Mozilla Firebird launches, but only for root 1

[leehinkleman]

For root, Mozilla Firebird launches, and much faster than the other Mozilla installed with RedHat 9, but Firebird won't seem to launch at all for non-root users.
The installation now is in /usr/local/MozillaFirebird, but I also tried it in /home/leehinkl/MozillaFirebird, from which it wouldn't launch for me as user leehinkl.
Would another location help?
Thanks for your help.

 

[AP81]

This would most likely be a 'rights' problem. You have to enable yourself to have access to Mozilla Firebird.

Go into the directory and issue a:

chmod u+s <filename>

on the Mozilla Firebird binary file. See if that works. If that still doesn't work, try:

chmod +s <filename>

Failing that, visit the Mozilla Firebird forum and post your question there. Here is the website:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/index.php?c=4

 

[flugh]

Ouch, make a web browser setuid (owned by root)? That's scary. How about just an 'ls -l `which mozilla`' and see if it's not at least 755 (read+write+execute by owner, read+execute by group, read+execute by all others). Maybe just a 'chmod 755 <filename>' would do it (at least do it a little more safely ;-) )

Also, may not be permissions on the binary file itself, but the directory it's in. 'ls -ld /usr/local/MozillaFirebird'.

Or, first thing we should have mentioned. Is /usr/local/MozillaFirebird in your $PATH, your user's $PATH, or is the mozilla binary there symlinked to a directory in anyone's $PATH?

I've spent many hours beating myself up over the same problem and how easy it was (in hindsight) to fix. Learn from my pain ;-)

--
JBR

 

[flugh]

As a follow-up, I just downloaded Firebird. Extracted the files to /usr/local (so I now have a /usr/local/MozillaFirebird directory). Did a 'chown -R root.root /usr/local/MozillaFirebird' to clean up the ownerships. Then, as regular user, ran '/usr/local/MozillaFirebird/MozillaFirebird', and am now posting via that browser. So, it's got to be a simple fix ;-)

Seems sleek enough. I prefer the look (default fonts and all) of galeon a bit more, but that's no big deal.

Back to work...

----
JBR

 

[samsonx]

flugh- I have set my browser to be owned by root (setuid) a few months back and have no problems. How is that going to cause potential problems?

 

[jwenting]

ANY program that runs setuid is a potential security risk.
If there's a bug in the program that could be exploited for a remote takeover attack you now have a program running through which someone over the internet can gain root access to your machine.
If that program can access the filesystem and the network, your risk just went up because that attacker can now access your local filesystem remotely without you ever knowing it (including installing software, changing passwords, etc. etc.).
As and X software is victim to a host of security problems inherent to X, you've just opened up all the holes in X to anyone wanting to take over a machine.

 

[leehinkleman]

Firebird still isn't working for non-root users, with the following installation steps used, after downloading, with Mozilla, MozillaFirebird-0.6.1-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz as user leehinkl, into /home/leehinkl
1. chmod 755 MozillaFirebird-0.6.1-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
2. tar -xzvf MozillaFirebird-0.6.1-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
3. su
Password: xxxxxx
4. mv MozillaFirebird /usr/local
5. ln -s /usr/local/MozillaFirebird/MozillaFirebird /usr/bin
6 exit
7. startx
8. right-click desktop, and add link to new application
9. leftclick 'execute' tab and browse to '/usr/bin/MozillaFirebird'
10. leftclick permissions tab and choose rwxr-xr-x

On root's KDE desktop, this link to application works.
Also, most of the directories and files in /usr/local/MozillaFird are 775...not 755...and
chown -R root:root MozillaFirebird was tried, as was chown -R leehinkl:leehinkl MozillaFirebird, on many and varied attempts.

Thanks again.

 

[danielhozac]

Does it work if you start it from Konsole or another terminal emulator?

//Daniel

 

[leehinkleman]

Thanks, Daniel, and the following is the Shell Konsole error message after I tried 'MozillaFirebird &':

[leehinkl@localhost leehinkl]$ MozillaFirebird &
[1] 1070
[leehinkl@localhost leehinkl]$ INTERNAL ERROR on Browser End: No manager for initializing factory?

System error?:: Success

Thanks again.
Lee

 

[leehinkleman]

...this line was appended on Konsole after I pressed enter again:

[1]+ Exit 255 MozillaFirebird

so the entire Konsole message was:

[leehinkl@localhost leehinkl]$ MozillaFirebird &
[1] 1070
[leehinkl@localhost leehinkl]$ INTERNAL ERROR on Browser End: No manager for initializing factory?

System error?:: Success

[1]+ Exit 255 MozillaFirebird

 

[leehinkleman]

Problem solved, as follows:

removing the symbolic link libjavaplugin_oji.so from /home/leehinkl/.mozilla/plugins solved the problem.


Firebird was looking for, trying to use, the libjavaplugin_oji.so link in /home/leehinkl/.mozilla/plugins and j2re was compiled, I've been told, with a different version of gcc.

The link to the java plugin was never made in root's .mozilla/plugin folder, so that's why Firebird was confusingly able to launch for root.

Thanks to all who answered!

 

[Levis501]

Thanks for posting your final solution... I was having a similar issue and found yours through a search engine. I'm back up and running

 

[flugh]

I gotta second that. I posted a link to this post somewhere (maybe here at tek-tips?) for someone else to try fixing their similar issue. It's just nice when someone figures out their problem and posts their solution.

Now, I'm off to see if I did the same for all the threads I've started ;-)

----
JBR