed me to the /opt/firefox location, and I have been using this location since that time. I don't have any real justification beyond that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted September 19, 2006 Author Report Share Posted September 19, 2006 Thanks guys, I usually follow the same procedure as described by daniewicz except for putting firefox directory in /usr/local/.... There are no particular reason for that. As for permissions, I still have copies of 1.0.7, 1.5.0.1 and 1.5.0.7 in my archive, 1.0.7 stuff is owned by root, and the newer ones 1.5.0.1 and 1.5.0.7 (which was updated from the original 1.5.0.6) are owned by user. I will need to see why this has happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted September 20, 2006 Report Share Posted September 20, 2006 I always put in /usr/local/mozilla/firefox. My updates work also. How did you uncompress? As your normal user? Maybe this is why you can overwrite, even though you moved the files as root, the files still belong to you. My files also belong to my username. I used: ls -l /usr/local/mozilla/firefox to see who owned them. If root owned them, might make it difficult for the normal user to update. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted September 20, 2006 Author Report Share Posted September 20, 2006 Yes, I am pretty shure I uncompressed FF as user, and then moved the directory as root. I have done a quick test - moving files as root does not change the owner, so that explains why I own the FF files. I am now certain that the whole premise of autoupdates is a flaw, and won't allow updates anymore. My message to everybody who put the FF outside of the home dir - change the file permissions and forget about automatic updates Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reiver_Fluffi Posted September 21, 2006 Report Share Posted September 21, 2006 Pretty sure the norm is: distro-packaged binaries>> /usr upstream sources/binaries>> /opt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted September 21, 2006 Report Share Posted September 21, 2006 Pretty sure the norm is: distro-packaged binaries>> /usr upstream sources/binaries>> /opt /opt: /opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software packages. A package to be installed in /opt must locate its static files in a separate /opt/<package> or /opt/<provider> directory tree, where <package> is a name that describes the software package and <provider> is the provider's LANANA registered name. this can include distro-packaged binaries, as well as "upstream" or "third party" /usr/bin: This is the primary directory of executable commands on the system./usr/bin/ should really only include executable commands, not file data. it's best to put packages (with all associated data and such) in /opt/programname and then link the executable on /usr/bin, IMHE [in my humble experience]. unless of course the program is just an executable (references system libs that would be in /usr/lib, no program-specific data), in which case sticking it into /usr/bin would be fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted September 22, 2006 Author Report Share Posted September 22, 2006 Pretty sure the norm is: distro-packaged binaries>> /usr upstream sources/binaries>> /opt The majority of the third party software which come as tarballs or .tgz install to /usr/local/ and put executables or symlinks to usr/local/bin. Few years back when I used firefox for the first time, it came with installer which did exactly that. In fact only software which installs to /opt that I know of are Adobe Reader, Crossover Office, Picasa and Grisoft Antivirus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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