Firefox for Kubuntu?

[jmadero]

I'm helping a friend with an issue he's having and I'm not sure what to do at this point. He's installed firefox, it shows up in the internet menu but when he clicks it nothing happens (or it'll show the bouncing icon and nothing will happen after that). He's done apt-get, also done it from the GUI package installer that comes with Kubuntu. I've had him remove it and reinstall and the same issue. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

jmadero

[valemon]

Try running firefox from a terminal and post any errors if any. Also nothing changes with reinstalling applications. You have to delete/rename .firefox in home folder in order to reset it.

[jmadero]

So we got it to work but it's not the "right" way by far. There wasn't a .firefox folder in the home directory at all...which I found to be odd, instead it was in /opt folder. There were several really weird things beyond this as well.

1. Typing "firefox" in prompt as su or regular user came back with "firefox not installed"
2. GUI package manager did show that firefox was installed (check next to it)
3. Trying to do sudo apt-get install firefox would say that it was already installed and up to date.
4. Firefox was in the "internet menu" but wouldn't open (no errors either)

So I told him to remove it (apt-get remove firefox), I didn't realize that this didn't remove the program completely. Then I asked him if he would check in his firefox folder in /opt folder and see if there was a file named firefox. There was so I told him to double click it and hit "run in terminal", that did it, firefox opened and worked. This was after removing it and not reinstalling it, also still wouldn't work from prompt typing "firefox" or from the firefox in the internet menu. This all sounds like some weird link issue but what would cause it and how should it be fixed? I told him for a temporary solution just to make a application launcher on the desktop and type in the full path (also works) but I'm not sure if he should still try to get it working the right way. Now in the package manager it says that it's not installed (although it's obviously running).

jmadero

[sandra_777]

Execute this

which firefox
ls -l /usr/bin/firefox

Post output here.

[Dapper Dan]

At least in Ubuntu, (and I assume the same is true of all the *buntus) The local firefox configuration directory won't be in your home directory under .firefox, but will rather be inside your .mozilla directory.

It sounds as if he might have downloaded Firefox off the net and installed it that way and it was installed to /opt. On my machine, firefox is at /usr/lib/firefox, with a symlink to it in /usr/bin.

My guess is that it was manually installed to /opt, and the package manager sees it there so it's saying it is already installed and won't install it to where it is suppose to be which is why you cannot get it to work from the menu or in the console. If that is the case, I would completely remove it manually from where it is in /opt, then try installing it through apt-get so it will get installed to /usr/lib/firefox/. Then, by the menu entry and running it in terminal should work.

If he says he didn't install it himself outside of the Kubuntu package manager, then I'm really stumped as to how it got installed to /opt.

[jmadero]

He actually did tell me that he read some instructions on Ubuntuforums.org that said to manually install it in that folder (no clue why) and I told him that it was more complicated than it had to be (there were about 10 steps to install firefox!). So you think just manually removing that folder and then doing apt-get will get the job done? I don't understand how the GUI package installer would possibly even see that folder? I told him to ditch Kubuntu and get on Ubuntu (I'm a KDE hater I suppose) but he's stubborn and says he wants to stick with it for awhile.

One other thing, he didn't have a .mozilla directory either in his home directory...thought that was really strange.


jmadero

[sandra_777]

apt-get will sort out problem but you should find out current location of firefox using commands I have suggested in my last post.