Dependencies of Firefox

[Havard Rast Blok]

Hi,

After updating to 1.5.0.7-1.fc5 (on a rather pristine FC5 installation)
I got the wildly reported error when trying to access a site over HTTPS:

Unexpected response from server
    Firefox doesn't know how to communicate with the server.
    *   Check to make sure your system has the Personal Security
        Manager installed.

After much googling, grumbling and yumming, I finally got it working
with these updates (I'm not sure if the openssl was necessary):

yum list firefox nss openssl mod_ssl

firefox.i386	1.5.0.7-1.fc5
mod_ssl.i386	1:2.2.2-1.2
nss.i386	3.11.3-0.5.fc5
openssl.i686	0.9.8a-5.3

My question is now, why are these packages not updated by yum as
dependencies of firefox? Surely, accessing https sites is a rather
common task. Even my mom needs this.

Unfortunately, I've not had the time to check if this has changed in FC6
Test 3.

Regards,

Havard

[Rex Dieter]

Havard Rast Blok wrote:
> After much googling, grumbling and yumming, I finally got it working
> with these updates (I'm not sure if the openssl was necessary):
>
> yum list firefox nss openssl mod_ssl
>
> firefox.i386  1.5.0.7-1.fc5
> mod_ssl.i386  1:2.2.2-1.2
> nss.i386      3.11.3-0.5.fc5
> openssl.i686  0.9.8a-5.3
>
> My question is now, why are these packages not updated by yum as
> dependencies of firefox?

There *is* a dependancy on nss, but you probably just had an older
(non-functioning) version.  Updating it to the latest (probably) is what
fixed it.

-- Rex

[Ian Burrell]

On 9/26/06, Havard Rast Blok  wrote:
> After updating to 1.5.0.7-1.fc5 (on a rather pristine FC5 installation)
> I got the wildly reported error when trying to access a site over HTTPS:
>     Unexpected response from server
>     Firefox doesn't know how to communicate with the server.
>     *   Check to make sure your system has the Personal Security
>         Manager installed.
>
> After much googling, grumbling and yumming, I finally got it working
> with these updates (I'm not sure if the openssl was necessary):
>
> yum list firefox nss openssl mod_ssl
>
> firefox.i386    1.5.0.7-1.fc5
> mod_ssl.i386    1:2.2.2-1.2
> nss.i386        3.11.3-0.5.fc5
> openssl.i686    0.9.8a-5.3
>
> My question is now, why are these packages not updated by yum as
> dependencies of firefox? Surely, accessing https sites is a rather
> common task. Even my mom needs this.

My impression is that there is an unstated dependency between firefox
and the exact version of nss that it was built against.  The new
firefox needs the new nss to work correctly.  "yum update firefox"
will only update its depdencies if there is a depdency between the
versions.  Updating just firefox causes a failure. Most people didn't
see a problem because they did "yum update" and updated them together.

- Ian