74106 - mozilla gets stuck during startup and won't open

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 41057

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Doug McMahon]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.7 [en] (WinNT; U)
BuildID:    20010326

So far I've only found one release, the 0.7 milestone, that runs on my Linux 
boxes.  Most releases, including some prior to 0.7 and all releases since then, 
exhibt the same behavior.  I'm starting to think the problem isn't going to be 
solved, and that there's something basically wrong on my side, but I'm damned if 
I know what it is.

The symptom is that after I type "mozilla" at the command line, I get a few 
printouts showing me that it's going through the startup procedure, culminating 
in two lines about "registering plugin 0".  After this, nada, it just seems to 
sit there, no window, no nothing.  The 0.7 version goes past this point to open 
a window, the 0.8 and now the 0.81 versions seem to have reverted to the 
original failure mode, whatever it is.  I'm running RedHat 6.1 and 6.2 on two 
different boxes and I get the same problem on both.

A "ps al" shows the mozilla parent process, a thread management "process", and 
three threads.  The parent process and the thread management "process" are in 
"do_pol" state.  One of the three threads is also in "do_pol", the other two are 
in "rt_sig".  None of them is accumulating any CPU time.

I can't believe mozilla doesn't work at all on Linux, so I must be doing 
something wrong - but what?

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. run mozilla from command line

Actual Results:  Program prints a few messages, then seems to get stuck and 
never opens a window.  Processes continue to stay alive but don't consume any 
CPU.

Expected Results:  Mozilla browser window to open.

ps shows three threads, one in the "do_pol" state and two in the "rt_sig" state. 
 Behavior is the same on RH 6.1 and 6.2.

Comment 1

[Scott Kester]

Have you tried removing your .mozilla directory?  I had this problem as well and
that fixed it for me.  My box is RH 7, but I know mozilla runs on RH 6.2, so the
problem is on your end somewhere.  Hope this helps.

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

1)  try a new profile
2)  did you install as root?  If so, are you running as user?  If so, did you
either run once as root or run regxpcom and regchrome as root?  See bug 41057

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Comments from reporter:

Bingo!  You win a kewpee doll!  It runs if I try it as "root".  Also now
runs for the real me if I first "chown root.root * */* */*/* ..." in the
/usr/local/mozilla area.  Terrific, thanks!

(Now, if only (a) it didn't require this sort of hocus-pocus out-of the
box, and (b) it provided some sort of useful error message to let users
know why it's unhappy.)

:)

P.S. Is there any action required by me do to close out the bug at this point?

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

resolving duplicate per reporter's last comment...

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 41057 ***