Release Firefox 17.0.1 in repo

[apersonthinks]

Interesting problem here. When i enable bluetooth (wifi is already enabled), connect my bluetoth keyboard and launch firefox, the entire xserver crashes. It just puts me into dmesg and tty1.

 

[fusion_power]

I've tried everything, even with a fresh install Firefox 17 still messes up the thumbnail page, it's pretty annoying. Somehow it stores your entire browsing history in thumbnails, this slows down everything. clearing history helps but that's not how the quickstart page should work! Of course I've tested the same on my PC and there it is like it should, you can add your fav. pages there but this doesn't work on the Pandora. Should be easy reproducable, just open the thumbnail quicklaunch site and you may find a gazillion thumbs (delete the visible ones and the others are loaded).

Another problem is, I can't install the GHOSTERY addon, maybe some permissions issue, no clue how to solve.

 

[Neelix]

(delete the visible ones and the others are loaded).

Erm... isn't that how it's supposed to work? Always displaying the 9 most recently popular history entries? If you delete them then of course it will pull in other items to make up the 9...
I just loaded up a new tab in firefox 17.0.1 on my pandora, and it only loaded 9 thumbnails.

I haven't seen any speed issues either. The only problem I had with it turned out to be a partially corrupted file system issue on the SD card that was affecting part of my profile. (I had to run chkdsk from a windows machine to fix it as fsck didn't detect any errors)

-- Neelix

 

[hmc]

Thanks hdonk! Great work.

An issue, though:

Profile selection at first startup (I deleted the appdata directory of all firefox installations I had before): Default folder in utmp directory is said to be not writable. However, shouldn't the PND write into the appdata dir instead? That doesn't work. When selecting another location, I select my home and want to "Crate Folder" ".mozilla" in there, but as soon as I create the dot folder, it's not displayed anymore and when clicking the "Open" button, only the home directory, without ".mozilla", is returned.

So I now used /home/daniel/firefox now, which works. However, this is not the optimal way, because a) it's not in the appdata folder and thus writes to the main system SD (or NAND for most other users) and B) the folder is not hidden.

Great, that SSL seems to work fine now. I can access my Google Mail account flawlessly, which was not possible with earlier Firefox versions (don't know about the more recent ones, though), and not with Chromium either, except after manually changing some SSL configuration, IIRC.

 

[lomaxx]

Profile selection at first startup (I deleted the appdata directory of all firefox installations I had before): Default folder in utmp directory is said to be not writable. However, shouldn't the PND write into the appdata dir instead?

I am not sure if you misunderstand the mechanism or I misunderstand you. To be sure: The /mnt/utmp/<mountpoint>/-directory is an loop-mounted union-type-filesystem of the pnd and the appdata-folder. Any unchanged data is read from the read-only pnd. Everything that is written to /mnt/utmp/<mountpoint> or any changed data that is located in the appdata-folder is read from the appdata-folder.So if it's writing to the utmp-directory it's actually writing into the appdata-folder.

That doesn't work.

That's indeed an error. Is your pnd and appdata-folder located on a FAT32-sdcard? There seems to be a bug in the aufs (union-type-filesystem) that makes some trouble with them sometimes.

Please open a terminal while running and post the output of "ls -la /mnt/utmp/hdonk_firefox_001/". All files (except "..") should belong to your user and the group "users" or your username too. And "ls -ld (mnt/utmp/hdonk-firefox_001" should output something like this:

/mnt/utmp/hdonk_firefox_001/
drwxrwxrwx 9 root root 4096 Jan 2 12:12 /mnt/utmp/hdonk_firefox_001/
The beginning of that line (for that directory) should show "drwxrwxrwx" for you too, as it shows the userrights. "d" for "directory" and the three times "rwx" for "read-, write-, executable-enabled for each of "owner", "groups" and "others".

If /mnt/utmp/hdonk_firefox_001/.mozilla does not exist or the rights/ownership for it is wrong, then you can do the following for testing (or as a workaround) while firefox is running (the pnd is mounted):

sudo su -
mkdir /mnt/utmp/hdonk_firefox_001/.mozilla/
chown <username>:<username> /mnt/utmp/hdonk_firefox_001/.mozilla/
chmod -R 700 /mnt/utmp/hdonk_firefox_001/.mozilla/
exit
Note: Replace <username> with your actual username.

If all this is the reason (and the solution) to your problem, then AFAIK as I know the solution for fixing the pnd is to make it come with a "home"-directory in it's pnd-root-directory and setting the HOME-environmental-variable to that directory.

