On 02/20/2012 04:07 PM, 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

I missed that -- sorry.  But in fact, that is what I do.  E.g., I start 
a terminal as an end-user, su, and then /usr/lib/firefox/firefox .  The 
diagnostics I get are not related to the update process.  Here is an 
example:

[root@localhost ykarant]# /usr/lib/firefox/firefox
failed to create drawable

(firefox:3299): GnomeUI-WARNING **: While connecting to session manager:
None of the authentication protocols specified are supported.

Nonetheless, despite these diagnostics, on one machine there is success 
and another not.  However, the next time I go to do this, I shall record 
the specific diagnostics, but having read these in the past, there has 
never been an obvious significant difference.  Note that firefox invoked 
as above appears to be fully functional as a web browser.

Yasha Karant