[rhn-users] firefox and yum

[Herta Van den Eynde]

On 12/12/2007, Paula J. Lindsay <paula at scripps.edu> wrote:
> Hi everyone, I hope you can help me with this silly problem.  I'm
> working on a RHE 3 machine and I am trying to install yum
> so I can yum down firefox.  Well, when I try to install yum (via rpm)
> there are too many dependencies/conflicts and the install
> fails.  I finally gave up and downloaded a firefox package and I can't
> install that either.  I get this message:
>
> (firefox-bin:1120): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:
>
> I am getting so frustrated because these were such simple tasks and I am
> just spinning my wheels.  Why is it so hard to install
> these two programs.  Why doesn't the rpm that I download already have
> the libs and python that is needed.  I can't even
> google the problem because I always end up where I downloaded the
> program in the first place.  Any help would be
> dearly appreciated.  And, thanks in advance.
> Paula
>
> --
> Paula J. Lindsay
> IT Analyst III
> Research Computing
> 10550 North Torrey Pines Road
> La Jolla, CA  92037
> 858.784.9378 (office)
> 858.784.9301 (fax)
> paula at scripps.edu

You'd probably get better results in google if you search for
"Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display".  Normally you install firefox
as root, and then start it up as root once.  Just opening one page is
enough.  You should them be able to run it from other users as well.

The rpm does not include all its dependencies because they often are
shared by other products.  Just imagine how much diskspace and memory
would be wasted when every product would come with its proper set of
libraries or auxiliary products.
Normally if you run 'yum install productx', yum automatically installs
all dependencies for productx.  Using some non-standard repos, or
force-installing rpm packages can seriously mess up your system.  I
suppose you could try to correct it, but it may be faster to just
re-install.

Kind regards,

Herta