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Adding Firefox 1.5 to 2006 [solved]


jboy
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I'd like to install Firefox 1.5 on 2006 but I'm uncertain what the best way to do that would be.

 

I don't want to remove the default Mandriva 1.0.x version, because as has been pointed out in this thread, that will affect many package dependencies.

 

Several people have reported that they installed Firefox 1.5 on 2006, but how did you do it, specifically?

 

Do you just download the rpm (EDIT: I meant the .tar.gz) from Mozilla and install, while keeping the original Mandriva 1.0.x version? There is only one .mozilla directory in /home, so that would need to be shared between the two versions, right? Does this cause any problems?

 

Has anyone actually removed the default Firefox 1.0.x and then installed 1.5? Did this cause you any problems with other stuff being uninstalled along with it?

 

Any suggestions from those who have actually done this and are familiar with the consequences, or from those who have a clear understanding of how this should be done, are appreciated. Or should adding 1.5 be avoided altogether because of the consequences?

 

If this can be done, please give some clear details on how to do it.

Edited by jboy
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There is only one .mozilla directory, so that would need to be shared between the two versions, right? Does this cause any problems?

 

You should be able to share the same .mozilla directory, but you will need a separate profile for each version within this folder.

 

The first time you run the new firefox if you run firefox-profilemanager you should be given the option of creating a new profile and giving it a name other than Default User. This new profile will reside in .mozilla as a separate profile.

 

This approach SHOULD work, but I have not tried it as I use the Firefox tar file from mozilla.org. I have never tried the rpm. I have also never tried to run two versions together.

 

In retrospect, I don't know much do I? :mr-green:

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Thanks, daniewicz. That's a great tip about setting up a new profile with profilemanager. I remember hearing about profilemanager (probably from one of your posts) but it didn't register with me about using that to create a new profile for a new separate installation of a second version of Firefox.

 

Also, I need to correct what I said about downloading and installing the rpm - I really meant the .tar.gz file from the Mozilla site. I would plan to install using that, not an rpm.

 

Your post gives me some confidence that this is feasible, given the ability to create that separate profile.

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hey jboy. whenever i do it, there is one .mozilla file. but there is also a new mozilla-firefox executable somewhere. you can either change the usr/bin shortcut to this new mozilla-firefox or you can simply make a new one either from your home directory or in the /usr/local/bin (i think this is proper directory structure. someone correct me, please).

 

by shortcut i mean ln -s ___ ____

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I have LE2005, running firefox 1.07 -- from rpm and 1.5 downloaded from mozilla.

 

you dont need to remove the one from rpm... the one that came from mozilla/firefox website is a tar.gz, when you untar it, you can then use it readily, just untar it under /usr/local/ will become /usr/local/firefox-1.5, the one that came from rpm will be installed at /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox.

.

normally, when you hit the icon of currently installed firefox, it will lunch the firefox-1.07.. so, to lunch the firefox 1.5 in particular, you can create a new link to application in your desktop and point the command as /usr/local/firefox-1.5/firefox

.

.

if you have some working plugins that resides in you /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins, you can just then copy that into /usr/local/firefox-1.5/plugins, for them to work also on that version...

.

conficts, only if you have some themes or extensions installed using your 1.07 and is not yet supported with 1.5, once you run the new firefox the firt-time, it will check for any conflict and will let you check then install if there are already updated version of that theme or extension

Edited by aioshin
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I second daniewicz - I always use FF from mozilla.org. I have upgraded FF several times, including upgrade to 1.5. The steps are simple, and you don't have to uninstall rpm or an older version of FF.

 

1. Download firefox-1.5.tar.gz from mozilla.org repositories. Unpack it to your home dir

$ tar -xzvf firefox-1.5.tar.gz

. This will create a new dir called firefox. The executable script is in that directory, and in principle it is all ready to go.

 

2. To make the installation systemwide, you need to move the whole bundle to, say, /usr/local. Open console, then login as root and run the following commands

# cd /usr/local
#ls
Adobe/            doc/      Firefox/     include/  man/    src/
bin/              etc/      lib/      sbin/   games/      libexec/  share/

In my case I have a previosly installed version of FF in /usr/local/Firefox. I wish to keep it, so I simply rename that dir to Firefox-old, then move the new stuff to /usr/local/ and rename the new dir as Firefox-1.5:

# mv Firefox Firefox-old
# mv /home/user/firefox /usr/local/
# mv /usr/local/firefox /usr/local/Firefox-1.5
# ln -s Firefox-1.5 Firefox

The last line creates the symbolic link to the new installation of Firefox. Usually (especially if you have an RPM installation or an entry in KDE menu) firefox is started using a script located in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin/. By creating a symbolic link, you make those scripts to point to the new FF executable. On my system this means that

/usr/local/bin/firefox -> /usr/local/Firefox/firefox -> /usr/local/Firefox-1.5/firefox

so now when I click on an icon linked to /usr/local/bin/firefox, the new FF 1.5 will start instead of the old version. Next time I update FF, I will simply point the symbolic link Firefox to the new bundle, without messing up the system.

