On 02/20/12 18:07, Mark Stodola wrote:
> 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
What he said:)

Perhaps some of this could be useful:

http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2011/install-firefox-on-fedora-centos-red-hat-rhel/

Note:   I have not tested it.  I have no affiliation with said site.  YMMV

Chris