Starting SeaMonkey in container

There is a problem with starting SeaMonkey in a container, if there is no Internet connection. It seems that at startup, SM tries to reach an Internet destination, but from inside the container doesn't seem to realise there is no Internet and times out. Thus startup is very slow. That's my hypothesis anyway.

There may be a network connection, say to the modem, but no Internet, and from within the container, the bridge to the actual network interface is not working quite the same as on the main desktop.

Anyway, I have put in a test, and a message will popup if no Internet inside the container and SM will not start.

Implementing this is a bit roundabout. In a pristine system, /usr/bin/seamonkey is a script -- see /usr/bin/seamonkeyQNEW in Woof and also see script 3buildeasydistro. What normally happens is this script puts up a "Starting SM first time, please wait" message, then relinks /usr/bin/seamonkey to the actual executable, usually /usr/lib/seamonkey/seamonkey.

The script now detects if inside a container, and performs the Internet test, and will not run SM if no Internet. It also relinks /usr/bin/seamonkey to /usr/local/easy_containers/internet-container-abort, so that the test is always run on future startups of SM. 

If required, the principle can be extended to other web browsers. 

Tags: easy