[New] How to really muck up firefox

Les hlhowell at pacbell.net
Mon Dec 11 18:48:15 UTC 2006


On Mon, 2006-12-11 at 09:25 +0000, Ian Malone wrote:
> gary wrote:
> > On Sun, 2006-12-10 at 16:00 -0800, Les wrote:
> >> I'm still in there swinging, but I hab a vad cod and cand dink
> >> strait....;-)
> >>
> >> I tried installing the new firefox, and it went badly.  Next I tried to
> >> get it working by updating the Java with the sun linux jre.  That mucked
> >> it up worse.  Then I wanted to go back to the original.  Even worse,
> >> because now neither version recognized any of the media stuff, not
> >> flash, not mplayer, not java NADA!
> >>
> >>   OK, I thought, just uninstall the works, then eliminate the new
> >> firefox files, and finally reinstall the whole Java, mplayer, totem,
> >> etc.  So, I opened the add/remove software and removed all the stuff
> >> that said Java, and accepted uninstalling all related packages, thinking
> >> that when I reinstalled them via the same mechanism, everything would
> >> come back.
> >>
> >>   Now nothing at all works in the old version of firefox (except basic
> >> HTML and it parses badly, which seems to be a problem for javascript
> >> anyway, since it doesn't do well with lines that have been commented out
> >> with "#" this is typically a compiler error where the standard parse
> >> string has left "#" out of the single char string for parsing).
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > 
> >  I'm guessing you need to get into .mozilla and clean out your firefox
> > folder???     -----gary
> > 
> 
> Sounds like a possibility. I'd add that FF has very little to do with
> Java except as a plugin (JavaScript being a different language, and
> FF's JS interpreter is a core part of Mozilla).  Why the upgrade to
> 2.0 wouldn't work I don't know, but I usually install or run binary
> packages in ~/opt to avoid damaging packed components.
> 
> -- 
> imalone
> 
I had put it in the same diretory as the original
installation: /usr/lib.
But it was it's own directory, so I wouldn't think that would hurt
anything.
I checked first and it was packaged as .../firefox/....
so after installation, it came out as /usr/lib/firefox.

But the rpm version did install in /opt.  After working on the tarball
for a bit and then finally giving up on it,
I had removed it and then run the rpm package, and that is where things
really mucked up.  Yes, it was probably stupid, but it did seem like a
good idea at the time.  And like you I thought firefox was basically a
stand-alone that used links to libraries and plugins.  So it "should"
have worked, or so I thought.

The full sequence was: get the tarball.  Ask how the install went for
others.  Check the tarball, and make sure it wouldn't overwrite the
"good" version I had.  Install the tarball.  Set up its plugins and so
forth.  Problem one was flash, but after mucking with it a bit I got
that going.  Then work on the multimedia.  Following Stantons website,
install Totem-xine.  That is where things went badly.  During that
process, the flash quit working and I was unable to get Java to work.  I
double and triple checked Stanton's stuff, then compared to Sun's stuff,
and it should have worked.  At this point I thought that I had mucked up
the pointers, so I traced through them by hand from the working version.
After setting up the new firefox, it still didn't work.  So I though,
use RPM and uninstall all the java stuff.  I did that.  Then I rebooted
to clean up the pointers.  Finally I reran RPM to pick back up all the
java stuff.  I am wanting to work on coding and so I have the
development packages as well. But now even the original installation is
not working.  Again, I began tracing through Stanton's instructions but
working on the original 1.5 version of Firefox.  After checking and
rechecking my work and not getting the Java to work (and flash is still
broken) I thought it is time to seek assistance.  While my sequence is a
bit wacky, I don't think what I have done is too off the wall.  

	So, What do you advise?  Since my Home website is flash, I would like
to get that working first.  I think that totem-xine is actually masking
the mplayer stuff, but I don't know why I think that.  And I don't want
to muck it up any more.  I'm still a bit under the weather, but I will
be here the rest of the day.

Regards,
Les H




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