 

3. Now you can start FF from the menu, or from CLI. Firefox 1.5 creates keeps user profile in the dir ~/.mozilla/firefox. If you have an older profile there you can follow the above advice and fiddle with profiles, but I never do that. In fact you only need to transfer your bookmarks and user preferences to use with the new version. I simply move ~/.mozilla/firefox dir to ~/.mozilla/firefox-old, let the new version create new profile, then copy bookmarks and user preferences to this new dir:

$ mv  ~/.mozilla/firefox ~/.mozilla/firefox-old
$firefox (or $ /usr/local/firefox)

Now you can check that this has started the new version: Help -> About Mozilla Firefox should show Firefox version 1.5.

 

If everything is okay, copy bookmarks.html and prefs.js from ~/.mozilla/firefox-old/old-profile-name/ to ~/.mozilla/firefox/new-profile-name/. Optionally, you can copy history.dat too.

 

That's all. Though it sounds complicated, you'll be up and running in 10-15 min.

 

Edit: Oh, if you wish to use both old and new versions concurrently, create a symlink to the old version. As root,

:# ln -s /usr/local/Firefox-old/firefox /usr/local/bin/old_firefox

Then you can create a link to application old_firefox on the desktop, or simply start it from the CLI by typing old_firefox.

Edited by coverup
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Guest one2one

None of this EVER works. And there is never any help given to understand the commands given. A real shortcomming of Linux for any newb.

 

Simple quest to move firefox folder to /usr/local by:

# cd /usr/local

#ls

Adobe/ doc/ Firefox/ include/ man/ src/

bin/ etc/ lib/ sbin/ games/ libexec/ share/

 

Results here as:

# cd /usr/local

# ls

bin/ doc/ etc/ games/ include/ lib/ libexec/ sbin/ share/ src/

and nothing is moved anywhere.

 

And if I give the command all at once as:

#ls Adobe/ doc/ Firefox/ include/ man/ src/

bin/ etc/ lib/ sbin/ games/ libexec/ share/

Of course, I have no such directories.

 

I'm in root. All I want to do is copy firefox folder in Home to /usr/local and can't.

Would they ever offer Firefox 1.5 update from the repository? I seem to be able to do that.

Edited by one2one
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one2one wrote:

 

None of this EVER works. And there is never any help given to understand the commands given. A real shortcomming of Linux for any newb.

I understand your frustration. We all had to learn to fly. Coverup gave good instructions that do work, but to a n00b it might as well be Greek.

 

Instead of trying to explain the commands coverup gave and what your misunderstandings are, I suggest you learn the basics of using Midnight Commander for file copy/move, changing permissions, creating symlinks, etc, etc. until you get more familiar with the Linux command line. It should already be installed, just type 'mc' in a terminal and play around with it a bit, it's pretty simple to understand. Of course most GUI file managers like Konqueror or XFE will do such stuff with a Windoze Explorer-style GUI, but MC is more versatile and has the advantage that since it's a text-based GUI, it will run even if you hose your system and can't get X to run. So once you learn basic MC use you always have a familiar interface for file manipulation to fall back on in good times or bad. Also does cool stuff like let you look into rpms or tarballs and much more. A great tool for n00bs or power users.

 

That said, remember to do a couple of things. First, after moving /firefox into /usr/local, make a symlink in /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin to the Firefox executable. This is done because Firefox should be started by calling the symlink, not the executable itself directly. It's easy to do that with MC or you can do it easily from a terminal with these commands (as root):

 

# cd /usr/bin (or /usr/local/bin)

 

That puts you in the directory you want to create the symlink in. Now create the link (edit this line to suit if your directories are different):

 

#ln -s /usr/local/firefox/firefox

 

Now you should be able to run Firefox by calling the symlink by either typing 'firefox' in a terminal or creating a icon aimed at it.

 

Second, run Firefox from a terminal **as root** once before any users try it, so as to create the base files it needs.

 

What I do is since Mandriva rpms install stuff in /usr/lib and executables in /usr/bin, I install Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. packages that I get directly from their site into /usr/local/bin. That keeps them separated from the Mandriva-installed stuff, avoids any conflicts and it's, well just easy that way to install/upgrade/uninstall. Then I put the symlinks I create to run those apps in /usr/local/bin for consistency. Easy to remeber that way.

 

Hope this helps...

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Basically you need to seperate what he is showing you as output from what he types.

 

If you are in a root console just type one at a time

 

cd /usr/local

will change directory

 

then

ls

 

will list the contents ... you should get something similar to coverup.

