On Tue, 2010-01-26 at 08:17 -0500, Mirko Vukovic wrote: > Hello, > My firefox browser crashes about 2-3 times/week. Does anyone else > have a similar experience? I did not yet try it in safe mode.
Many Firefox add-ons and site scripts can hang/crash the browser via nominal usage. These are not issues with Firefox itself. I started using NoScript ( http://noscript.net/ ) years ago to "opt-in" to enabling scripting and add-ons for sites. By default, unless disabled, NoScript _blocks_ everything but standard HTML and related presentation. Since doing so, I virtually never crash/hang. The Red Hat Network (RHN) version can be trusted to be updated with security vunerabilities patched per Red Hat policies. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Errata Support Policy: http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/ Backporting of Security Fixes: http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/backporting/ > On a tangential issue, the version of firefox that comes through yum > is usually much older than the latest firefox official release. > Considering that new releases usually have security fixes, I am > tempted to install the latest version by myself. Any major reason > why not do it? Just because the Mozilla Foundation is shipping 3.5 (or even 3.6) does not mean 3.0 is unmaintained. The Mozilla Foundation just recently moved to 3.6 and has deprecated 3.0, although this does not mean Red Hat will not continue to backport security fixes on 3.0 until it decides to rebase Firefox to a newer version. Red Hat's errata policy avoids rebasing software to avoid regressions, tests before release, etc... while backporting fixes. E.g., Mozilla-Gecko profiles may change every major revision, causing issues with existing mandatory and default policies and related regressions. I.e., If you maintain thousands of enterprise desktops, rebasing can be a major issue. ;) There can also be unforseen issues and other problems with a major Firefox revision. E.g., it was not by chance that Red Hat skipped Firefox 2.0, waiting on Firefox 3.0 before rebasing from Firefox 1.5 (circa EL4.7/5.2). If you believe this can be done lightly and easily, then you've never managed 1,000+ enterprise _desktops_ before. ;) If you _really_ believe you _need_ to run another version, then I offer the following for the latest Firefox i386. *YOU* now become responsible for updating it though, not Red Hat. May the force be with you. ;) === PROCEDURE (install latest Firefox i386 into /usr/local/lib) === NOTE: "#" indicates a superuser prompt so type the exact command (sans variables like "(ver")" as root. "[*#*]" indicates a note which follows. Get Firefox: - Download i386 tarball from Firefox from getfirefox.org Install Tarball: # cd /usr/local/lib # tar xzvf firefox-(ver).tar.gz - Or, for bzip2: # tar xjvf firefox-(ver).tar.bz2 # mv firefox firefox-(ver) - Since you're likely to download future versions too Binary Symlink: # cd /usr/local/bin # ln -s ../lib/firefox-(ver)/firefox firefox32 - Or whatever you want to name it (ff32, etc...) - Edit /usr/local/lib/firefox-(ver)/firefox - Change "$0" to "firefox" (since binary name doesn't match symlink) - Create GUI menu/bar launcher to "firefox32" Plugin Setup: [*1*] # cd /usr/lib/mozilla - Should have any installed 32-bit plug-ins # find plugins -mount | cpio -pmdv /usr/local/lib/firefox-(ver) - Possibly also: # find plugins-wrapped | cpio -pmdv /usr/local/lib/firefox-(ver) - Manually copy/symlink other plugins as well - to: /usr/local/lib/firefox-(ver)/plugins SELinux Contexts: [*2*] # chcon -R --reference=/usr/lib[64]/firefox-(ver) /usr/local/lib/firefox-(ver) - This leverages the distros included Firefox's contexts (F7+/RHEL5.2+) # chcon -t textrel_shlib_t /usr/local/lib/firefox-(ver)/plugins/(plugin).so NOTES: [*1*] 32-bit Plug-ins If you are running EL/x86-64, do _not_ copy any plug-ins from /usr/lib64/mozilla as they will be for the 64-bit version. Most (all?) properly packaged programs with Gecko engines _should_ drop any and all 32-bit plug-ins under /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins, so use the above find|cpio command. On some systems, there may also be a /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins-wrapped directory as well. [*2*] SELinux Contexts The first chcon command takes advantage of the fact that most newer Fedora and RHEL releases actually locate the Firefox tree under /usr/lib[64]/firefox-(ver) as appropriate for 32-bit (/usr/lib) and 64-bit (/usr/lib64), and the trees are not much different than the tarball download from getfirefox.org. It probably won't work for a distro that ships old Firefox 1.5 when you're installing Firefox 2 or 3, but it should on any distro with Firefox 2+. The second chcon command, setting the textrel_shlib_t, may be required on various plugins under the ./plugins directory, if copied) or the de-referenced shared object (.so) in another directory. E.g., ICAClient (Citrix ICA Client aka XenApp). -- Bryan J Smith Senior Consultant Red Hat, Inc Professional Consulting http://www.redhat.com/consulting mailto:[email protected] +1 (407) 489-7013 (Mobile) mailto:[email protected] (Blackberry/Red Hat-External) -------------------------------------------------------- You already know Red Hat as the entity dedicated to 100% no-IP-strings-attached, community software development. But do you know where CIOs rate Red Hat versus other software and services firms for their own, direct needs, year after year? http://www.redhat.com/promo/vendor/ _______________________________________________ rhelv5-list mailing list [email protected] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rhelv5-list
