279934 - Firefox can only be started by root and not user

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect, P3)

Description

[cncxbox]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

I installed Firefox a few times. I installed it as root into /opt/firefox then I
ran it as user. It worked with previous versions.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Click the K Menu (if KDE)
2.Select Mozilla Firefox
Actual Results:  
it doesn't startup

Expected Results:  
it would only boot up if I was using root user

Comment 1

[Ben Fowler]

See Bug 163524 "installer creates components directory without exec perm"

Comment 2

[cncxbox]

So do I install all the fixes available on Bug #163524?

Comment 3

[Ben Fowler]

I have just had a similar problem with KDE, you might want to check the
permissions on ~/.mozilla .

Comment 4

[Zottacko WallyMan]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I have just had a similar problem with KDE, you might want to check the
> permissions on ~/.mozilla .

My Box is SuSE 9.1 Personal and Installed Firefox on /opt/firefox
/opt/firefox/components permissions are 755
~/.mozilla permissions were 700, I switched it to 755 (with no improvement)

When I start Firefox (as a normal user) from a icon, it doesn't do anything.
When I start Firefox from a terminal it repeats: 

*** loading the extensions datasource
*** nsExtensionManager::start - failure, catching exception so finalize window
can close = [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80520015
(NS_ERROR_FILE_ACCESS_DENIED) [nsIFile.copyTo]"  nsresult: "0x80520015
(NS_ERROR_FILE_ACCESS_DENIED)"  location: "JS frame ::
file:///opt/firefox/components/nsExtensionManager.js ::
nsInstalledExtensionReader_read :: line 800"  data: no]

...again and again and never stops.

In order to run Firefox as normal user I must start it with the -safe-mode
option and it runs fine. Surprisingly, the next time I run Firefox (as user in
normal mode), it will run fine, but not a seccond time.

I'm not very good in english, I hope my explanations are clear enough.

By the way, it should be documentation for installing firefox as root in order
to have only ONE installation available for all users in a Box.

Comment 5

[Ben Fowler]

This is merely a suggestion, and I feel that I am doing cargo-cult debugging
here.

If you can, install using the SuSE installer/Yast/RPMs. This means that you get
the benefit of SuSEs testing and support.

Otherwise, you may want to run Firefox once as the user who installed it
(probably root), in order to create certain files/directories inside the
installation.

You observations sound reasonable, and if you check the FAQ and search the
forums you will probably find people who have met, and perhaps solved, this
exact problem.

Comment 6

[Ben Fowler]

If anyone is reading this, you might also want to review
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007797.html . If MoFo is able
to gain the co-operation of Vendors such as SuSe then there might be official
RPMs (like the KDE ones) qualified to work on specific systems and releases.

This would be an end-run round this problem, which crops up by the dozen
in Bugzilla and probably by the Myriad in the wider world.

(Some end-users and/or their representatives might see this as a regression,
a step back, because there is a continuing pressure that all third party
software for linux should come with a working, stable and reliable installer.
Firefox is quite possibly the poster child. Many if not most end-users just 
don't like RPMs. This is not really part of this bug, and I would guess only
just within the remit of Bugzilla - See Bug 283676 "change compressed build 
filelists to closely match installer builds" and its friends - but you might
want to also look at the wider picture!).

Comment 7

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Various trunk fixes have fixed and/or invalidated this bug.