Noone minds complete beginners but we often need asking for complete beginer instructions ... if we aim the same level at everyone it would take forever when 90% of people quickly get past the absolute basics ... this will inclide you very quickly :D but meanwhile just keep asking for the complete noobie instructions... (add it to your sig in your profile) and that way people will take a bit longer helping you out :D

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First of all, I wish to thank everyone for the really excellent suggestions that gave me the info and confidence to do this. I went ahead and installed firefox 1.5 on LE2005, leaving the original 1.0.x Mandriva version in place. I'll try it on 2006 later. So far, everything works fine. Here's what I did:

 

1. Made a backup of ~/.mozilla (using command: tar cvzf ~/.mozilla)

 

2. Downloaded the .tar.gz from the Mozilla site and put it in /usr/lib

 

3. Unpacked the file (tar xvzf firefox-1.5.tar.gz). This created the /usr/lib/firefox directory and contents.

 

4. I left the original /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox-1.0.2 directory in place. Copied the plugins from the old version to the plugins subdir of the new version. Also copied the nphelix.xpt component from the old components subdir over to the new components subdir (this nphelix.xpt is realplayer-related, since I installed realplayer some time ago).

 

5. I decided to go ahead and use the original .mozilla home dir and did not create a new profile.

 

6. In Mandriva, firefox is launched via the /usr/bin/mozilla-firefox script. Made a backup copy of that as mozilla-firefox-OLD. Then created a new mozilla-firefox script, as follows:

 

#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/lib/firefox
./firefox

6. Clicked the firefox icon in the panel and everything worked great!

 

So the only thing I changed regarding the old 1.0.x version was the /usr/bin/mozilla-firefox script that invoked it. Instead I pointed this script to execute the new version instead. If for some reason, I have to go back to the original firefox version, all I have to do is restore the backups of the .mozilla home dir and mozilla-firefox script.

 

If everything continues to work fine for a week or so, then I'll update my 2006 installs using the same method.

 

EDIT: I went ahead and did this on 2006 as well and it worked fine.

Edited by jboy
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None of this EVER works. And there is never any help given to understand the commands given. A real shortcomming of Linux for any newb.

 

Simple quest to move firefox folder to  /usr/local by:

# cd /usr/local

#ls

Adobe/            doc/      Firefox/    include/  man/    src/

bin/              etc/      lib/      sbin/  games/      libexec/  share/

 

Results here as:

# cd /usr/local

# ls

bin/  doc/  etc/  games/  include/  lib/  libexec/  sbin/  share/  src/

and nothing is moved anywhere.

 

And if I give the command all at once as:

#ls Adobe/            doc/      Firefox/    include/  man/    src/ 

bin/              etc/      lib/      sbin/  games/      libexec/  share/

Of course, I have no such directories.

 

I'm in root. All I want to do is copy firefox folder in Home to /usr/local and can't.

Would they ever offer Firefox 1.5 update from the repository? I seem to be able to do that.

of course nothing is moved anywhere, because... you haven't moved anything!

# cd /usr/local    -> changes to dir /usr/local
# ls -> lists the content of the folder /usr/local.

The output of this commands shown in my post was from my box. Your /usr/local may contain different stuff... You may not even have /usr/local though it's a good Idea to create that dir.

 

 

The original question was how to install FF 1.5 without removing the already installed version. That's what I was trying to explain.

 

As my listing showed, I had an older version of firefox installed, and the next four lines

# mv Firefox Firefox-old
# mv /home/user/firefox /usr/local/
# mv /usr/local/firefox /usr/local/Firefox-1.5
# ln -s Firefox-1.5 Firefox

were to show how you can install FF 1.5 without removing the already installed version. The first line is to rename the old dir, which we want to keep. The 2nd line is actually to move FF1.5 to /usr/local. The rest was explained in my post.

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5. I decided to go ahead and use the original .mozilla home dir and did not create a  new profile.

 

I am glad it has worked for you.

 

For some reason beyond my understanding, if I kept the original profile, I could not install extensions. FF 1.5. just kept hassling me about permissions to install despite I allowed install of third party extensions... Creating clean profile fixed the problem.

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For some reason beyond my understanding, if I kept the original profile, I could not install extensions. FF 1.5. just kept hassling me about permissions to install despite I allowed install of third party extensions... Creating clean profile fixed the problem.

Hmm, didn't have that problem. I was able to install a new extension (fasterfox), update an existing extension, and delete an old extension I no longer wanted. The cleanest thing is probably to do start with a new profile, but I thought I'd try the lazy way out first. Anyway, I'm very happy to have the new version installed. I like it a lot better.

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  • 3 months later...
Guest Larry Shipley

Guys,

 

I'm a n00b too, but this is what I get when I run firefox from the cli:

error while loading share librares: libstdc++.so.5 cannot open shared object file: No such directory exists.

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