@Fusion-Power: You could please test the rights of these directories and files too.

 

[lomaxx]

Oops. Forgot something in the process of manually creating the .mozilla-directory. Will edit the above post now.

 

[hmc]

Profile selection at first startup (I deleted the appdata directory of all firefox installations I had before): Default folder in utmp directory is said to be not writable. However, shouldn't the PND write into the appdata dir instead?

I am not sure if you misunderstand the mechanism or I misunderstand you. To be sure: The /mnt/utmp/<mountpoint>/-directory is an loop-mounted union-type-filesystem of the pnd and the appdata-folder. Any unchanged data is read from the read-only pnd. Everything that is written to /mnt/utmp/<mountpoint> or any changed data that is located in the appdata-folder is read from the appdata-folder.So if it's writing to the utmp-directory it's actually writing into the appdata-folder.

That's what I meant how I understood the PND system. But it's NOT writing into the appdata folder in my case.

Here is what I do exactly:

- Start FF, an empty profile list is shown

- Click "Create Profile"

- Click "Next"

- Accept the default location mentioned in the dialog: "/mnt/utmo/hdonk_direfox_001/.mozilla/firefox/j6z2htlt.Default User"

- Click "Finish"

--> Error is shown "Profile Creation Failed": "Profile douln't be created. Probably the chosen folder isn't writable. [...]"

- Click OK and get back to the prior dialog

- Click "Choose Folder". The Directory Open dialog's default directory is now "/mnt/utmp/hdonk_direfox_001/.mozilla/firefox". If I simply click "Open" and thus accept this location, then click "Finish"...

---> IT WORKS! Neat.

What did not work before, was to create a sub directory ".mozilla" there. However, I can live without that of course. I only thought, it would be better.

What I observe is this:

Even if the error dialog is shown, the profile directory IS created... strange.

And if I go back into the "Choose Folder" dialog and re-select the just created directory, then I can use it for the new profile, too. Strange, too. ;-)

I guess, there should be a more intuitive way to create a profile. Or maybe switch off this profile feature at all? Pandora is not a typical multi-user environment anyway.

More intuitive meaning: Get rid of that error message, that apperently does not make much sense anyway.

Okay, but no big deal, now that we know how to deal with that. ;-)

Thanks for your help and for the PND. Much appreciated!

 

[lomaxx]

For me the profile-manager doesn't even show up, if i run firefox the first time after removing the appdata-folder. So there is already something fishy. Alas I can't think of another reason then incorrect file-/directory-permissions. And when ever there were issues with them, FAT32-cards were involved.

I assume that in your default-directory-description "utmo" and "direfox" are just typos and is not some strange error in the profile-manager of the pnd. Not a problem, just want to be sure that not.

 

[lomaxx]

@hmc: What happens if you edit "/mnt/utmp/hdonk_firefox_001/firefox.sh" and add a "mkdir ./.mozilla" one line before "./bin/firefox $*", then delete the .mozilla-folder and start firefox as if it's the first time?

 

[fusion_power]

Ah, I knew there was another Firefox folder, besides the appdata folders on SD but I forgot where it was. Because Firefox first complained about not to be able to load a profile when I deleted the appdata folder and was unable to start. A clean FF install should create that folder and also a new profile but somewhere it already had  "hidden" configs in the NAND.  However, after manualy creating an empty FF appdata folder, it worked.  
I'm not that fit in Linux so I was not able to run Firefox in Admin mode, I wanted to test, if the Ghostery plugin can be installed then. Maybe I have to find and delete all Firefox releated files on the NAND and then the Appdata Folder to get a clean FF install on my Pandora?
 

(delete the visible ones and the others are loaded).

Erm... isn't that how it's supposed to work? Always displaying the 9 most recently popular history entries? If you delete them then of course it will pull in other items to make up the 9...

I just loaded up a new tab in firefox 17.0.1 on my pandora, and it only loaded 9 thumbnails.

Then it may have changed how it behaves? I remember that it was not an history overview in thumbnail form but some kind of quickload thing for pinned and last visited pages that you can add or FF do automaticly with most visited pages. And only main pages were added then, not every subpage.  That's wat confuses me, now this quickload page acts completely different. Of course this can be intended, I just thought all the thumbnail generation slows down the browsing. 
I can test it by disabling the remember history function so no pages are added in the quickload overview.

