Christian Krog Madsen » Updates

Firefox 2 – rediscover the web. Again

Christian Krog Madsen — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 20:46:45 +0000

Firefox 2 was released last week (press release), so it is time to experience the next generation browser.

To install Firefox 2 using Yast, add a new software source (in Yast select Software > Installation source):

protocol: http
server: software.opensuse.org
path: /download/repositories/mozilla/SUSE_Linux_10.1/

Save changes.

Next select Software Management and search for “firefox”. You should get some matching packages. Check that their version number is something like 2.0.xxx. Select them and install.

Thanks to Justin Freeman for pointing to the RPMs (see the comments).

Happy browsing!

Firefox fails to start after updating to 1.5.0.7

Christian Krog Madsen — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 15:52:14 +0000

In today’s shipment of updates to OpenSUSE was the latest version af Firefox, 1.5.0.7. As usual, I indiscriminately chose to get all available updates, including Firefox.

When the updater reported succesfully completing the update, I started Firefox. And waited. And waited. Though I could see the process running, no windows appeared. Hmm… Houston do we have a problem?

First step was to kill the running processes and then start Firefox from the command line. After printing a lot of stuff including a couple of failed assertions (!), Firefox stopped and apparently waited for a debugger to be attached.

Next step was to start Firefox in safe mode using the command line: “firefox -safe-mode”. This – among other things – prevents extensions from being loaded. Now the window came up. Figuring that it was a problem with one of my extensions, I disabled all the most conspicuous ones and restarted in normal mode. After a bit of trial and error, enabling and disabling extensions, I found the culprit: FireBug 0.4.
I believe I have run FireBug 0.4 on Firefox 1.5.0.7 under Windows at work, so it must be an issue that appears only under Linux or perhaps with the combination of extensions I have. Too bad, since FireBug is a cool extension for doing Ajax development.

When updating the updater fails…

Christian Krog Madsen — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 20:13:52 +0000

After booting into Linux the online update notification icon indicated that new security updates were available for download. On the list of available updates was libzypp and zmd, parts of Novell’s Zenworks online update management software. I just clicked OK and let the update start. After downloading the available packages, it failed while installing libzypp, giving the message:

Establishing script:libzypp-patch-zmdrestart.sh-2-1533-1.noarch[SUSE-Linux-10.1-Updates]
This would invalidatescript:libzypp-patch-zmdrestart.sh-2-1533-1.noarch[SUSE-Linux-10.1-Updates].
Marking this resolution attempt as invalid.

As I always do, I fired up my trusty ol’ Firefox and did a quick search. Google came up with a post by a Novell staff member, giving guidance for fixing the broken online update. It turns out that a bug existed in the version of Zenworks shipped with the release version of the OpenSUSE. Novell figured they could fix it using updates, but something apparently went wrong.
Following the procedure, I updated libzypp and its dependencies using Yast2 (the old SUSE package management UI). After doing this, I restarted automatic updates and this time the update procedure ran all the way to the end. Hurrah!

I know someone who reverted to OpenSUSE 10.0 because of the issue with online updates. Having security updates done regularly is (unfortunately) necessary to steer clear exposure to attacks over the internet. Therefore the error in 10.1 is most unfortunate, since it could cause users to just turn off automatic updates altogether.

Update:

SUSE Wiki also has an article on wrestling zen to work.