On 09/20/2016 11:02 AM, Yasha Karant wrote:
> We use current production (not beta / pre-release) releases of x86-64
> Linux Mozilla Firefox (as well as Mozilla Thunderbird), not the distro
> ESR version.  There are a number of reasons for this that can be
> discussed under separate cover.  The environment is SL7x.
>
> Firefox often (almost always) fails to open, with the diagnostic:
>
> [ykarant@localhost ~]$ /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox
> XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /usr/lib64/firefox/libxul.so:
> libmozgtk.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
> Couldn't load XPCOM.
>
> A simple script "fixes" the problem.  I keep the run directory
> /usr/lib64/firefox that has the installed compressed tarball files
> duplicated in /usr/lib/firefox-current , and then as root superuser rm
> -rf the run directory followed by a directory copy of the duplicate
> directory into a new copy of the run directory.
>
> Does anyone know what causes current standard production firefox from
> "destroying"
> /usr/lib64/firefox/libxul.so ?
>
> Yasha Karant

Are you sure it is libxul.so that is the problem and not libmozgtk.so? 
It looks like xul is trying to load mozgtk and can't find it.  I use the 
included ESR, so am not sure what the Mozilla tarballs include, but 
having the matching xul/xulrunner is critical.

Have you run a diff on the directory before/after it fails? (diff -rupP 
/usr/lib64/firefox-current /usr/lib64/firefox > /tmp/diff.out)  It may 
be worthwhile to run it with the directories listed in the opposite 
order, to catch files that come and go.  I don't recall all my diff 
switches off the top of my head.

Checking things with 'ldd' may also be useful.

-Mark