On 2/20/2012 5:37 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:
> On 02/20/2012 02:32 PM, Chris Pemberton wrote:
>> On 02/20/12 13:29, Yasha Karant wrote:
>>> Before someone states that this is not a Scientific Linux issue, as it
>>> seems to be restricted to this distribution (perhaps other EL
>>> distributions as well), this issue would seem to qualify.
>>>
>>> Rather than using the Mozilla packages that exist within the
>>> distribution repository, I use the production (not testing or beta)
>>> installations from Mozilla: firefox, thunderbird/lightning, and
>>> seamonkey, currently 10.0.2 except SeaMonkey 2.7.2.
>>>
>>> My laptop and workstation are operating environment identical except
>>> that my laptop is IA-32 SL6x and my workstation is X86-64 SL6x (and
>>> there are some hardware differences reflected in driver differences).
>>> On my workstation, as root, I can update any of the Mozilla
>>> applications I have mentioned within a major release (e.g., 10.0.1 to
>>> 10.0.2) from within the application. However, on my laptop, this
>>> generally fails and I must download a new tar.bz2 file that I must
>>> unpack into the appropriate directory. Does anyone have an idea on
>>> what is the reason? Note that my mozilla configuration files between
>>> the two platforms are the same in so far as I have any control over
>>> these (e.g., visitation to different URLs from firefox or seamonkey
>>> might have different cookies, etc., loaded -- but all URLs are either
>>> mandated by my university or from "clean" sites).
>>>
>>> I have done a cursory check of the mozilla public lists but have found
>>> nothing of relevance.
>>>
>>> Thanks for any insight.
>>>
>>> Yasha Karant
>> Could you start firefox from a terminal, try the internal update
>> process, and see if any usefull information is given in the terminal?
>> Sure sounds like a permission problem; but you said you are using root?
>> You should be able to destroy anything as root:)
>>
>> Chris
>
> There is no problem in downloading from Mozilla the entire update as a 
> tar.bz2 package followed by the manual installation ( tar -vxjf ) as 
> root into the appropriate directory.
>
> However, there is a mechanism, for minor release updates (e.g., 10.0.1 
> to 10.0.2) within firefox, thunderbird/lightning, and seamonkey 
> without the manual unpacking -- the files are updated within the 
> running application and the updated instance is invoked at the next 
> initiation (restart) of the application.  This mechanism needs to be 
> as root if the files are installed in a systems, as contrasted with an 
> ordinary end-user, directory.  However, the mechanism fails on one 
> SL6x box but succeeds on another; when the mechanism fails, then I 
> must used the manual installation method from the tar.bz2 file as 
> explained above.
>
> Yasha Karant

I believe Chris is well aware of that.  He instructed you to start 
firefox from a terminal and attempt the update process from within 
firefox (meaning _not_ the tar.bz2) and see if it has any errors written 
to stdout or stderr in the terminal.  It helps if you read the email you 
are replying to.

-Mark