 

[Neelix]

Then it may have changed how it behaves? I remember that it was not an history overview in thumbnail form but some kind of quickload thing for pinned and last visited pages that you can add or FF do automaticly with most visited pages. And only main pages were added then, not every subpage.  That's wat confuses me, now this quickload page acts completely different. Of course this can be intended, I just thought all the thumbnail generation slows down the browsing. 

I can test it by disabling the remember history function so no pages are added in the quickload overview.

I'm not sure how exactly it chooses which pages it displays, but I doubt it ever made any distinction between main pages and sub pages, as I doubt the browser has any way of knowing the difference. I expect that once you've been using the browser long enough to build up your history a bit, then the simple fact that go back to those 'main' pages more often than any other page on the site would be enough to make them stand out, but with a fresh profile, or with you constantly emptying the history, it has no such data to work with.

Also I'm not sure why you would think its generating a thumbnail for every page... It seems more likely that it just caches pages as normal, then generates the thumbnails on the fly as they are needed, based on the cache. It would never need to generate more than 9 thumbnails at any given time.

- Neelix

 

[F_Slim]

Could you guys maybe state the format of your SD-partition?

I had problems installing the Ghostery-Addon on my fat32 partition, so I tried the PND on an ext2 partition. I did not get a user-setup dialog (just like Lomaxx), but I was finally able to install Ghostery. Could be that the Firefox PND is rather sensitive to the filesystem?

 

[hdonk]

Could you guys maybe state the format of your SD-partition?

I had problems installing the Ghostery-Addon on my fat32 partition, so I tried the PND on an ext2 partition. I did not get a user-setup dialog (just like Lomaxx), but I was finally able to install Ghostery. Could be that the Firefox PND is rather sensitive to the filesystem?

It's possible. There was an issue with an exception being hit and not handled changing the permissions on a fat32 partition whilst installing plugins. I fixed that for earlier versions of FF (with someone on the board's help, CRW), but Mozilla recoded it in such a way that the fix should not be needed... Unless the problem is in Ghostery itself, or some other part of FF.

 

[lomaxx]

It's not only this pnd. I have the feeling that there are issues with FAT32-cards with several pnds. Let me explain what IMHO causes this, although it's slightly off-topic as it's not only related to the Firefox-pnd:

As far as i know FAT32 does not know anything about ownership of files. Thus Linux has to decide what owner the directories and files on a FAT32-card get when the filesystem is mounted. From my experience with my GentooPC by default everything is mounted as "root", which is annoying when using USB-sticks. You can somewhere configure that the default user is supposed to be something else than root, but you can not be sure which one you want it to have on a multi-user-system. For that reason I personally am using pmount on my GentooPC which allows me to semi-manually mount a stick as normal user resulting in that user owning all files.

 Someone (I think it was Pickle refering to it as a bug of "aufs") said that the solution as already stated above is to create a subdirectory in the pnd-root (for example with the name "home") for all configs, but I haven't tested that myself. But if you ask me it would be better to try if it helps to change the default mount-process of the Pandora, to make the current user the owner of all files/dirs on the fat32-card.

 Right now I don't know the best way of doing this.

 

[lomaxx]

Another note: This might already by a problem when building a pnd. Not sure what owner the files have when you package it on a fat32-card. But back in time I had some problems with pnds on ext-fs too and asking the pnd-maintainers to repackage them helped. I can't recall what exactly they did.

 

[ptitSeb]

I confirm that with PND on FAT32, all the files and folder inside the PND are read-only. It is not the case with PND on ext2. So, if something need to be changed, it must be on a folder that does not belong the the PND. That is why, when building a PND, you the create some "home" or whatever you want folder and put all "user" files here. Even putting files directly in the "appdata/[yourappfolder]" "root" is not advised and doens't work most of the time.

 

[F_Slim]

I am currently switching to a larger SD-card using 2 partitions (ext4 and fat32), so I can put any PND to its favorite file-system if I have to

 

[superatarian]

I may have miss this in this thread, but I see FF needs to upgrade the flash player to version 11. Do we have to wait for this to happen in the next upgrade or can we do it manually??

 

[Binky]

The flash included with FF on the pandora is a top secret private development prototype distributed in tightly-controlled circumstances by TI/Adobe.

They have now abandoned mobile flash, and it keeps being included in the .pnd by accident.

There is very unlikely to ever be an update for it (unless the Gnash project makes a lot of headway)

 

[Askarus]

http://www.infoworld.com/t/web-browsers/firefox-18-boasts-25-percent-speed-boost-mozilla-claims-210401

There's some work for Hdonk.

FireFox 18 is on it's way.

 .