Re: FC2: firefox won't run after installing search and mouse plugins

[Frank Rehwinkel]

So after a reboot, firefox is working again.

For kicks, I tried to follow the same procedure as far
as getting the mouse gestures extension installed, and
this time with better results.

As an unprivileged user, the install failed, saying I
didn't have appropriate permissions to write to
mozilla/chrome directory.  Error code:-202.

After restarting firefox, there was in fact no new
extension.  But at least firefox could still be run.

Then as root I started firefox and installed the mouse
gestures extension which did work.  Both the root's
firefox and my user's firefox show mouse gestures as
an installed extension now.

I'll chalk it up to a problem with the search
extensions that I had tried to install, and some bad
state left in the kernel, which didn't get cleaned up
until it was rebooted.

-Frank

--- Frank Rehwinkel  wrote:
> Just put FC2 on a second machine at home.  It's
> great.
>  Kudoes to the developers and testers.
>
> For days, I've had firefox installed and running
> fine.
> I had used apt and synaptic to get/install the
> package.
> Firefox was made the default gnome browser.  All
> good.
>  Very good.
>
> Today I decided to load some plugins.  I added about
> eight search plugins and the mouse gestures plugin. 
> All as a regular user (i.e. not root).  There was
> one
> error message that popped to the screen during the
> mouse gestures install which I think had to do with
> not being able to write or create to a file.  I
> didn't
> note the error, thinking the install would just be
> aborted.  The next popup indicated the install had
> completed successfully.  So, wondering if it had or
> had not installed properly, I closed my firefox
> program and tried to start it back up.
>
> But it won't start.  The symptom, when typing
> firefox
> in a shell, is that after a few seconds, it ends. 
> Nothing writen to stdout or stderr.  Nothing pops
> up. 
> No new process created.  If I try to start it from
> the
> gnome panel, a see a "Starting Web browser" window
> being created, but after a few seconds it
> disappears.
>
> I've uninstalled firefox, and reinstalled it, to no
> avail.  I searched for a ~/.firefox directory.  One
> didn't exist.  I've moved the ~/.mozilla directory
> out
> of the way and the ~/.phoenix directory out of the
> way, still no good.  I uninstalled firefox again,
> and
> moved the /usr/lib/firefox directory out of the way.
>
> And reinstalled firefox.  Still no good.  I moved
> /usr/lib/mozilla out of the way, and still firefox
> just returns immediately.
>
> I have not tried rebooting, but as this isn't
> Windows,
> I wouldn't expect that to help.
>
> What file/directory am I missing?  Or what package 
> dependancy have I broken by uninstalling firefox and
> reinstalling (all via synaptic)?  I may have made
> the
> problem worse during this debugging because firefox
> won't start under my root login any longer either. 
> But admittedly I had installed the mouse gesture
> plugin there too, but at least saw it work once as
> root.  That install didn't cause a file/directory
> failure message to be printed.  I did not install
> the
> search plugins as root though.  Now after the
> uninstall/reinstall.  Even root can't get firefox to
> do anything.
>
> -stuck
>
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