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423: Firefox 3.5.2

August 19, 2009 — BarryK
I am intrigued by recent reports that Firefox 3.5.2 works in pup 4.3beta1 with 2.6.25.16 kernel but not with 2.6.29.6 kernel. I think it was ttuuxxx who reported that Fedora, which also uses 2.6.29.x, has the same problem.

I decided to compile it myself in 4.3beta. This is how I configured:

# ./configure --disable-mailnews --disable-composer --enable-extensions=default --enable-mathml --enable-crypto --enable-module=psm --enable-default-toolkit=cairo-gtk2 --without-system-png --disable-profilesharing --enable-official-branding --disable-ldap --disable-svg --localstatedir=/var --prefix=/usr --host=i486-pc-linux-gnu --with-x --with-system-jpeg --with-system-zlib --with-system-bz2 --enable-application=browser --with-distribution-id=com.puppylinux --enable-postscript --disable-gnomevfs --disable-gnomeui --disable-dbus --enable-plugins --disable-accessibility --disable-jsd --enable-printing --disable-crashreporter --disable-tests --enable-system-sqlite --enable-strip --enable-chrome-format=jar --enable-system-cairo --enable-necko-protocols=all --enable-cookies --enable-permissions --enable-native-uconv --disable-inspector-apis --disable-updater --disable-parental-controls --enable-places --enable-negotiateauth --disable-calendar --disable-logging --disable-debug --enable-xinerama --with-pthreads --disable-xprint

When I ran 'make' though, it stopped with errors. I googled and found one other guy who got the same error, but he found that compiling works the first time. That is, I had experimented with different configure options, running 'make distclean' each time, however that stuffs up the source somehow. You have to start with pristine source, run the above configure once, then run 'make', and off she goes.

However, after compiling and installing, it hangs at startup (running with 2.6.29.6 kernel, haven't tried any other kernel).

Comments

firefiox 3x
Username: kirk
Had the same problem, make clean doesn't seem to work. The big problem with Firefox 3x and Puppy 4x, is when you go to a web page with lots of flash, it crashes. I had put Firefox in Fatdog 111, but then techtype pointed me to this page: http://my.yahoo.com/ If you use that page a bit Firefox will crash. By the way, Fatdog uses Flash 10. For Fatdog 112 I went back to Seamonkey. If you search the forum you'll find that people have been fixing that problem by using a newer version of glibc. That doesn't seem like a good idea to me, one of the reasons I decided to rebuild with T2.

firefiox 3x
Username: kirk
"Oh, that was Firefox 3.06 with the flash problem, don't know if it's been fixed in 3.5. I've been using Firefox 3.5 in Fatdog2 for a couple months with no crashes. Of course that's with a newer glibc too.

Firefox ok...
Username: Jota
"Just to report that Firefox 3.6 alpha (codename Namoroka), downloaded from the Mozilla site, works with the 3.6.30 kernel without problems. And, as a side note, is fast, very fast, maybe the fastest Firefox ever.

firefox crash
Username: BarryK
"I tried some other config options, still hangs. In fact it renders the whole system unusable and I have to press the power-off button for 4 seconds to force a power-down.

off topic - updated apps info
Username: trio
"Barry, Updated apps: JWM Theme maker - now v 1.3 You2pup - now v 1.3-1 Pstreamvid/TV - new patch CPU scaling ondemand, screenshot utility stay the same. Thanks

The problem is in UnionFS
Username: mories
"At startup Firefox causes a Ooops in kernel by [i]null pointer dereference unionfs_setattr /i]. Similar is reported (and perhaps fixed) in https://bugzilla.filesystems.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633

unionfs bug
Username: BarryK
"mories, Thanks for looking into that. I will be recompiling the 2.6.29.6 kernel this weekend, so I'll apply that patch to the unionfs 2.5.2 source.


Tags: woof