Suse10.1:firefox on clicking just shows hourglass doesn't open

[ilugd]

I have Suse 10.1 and i installed it on saturday. Firefox was working ok. But today when i click the firefox shortcut in the browsers section of kmenu, it just shows a hourglass (animated) in the taskbar and the mouse pointer also shows a bouncing firefox icon for 15 seconds or so and then it just disappears. I am not able to start firefox at all. I don't know what to do and what else investigation to do to solve the problem. Can anyone help or point me in the right direction?

 

[JGuru]

@Ilugd, How do you connect to the Net? Using a router, broadband modem or dial-up?

To see if you are able to connect to the Net, open the Terminal Window & type:

$ ping www.yahoo.com

If you get some data statistics, then you are connected to the Net. If you get the message
"Unknown host: www.yahoo.com" then it means you are not connected to the Net.

Press 'Ctrl + C' to end the ping command.

 

[kalpik]

Try running sudo killall firefox-bin and then try running Firefox.

 

[ilugd]

wow, those were fast replies mates.

@jguru- I apologise. I am able to connect through Konqueror and ephiphany. But only firefox has this problem.

@kalpik - I tried rebooting and then starting also. In the personal settings, i have set kde to even not load any previous session. But thanks for the command. I have written it down. I might be able to use it later for something else.

I also tried uninstalling and reinstalling with YAST. Even then the same problem persists. By the way i have only google browser sync extension installed.

Wow, this is getting really frustrating. Konqueror has none of my passwords and i forgot all. Needed to boot into windows to login to thinkdigit.

 

[mehulved]

Start firefox from terminal and see the output.
And Konqueror can store passwords in Kwallet. It does ask to store password. Strange if it didn't ask. And Kwallet needs a separate password to open.

 

[desertwind]

on a desperate attempt, try this also

$ rm -rf /home/username/.mozilla/firefox

replace username with youe username.
and then try starting Fx now.

Caution: you'll lose all your preferences, stored passwords, bookmarks, extensions etc.

 

[mehulved]

Riyaz wouldn't rather just renaming or moving that file to somewhere else be better.

 

[ilugd]

kwallet doesn't ask. My firefox asks though and then uses browser sync to send it to Google's server. Should Kwallet ask?

Will try out desert wind's suggestion though.

Techyourfuture: I did try that. It gave some page segmentation error or something. I will need to login to linux. Should be able to do that in half an hour or so (I just bought a transcend 1 gb pen drive. Am checking it out now. )
__________
---
Logged into linux suse 10.1 again.

trying firefox from the terminal, i get a segmentation fault.
here ---
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~> firefox
/usr/bin/firefox: line 159: 4370 Segmentation fault $AOSS $MOZ_PROGRAM $@

Just found out that the help centre doesn't work as well. I don't know the terminal command for that though, so couldn't check it for errors.

ok, trying desertwind's suggestion ---
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~> rm -rf /home/jsemmanuel/.mozilla/firefox
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~> firefox
/usr/bin/firefox: line 159: 4445 Segmentation fault $AOSS $MOZ_PROGRAM $@
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~>
__________
checked if the rm works and found that it does. The entire directory is empty.
Firefox, on being invoked from the command line again, seems to create the profile (??) directories etc and then seems to crash.
here is the terminal output
--
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~> rm -rf /home/username/.mozilla/firefox
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~> rm -rf /home/jsemmanuel/.mozilla/firefox
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~> firefox
/usr/bin/firefox: line 159: 4445 Segmentation fault $AOSS $MOZ_PROGRAM $@
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~>
__________
on further investigation this is what i get.

--
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~/.mozilla/firefox> ls
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~/.mozilla/firefox> firefox
/usr/bin/firefox: line 159: 4557 Segmentation fault $AOSS $MOZ_PROGRAM $@
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~/.mozilla/firefox> ls
k4wv7vvl.default profiles.ini
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~/.mozilla/firefox> rm -r *.*
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~/.mozilla/firefox> ls
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~/.mozilla/firefox> firefox
/usr/bin/firefox: line 159: 4579 Segmentation fault $AOSS $MOZ_PROGRAM $@
jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~/.mozilla/firefox> ls
jmzx6lm2.default profiles.ini

firefox crashes after creating the profiles, doesn't it. That is what I am able to figure out. What do i do now?

 

[mehulved]

Are you using some 3D desktop or had any updates just before this happened.
Maybe some problem with shared libraries that's what googling about suggests.
And yes did you install some pinball theme.
Just search the google with the error you get. It seems the last one is the culprit as per what search results I get.

 

[ilugd]

uh.. oh.. (blushes)
You caught me there, techyourfuture. It wasn't a pinball theme, but i really was messing around trying to get mp3s to play. You see our proxy doesn't allow ftp so i was not able to add sources and was trying it by downloading rpms. Got a couple of dependency errors. What do you think? Do I need to reinstall linux?

On a side note, can anyone advice on how to enable mp3s without adding ftp repositories?

 

[mehulved]

For enabling mp3's just download and install win32codecs rpm.
I don't know how to manage without ftp repos. Maybe someone can give http repos and then you can just update your system. That should solve it.

 

[NucleusKore]

On a side note, can anyone advice on how to enable mp3s without adding ftp repositories?

You can also install the FC4 xmms mp3 plugin, it works fine.

As for your firefox crashing problem, remove firefox using yast.
Then go to the ./mozilla folder in your home folder
Delete the firefox folder
Then add this repository to your yast sources
*software.opensuse.org/download/mozilla/SUSE_Linux_10.1/

Now open software management in yast and install firefox
Should solve your problem

 

[ilugd]

Thanks everyone. Will try nucleus kore's suggestion tomorrow. Anyway as far as the repositories are concerned, i am just thinking of wiating till i get the airtel broadband connection at our office in a week or two.
__________
or guess i will just reinstall linux. It will help me get familiar with its quirks.

 

[eddie]

jsemmanuel@bcidelhi:~> firefox
/usr/bin/firefox: line 159: 4370 Segmentation fault $AOSS $MOZ_PROGRAM $@

Did you some how mess with alsa packages? It seems that you either uninstalled alsa-oss or you installed an incompatible version. This is causing firefox to crash at start-up. Your /usr/bin/firefox is predictably a script. Read it using less command and see what is the actual binary of firefox...try executing that binary directly and see if that works.

 

[ilugd]

yeah, the mp3 codecs had mentioned alsa somewhere. How do i use the less command? I can't figure it out from the man command.

 

[eddie]

Just use "less /usr/bin/firefox" in a terminal window