approved mechanism to switch to 32-bit firefox?

[Jack Howarth]

   I noticed that a fresh install of x86_64 FC6 resulted in
both i386 and x86_64 packages for firefox being installed.
I would like to configure my machine to default to the
i386 version of firefox and am wondering if there is
an approved mechanism to setting this (since FC6 went
out of its way to preinstall the i386 binaries on
x86_64)?
                  Jack

[Joel Gomberg]

Jack Howarth wrote:
>     I noticed that a fresh install of x86_64 FC6 resulted in
>  both i386 and x86_64 packages for firefox being installed.
>  I would like to configure my machine to default to the
>  i386 version of firefox and am wondering if there is
>  an approved mechanism to setting this (since FC6 went
>  out of its way to preinstall the i386 binaries on
>  x86_64)? 
Well, I doubt this is an "approved" method, but I edit 
/usr/bin/firefox at line 40 and change "/usr/lib64..." to 
"/usr/notlib64."  This fools the script into thinking there 
is no 64-bit firefox.  The only problem with this is 
remembering to make the change each time firefox is updated. 
  The line number is from firefox 2.0 from the development 
repo.  It may be different for firefox 1.5.  Just look for 
the lines like these:

if [ -x "/usr/notlib64/firefox-2.0.0.1/firefox-bin" ]
then
   MOZ_LIB_DIR="/usr/lib64"

-- 
Joel

[James Wilkinson]

Joel Gomberg wrote:

>  Well, I doubt this is an "approved" method, but I edit
>  /usr/bin/firefox at line 40 and change "/usr/lib64..." to
>  "/usr/notlib64."  This fools the script into thinking there is no
>  64-bit firefox.  The only problem with this is remembering to make the
>  change each time firefox is updated.  The line number is from firefox
>  2.0 from the development repo.  It may be different for firefox 1.5.
>  Just look for the lines like these:
>
>  if [ -x "/usr/notlib64/firefox-2.0.0.1/firefox-bin" ]
>  then
>    MOZ_LIB_DIR="/usr/lib64" 
If you're going to try something like this, may I point out that by
default /usr/local/bin is ahead of /usr/bin. So you can copy the file to
/usr/local/bin, make the changes there, and allow yum to update Firefox
at will. The only problem would be if the script changed incompatibly,
and that seems unlikely.

Hope this helps,

James.

-- 
E-mail:     james@ | Humans are humans. No one grouping is all good or all
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                   | dishonourable, indecent liar.       -- Phil Launchbury

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 01:06:00PM -0500, Jack Howarth wrote:
>     I noticed that a fresh install of x86_64 FC6 resulted in
>  both i386 and x86_64 packages for firefox being installed.
>  I would like to configure my machine to default to the
>  i386 version of firefox and am wondering if there is
>  an approved mechanism to setting this (since FC6 went
>  out of its way to preinstall the i386 binaries on
>  x86_64)? 
Install the "firefox-32" package from Extras:

Description :
Alternate Launcher for 32bit Firefox on Multilib Systems
If you have both 32bit and 64bit Firefox installed, the standard
/usr/bin/firefox launcher will run only the 64bit version.  This
launcher allows you to choose to run the 32bit browser by running
/usr/bin/firefox-32.  Please be sure  that all Firefox instances
are closed before running this launcher.


-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm(a)mattdm.org          <http://mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>              <http://linux.bu.edu/>