Firefox for Fedora

[Dotan Cohen]

I want to install Firefox 1.5 but Yum does not provide it. So I looked
for rpms on the net and found a few for Fedora, but none are in
Hebrew. Before I install from the oficial tarball, I have some
concerns that I would like some input on:
1) If I install from the tarball, yum will no longer update Firefox.
Can I tell yum to maintain it anyway?
2) I did locate and found that most ff files are in
/usr/lib/firefox-1.0.7/ . Can I just unpack the new 1.5 tarball in
/usr/lib/firefox-1.5/ and have them live side by side?
3) I currently can type the command "firefox" in the command line to
start Firefox. Will this change to start 1.5 if I install them side by
side? If not, how do I correct it?

Thank you.

Dotan Cohen
http://technology-sleuth.com/long_answer/how_much_memory_will_i_need_for_my_...

[thomas cameron]

On Tue, 2005-12-27 at 19:03 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> I want to install Firefox 1.5 but Yum does not provide it. So I looked
> for rpms on the net and found a few for Fedora, but none are in
> Hebrew. Before I install from the oficial tarball, I have some
> concerns that I would like some input on:
> If I install from the tarball, yum will no longer update Firefox.
>
> Can I tell yum to maintain it anyway?
> 2) I did locate and found that most ff files are in
> /usr/lib/firefox-1.0.7/ . Can I just unpack the new 1.5 tarball in
> /usr/lib/firefox-1.5/ and have them live side by side?
> 3) I currently can type the command "firefox" in the command line to
> start Firefox. Will this change to start 1.5 if I install them side by
> side? If not, how do I correct it?

I have installed Firefox 1.5 while keeping the FC stuff there.  What I
did was to download the tarball from www.getfirefox.com into /usr/local
so that the executable is /usr/local/firefox/firefox.  Then I
edit /etc/profile, putting /usr/local/firefox into the PATH environment
variable.  The way I do it is to add this line:

PATH="/usr/local/firefox:$PATH"

directly above the line that reads:

export PATH USER LOGNAME MAIL HOSTNAME HISTSIZE INPUTRC

When anyone logs in, Firefox 1.5 is ahead of everything else in their
search path.

This is not elegant, but it does work pretty well.

There are other ways of doing it, but this quick-n-dirty hack works OK
for me.

TC

[Dotan Cohen]

On 12/27/05, Thomas Cameron  wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-12-27 at 19:03 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > I want to install Firefox 1.5 but Yum does not provide it. So I looked
> > for rpms on the net and found a few for Fedora, but none are in
> > Hebrew. Before I install from the oficial tarball, I have some
> > concerns that I would like some input on:
> > If I install from the tarball, yum will no longer update Firefox.
> >
> > Can I tell yum to maintain it anyway?
> > 2) I did locate and found that most ff files are in
> > /usr/lib/firefox-1.0.7/ . Can I just unpack the new 1.5 tarball in
> > /usr/lib/firefox-1.5/ and have them live side by side?
> > 3) I currently can type the command "firefox" in the command line to
> > start Firefox. Will this change to start 1.5 if I install them side by
> > side? If not, how do I correct it?
>
> I have installed Firefox 1.5 while keeping the FC stuff there.  What I
> did was to download the tarball from www.getfirefox.com into /usr/local
> so that the executable is /usr/local/firefox/firefox.  Then I
> edit /etc/profile, putting /usr/local/firefox into the PATH environment
> variable.  The way I do it is to add this line:
>
> PATH="/usr/local/firefox:$PATH"
>
> directly above the line that reads:
>
> export PATH USER LOGNAME MAIL HOSTNAME HISTSIZE INPUTRC
>
> When anyone logs in, Firefox 1.5 is ahead of everything else in their
> search path.
>
> This is not elegant, but it does work pretty well.
>
> There are other ways of doing it, but this quick-n-dirty hack works OK
> for me.
>
> TC

This is not working for me. I took the line back out. How can I make
it so that when the command "firefox" is given at the command line, it
opens 1.5 and not 1.0.7? I don't want to simply change the file
associations in KDE.

Dotan Cohen
http://technology-sleuth.com/long_answer/what_are_the_advantages_of_lcd_moni...
(

[thomas cameron]

On Wed, 2005-12-28 at 21:34 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> On 12/27/05, Thomas Cameron  wrote:
> > On Tue, 2005-12-27 at 19:03 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > > I want to install Firefox 1.5 but Yum does not provide it. So I looked
> > > for rpms on the net and found a few for Fedora, but none are in
> > > Hebrew. Before I install from the oficial tarball, I have some
> > > concerns that I would like some input on:
> > > If I install from the tarball, yum will no longer update Firefox.
> > >
> > > Can I tell yum to maintain it anyway?
> > > 2) I did locate and found that most ff files are in
> > > /usr/lib/firefox-1.0.7/ . Can I just unpack the new 1.5 tarball in
> > > /usr/lib/firefox-1.5/ and have them live side by side?
> > > 3) I currently can type the command "firefox" in the command line to
> > > start Firefox. Will this change to start 1.5 if I install them side by
> > > side? If not, how do I correct it?
> >
> > I have installed Firefox 1.5 while keeping the FC stuff there.  What I
> > did was to download the tarball from www.getfirefox.com into /usr/local
> > so that the executable is /usr/local/firefox/firefox.  Then I
> > edit /etc/profile, putting /usr/local/firefox into the PATH environment
> > variable.  The way I do it is to add this line:
> >
> > PATH="/usr/local/firefox:$PATH"
> >
> > directly above the line that reads:
> >
> > export PATH USER LOGNAME MAIL HOSTNAME HISTSIZE INPUTRC
> >
> > When anyone logs in, Firefox 1.5 is ahead of everything else in their
> > search path.
> >
> > This is not elegant, but it does work pretty well.
> >
> > There are other ways of doing it, but this quick-n-dirty hack works OK
> > for me.
> >
> > TC
>
> This is not working for me. I took the line back out. How can I make
> it so that when the command "firefox" is given at the command line, it
> opens 1.5 and not 1.0.7? I don't want to simply change the file
> associations in KDE.

