Firefox won't load

Hello, I'm new to the Linux OS; recently I bought an Acer AspireOne 150 (blue case, 120Gb HD, 512Mb RAM, etc) with Acer Linpus Lite pre-installed. I only need the One for mailing and Web access while travelling so no great demands being made of it.

I should have left well alone but decided I wanted to upgrade the Firefox V2 browser for Firefox V3.0; big mistake – I quickly found that Linux is not Windows XP! Having followed the instructions set down in (URL http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/07/inst ... e-one.html) I now find that I'm unable to access the Internet from the Aspire One's 'Connect Browser' desktop icon; indeed I cannot connect to the Internet at all as the link from the icon to the Firefox application is broken. I can use all other functions – Messenger, E-mail, etc., so I'm sure web access is there but not for the Firefox browser.

This should be the time I decide to give up on Linux and load XP Home but in the main I'm more than happy with the performance of Linpus Lite and would like to keep it. I also don't want to do a clean install from the OS restore DVD as I feel sure that my One is not 'broken' enough to justify that. What stops a repair is my TOTAL LACK of Linux experience and a lack of familiarity with the command line approach.

So what I'd like is a SIMPLE step by step guide showing me how I can get back to my original Firefox V2 web browser via the Browser icon. I imagine the Firefox V2 code is still there on my HD somewhere but of course my 'upgrade' attempt may well have deleted it but I have no way of telling. I did try /opt/firefox/firefox from 'Terminal – user@localhost' but it returned the message “No such file or directory”.

For now I will leave the move to Firefox V3 to future editions of Acer's Live Update scheme. Ideally the repair process should be such that I can copy and paste any command line code I'm given in to the appropriate part of the One's utilities: - terminal, Xfce or whatever. If the process could be copied to a USB stick from my other PC and then run automatically by the Aspire One so much the better.

Note: - I've seen a similar post on this site but did not really understand the diagnosis/repair exchange between parties; I'm so unsure of this Linux stuff I may have to switch to XP (with the expense of buying licensed copy of XP Home or Pro) I really need a simple fix, ideally one that would self load and repair from a USB containing the code.

Cheers - Geoff

Thanks for your help.

 

As long as you're not so phobic about the command line that you can't use it at all, we should be OK!

We'll see what can be done, but we're going to have to find out a few things first!

Start up the dreaded terminal, and see if just typing

Code:

firefox

does anything. (Explanation: this is just calling firefox from the terminal)

If it doesn't start a browser, then are there any error messages in the terminal? If so, please copy them and paste into a message here, and don't do any more for the moment.

If a browser does open, then use Help->About to find out which version has loaded, then close the browser. In the terminal type

Code:

which firefox

and note down what it says. ("which firefox" just asks Linux where it found the program called 'firefox').

Then type this into the terminal (sorry, this is a more complex command - type it carefully)

Code:

grep web .config/xfce4/desktop/group-app.xml

This uses a utility called 'grep' to search the file which sets up the desktop for the word 'web' - you should get back a response similar to:
<app sequence="0">/usr/share/applications/linpus-web.desktop</app>

If you do, then this confirms that the desktop setup file is looking in the right place, so now we need to see whether the firefox command is right in that place. Here's another more complex command, but rather like the last one: this time we're looking for the word 'firefox' in the linpus-web-desktop file:

Code:

grep firefox /usr/share/applications/linpus-web.desktop

What response do you get to that? Please post back all the responses and which version of Firefox opened.

On my machine, typing 'firefox' into a terminal starts firefox, "which firefox" returns /usr/bin/firefox, the first 'grep' command returns the line I quoted and another relating to 'web-office', and the last one gives me two lines, one of which is "Exec=firefox". The answers your machine gives will help work out what needs to be changed.

 

When I type "Firefox" into my terminal, I get an error that says line 131: 6193 Segmentation Fault $prog" ${1+"$@"}