[Lilux-help] Installing/using Firefox

[Serge Marelli]

Hi,

and thanks for the answer, and thanks to Brent as well.

On Fri, 2004-11-26 at 11:12, Eric Dondelinger wrote:
> Hi Serge,
> 
> On Fri, Nov 26, 2004 at 09:46:47AM +0100, Serge Marelli wrote:
> > I went on the website, downloaded the firefox installer and "installed"
> > it (as root) but my other users can't use it. For some reason, it won't
> > start. It did work when I ran it as the user who installed it (root).
> 
> Hmm... where did you install it? Did you install it into root's
> home directory, or someplace accessible by every user (/usr/local
> for instance)?

Presently I downloaded and installed it as root, it is in
/usr/local/bin/ and put a symlink in /usr/bin/


> > I'd like to know the following things in general:
> > 
> > - do I need to be logged in as root to install firefox on my system?
> 
> If it's to be used by every user on the system, definitely yes.

What I thought

> > - if not, should be logged in as root to install firefox on my system?
> 
> sux -c "/path/to/firefox-installer"
> should do. (sux is a wrapper around su that will properly set what
> you need to allow output to your X11 session)

I actually logged in as root, felt almost strange doing so :-)


> > - where should I install firefox?  in /usr/local/bin/?  in /opt/ ?
> 
> Depends on your distro and your own tastes. I'd put it into /usr/local.

I'm using a SuSE. 
I'd checked and found a few other apps in /usr/local/bin/xxx so that's
where I put it.  As mentionned above, I also put a symlink to the main
executable in /usr/bin/.
I later found that a few apps like OOo, Netscape and Mozilla  were
installed in /opt/ so I was wondering.


> > - there are three different users on my system, what should I do to make
> > sure they all can use firefox once it's installed?
> 
> Install as root into a place that's in the normal PATH, or else add
> the path to mozilla-firefox to your $PATH (/etc/profile).
> Or to make your life easier, install a package that's ready-made
> for your distribution.

Haven't seen any rpm at all, all I've seen is the tgz.


> > About my specific problem, I launched firefox from the shell and got the
> > following error message:
> > 
> > <quote>
> > user at host:~> firefox
> > Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
> > Xlib: XDM authorization key matches an existing client!
> > 
> > (firefox-bin:5584): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:
> > </quote>
> 
> That sounds like that user was another one that the one you logged
> into your X11 session with. 

Well that's strange... in a way.
I launched it twice from KDE icons on the desktop and got no result at
all, so I launched it from a shell in order to get the messages. So the
shell _was_ run by the same user.


> What happens if you do a 
> 
> export DISPLAY=:0
> xauth merge ~loginuser/.Xauthority
> mozilla-firefox &
> 
> ? - you shouldn't get that error.

I tried, same result. Two points : 

1) DISPLAY was allready set, so no change then

> Btw. I wrote "mozilla-firefox" because that's what the executable
> is called here on my Debian installation. I didn't try the installer
> which is provided from the website.

2) there are three executables in /usr/local/bin/firefox/, 
  - firefox is a shell script, 
  - firefox-bin seems to be the actual binary and 
  - run-mozilla.sh is another shell scripts

I tried each of them, from my home directory and from whithin
/usr/local/bin/firefox/
to no special result.


> Greets & hth, Eric

thanks anyway, I'll check on the firefox forums later
It's frustrating because it seems to work whithout a hitch when
installed  under windows :-/

Serge

-- 


----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Serge Marelli, Luxembourg
  E-mail : serge.marelli at linux.lu
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