Did you log out and log back in after changing /etc/profile?  This
method has worked for me for years.

TC

[Dotan Cohen]

On 12/30/05, Thomas Cameron  wrote:
> Did you log out and log back in after changing /etc/profile?  This
> method has worked for me for years.
>
> TC

I went so far as to reboot the machine.

Dotan Cohen
http://technology-sleuth.com/technical_answer/why_are_internet_greeting_card...
|

[Richard England]

Dotan Cohen wrote:
> On 12/30/05, Thomas Cameron  wrote:
> > Did you log out and log back in after changing /etc/profile?  This
> > method has worked for me for years.
> >
> > TC
>
> I went so far as to reboot the machine.
>
> Dotan Cohen
> http://technology-sleuth.com/technical_answer/why_are_internet_greeting_card...
> |

With Thomas'  change back in place, log out, log in, and then see what 
the  "whereis"  command tells you about where Firefox is being found by 
typing:
    whereis  firefox

The command:
    which firefox
command can be informative sometimes, as well.  Look to see if your 
personal ".profile" or ".bash_profile" contains a path that leads to the 
alternate (older) firefox executable.

[Dotan Cohen]

On 12/31/05, Richard England  wrote:
> Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > On 12/30/05, Thomas Cameron  wrote:
> > > Did you log out and log back in after changing /etc/profile?  This
> > > method has worked for me for years.
> > >
> > > TC
> >
> > I went so far as to reboot the machine.
> >
> > Dotan Cohen
>
> With Thomas'  change back in place, log out, log in, and then see what
> the  "whereis"  command tells you about where Firefox is being found by
> typing:
>     whereis  firefox
>
> The command:
>     which firefox
> command can be informative sometimes, as well.  Look to see if your
> personal ".profile" or ".bash_profile" contains a path that leads to the
> alternate (older) firefox executable.

Thanks, but this is no longer nessacary. After I changed the syslink
it worked great. And to me, this seems to be the 'proper' method. All
new users on the machine will get 1.5 when they command 'firefox'- no
hacks.

Dotan Cohen
http://technology-sleuth.com/long_answer/what_are_the_advantages_of_lcd_moni...
&^

[John Summerfield]

Dotan Cohen wrote:
> Thanks, but this is no longer nessacary. After I changed the syslink
> it worked great. And to me, this seems to be the 'proper' method. All
> new users on the machine will get 1.5 when they command 'firefox'- no
> hacks.

And when next you upgrade firefox? What then?
> Dotan Cohen
> http://technology-sleuth.com/long_answer/what_are_the_advantages_of_lcd_moni...
> &^

[Dotan Cohen]

On 1/1/06, John Summerfied  wrote:
> Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > Thanks, but this is no longer nessacary. After I changed the syslink
> > it worked great. And to me, this seems to be the 'proper' method. All
> > new users on the machine will get 1.5 when they command 'firefox'- no
> > hacks.
>
> And when next you upgrade firefox? What then?
> Cheers
> John

Replace the syslink again. Unless you could recommend another method
that would call 1.5 when the command "firefox" is given (for all
users) and leave 1.0.7 intact.

Dotan Cohen
http://technology-sleuth.com/question/how_can_i_be_safe_online.html
_+

Firefox for Fedora - build rpm

[Gerald Thompson]

On Tue, 2005-12-27 at 19:03 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> I want to install Firefox 1.5 but Yum does not provide it. So I looked
> for rpms on the net and found a few for Fedora, but none are in
> Hebrew. Before I install from the oficial tarball, I have some
> concerns that I would like some input on:
> If I install from the tarball, yum will no longer update Firefox.
>
> Can I tell yum to maintain it anyway?
> 2) I did locate and found that most ff files are in
> /usr/lib/firefox-1.0.7/ . Can I just unpack the new 1.5 tarball in
> /usr/lib/firefox-1.5/ and have them live side by side?
> 3) I currently can type the command "firefox" in the command line to
> start Firefox. Will this change to start 1.5 if I install them side by
> side? If not, how do I correct it?

Hi Dotan;

First off I am sorry for posting this explanation to different threads
but I noticed several people strugling with the same issue, this is how
to build the Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5 RPMs

You can build your own RPM for Firefox and Thunderbird and it will
overwrite the older version.  Also I find it useful to use

yum localinstall "path to the rpm"

The benefit of using yum localinstall is if there is a missing
dependency then it will automatically download it.

Here is the info on building Firefox and Thunderbird RPM's

Do this first:
http://www.fedoranews.org/tchung/rpmbuild/

Another method to create rpmbuild directory in your home directory is
using fedora-rpmdevtools
Thanks to Mr. Warren Togami's suggestion.

1) Install fedora-rpmdevtools binary RPM from Fedora Extras for your
Fedora release.
   $ sudo yum install fedora-rpmdevtools

2) As a non-root user, run fedora-buildrpmtree to create rpmbuild
directory.
   $ fedora-buildrpmtree

Do these next:

http://www.fedoranews.org/tchung/firefox/

http://www.fedoranews.org/tchung/thunderbird/

It has worked perfectly for me following the steps on those web sites.