updating firefox in centos 5

wangberg · 07-20-2007, 12:05 AM

i don't want to sound like a dick, but the firefox install documentation is terrible for linux platforms. I can't figure out how to upgrade from firefox 1.5 to 2.0 in CentOS 5.

another member from a different forum said that we should edit the firefox 2.0 script to match the same directories as the firefox 1.5 script. I opened them up side by side and couldn't figure out what needed to be changed, in addition to not seeing the same fields in both.

if anyone can point me to the right direction or help me upgrade this browser. Better yet, a firefox 2.0 src rpm would be great.

thanks,
Wang

shadowsnipes · 07-20-2007, 01:04 AM

I'm not sure how Red Hat based systems have Firefox installed but I'm pretty sure all you have to do is untar the firefox files to a central directory such as /usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.5. Add a symbolic link at /usr/lib/firefox that points to the one you want in case some program tried to install plugins globally. Finally, make sure you have a symbolic link in /usr/bin or somewhere similar that points to the executable in the firefox directory.

You could even leave firefox 1.5 on the box by simply making a special symbolic link to its executable (you could name it firefox-1.5 for example). If you do this be sure you create a profile specific for each version and execute firefox with the -P option to specify which profile you want to use (this works on Windows, too).

jens · 07-20-2007, 09:00 AM

Here's the latest stable RH/Fedora SRPM (from Fedora 7, updates):
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...-1.fc7.src.rpm

Using an SRPM has a downside though...
The inbuilt firefox updater is disabled, so you'll have keep track of security updates yourself.
Instructions:
http://linux.or.id/node/1583

I personally would do as shadowsnipes suggested:

Download the mozilla binary
# mv firefox-2.*.tar.gz /usr/local/
# cd /usr/local
# tar xvfz firefox-2.*.tar.gz
# mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-1.5
# ln -s /usr/local/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

this213 · 07-20-2007, 09:07 AM

You can use packages from Fedora 7 to do this. As a regular user, open a terminal and do:

Code:

mkdir ~/downloads
cd ~/downloads
wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Everything/i386/os/Fedora/fedora-bookmarks-7-1.noarch.rpm
wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/7/i386/firefox-2.0.0.5-1.fc7.i386.rpm
wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/7/i386/firefox-devel-2.0.0.5-1.fc7.i386.rpm
wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Everything/i386/os/Fedora/libbeagle-0.2.16.2-5.fc7.i686.rpm
wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/7/i386/yelp-2.18.1-5.fc7.i386.rpm

Stay in the same directory and su to root, then:

Code:

rpm --import http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Everything/i386/os/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora
yum remove yelp
yum localinstall fedora-bookmarks-7-1.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall firefox*
yum localinstall libbeagle-0.2.16.2-5.fc7.i686.rpm
yum localinstall yelp-2.18.1-5.fc7.i386.rpm

If you're running 64 bit ("uname -m" returns x86_64), replace "i386" in the URLs above with "x86_64"

It should be noted that these might have some effect on your system stability as they're not really "made for" CentOS. I've had no problems so far though. Also, Firefox 2 is too new to be considered *stable*.

wangberg · 07-21-2007, 04:25 PM

props to shadowsnipes and jens for having an easy working solution!! Thank You!

-wangberg

wangberg · 07-25-2007, 03:37 PM

however, obvious, i wanted to mention that i successfully updated thunderbird 1.5 to 2.0 using this same method. Just replace firefox with thunderbird and volia! Thanks again fellas!!!!!!!!