Installing Firefox 3.5 under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x
Tuesday, 4 August 2009If you're actually trying to install another version of Firefox, then click on the Firefox
tag, as there may be an entry on that other version.
Firefox 3.5.2 has been released. I imagine that someone will soon provide an .rpm
; but, for now, Red Hat users will have to install things from a tarball. Since a fair number of the hits to this 'blog are from searches as to how to install Firefox 3.0 under RHEL 5.x, I'm going to infer that people are and will be surfing the WWWeb for instructions on how to install Firefox 3.5 under RHEL 5.x.
My first piece of advice is that one not install Firefox 3.5.1. When I tried using it, it would do something that caused the Linux user account to be logged-out. However, I've being trying version 3.5.2, and so far I've not had that problem with it. [Up-Date (2009:08/17): Unfortunately, I have since had some problems with version 3.5.2 logging me out of the system, and on one occasion it screw-up the display resolution. But these problems have not been so frequent as to move me to stop using this version.] That said, here are the steps that I recommend:
- Download the archive, firefox-3.5.n.tar.bz2.
- The tarball contains a directory,
firefox
, which should be dropped-in as a sub-directory of something. If you want to ponder where, then study the FHS. As for me, as root, I put it in/opt
:
(Replace thattar -xjvf firefox-3.5.n.tar.bz2 -C /opt/
n
with the actual number from the archive that you downloaded.) - Make sure that you have
compat-libstdc++-33
(a Gnome C++ compatibility library):
If not, then as root install it:rpm -qa | grep compat-libstdc++-33
yum install compat-libstdc++-33
- To avoid conflicts with SELinux, as root run
(If you didn't install the directory inchcon -t textrel_shlib_t /opt/firefox/libxul.so
/opt
, or renamed thefirefox
directory, then you'll need to modify the above final argument tochcon
accordingly.) - You'll need a
.desktop
file for Firefox (though you may already have one). As root, edit/create/usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop
, ensuring that it reads
(Again, if you didn't install in[Desktop Entry] Categories=Application;Network;X-Red-Hat-Base; Type=Application Encoding=UTF-8 Name=Firefox Comment='WWW browser' Exec='/opt/firefox/firefox' Icon='/opt/firefox/icons/mozicon128.png' Terminal=false
/opt
, or changed the name of thefirefox
directory, then you'll need to change the above accordingly.) - Log out and back in or restart the system (to up-date the GUI).