Nov 15, 2006
How to update to Firefox 2.0 on Fedora Core 6, the easy way
We all love Firefox 2.0, at least I think we all do, after all 55% of my readers use Firefox as their browser. If you have Windows, downloading and installing it is a breeze, OSX as well. If you haven’t, download it right now!
UPDATE: The update to 2.0 is quite easy, but I have found yet an easier way to upgrade. The new way to update Firefox on FC6 is to use the following command:
yum -y -t –enable=development update firefox
This will perform the update from Fedora’s Development repository which is currently 2.0.0.1
Unfortunately, installing it in Linux, specifically Fedora Core 6, is not quite so simple. If any of you out there have had as much trouble as me finding a way to do this, as the website instructions are virtually non-existent, here is what I have found as the easiest way by far to install Firefox 2.0 on Linux.
Once your in to your Terminal and have su’d yourself to root, run the following commands in order:
- wget http://remi.collet.free.fr/rpms/fc6.i386/remi-release-1-2.fc6.remi.noarch.rpm
- rpm -Uvh remi-release-1-1.fc6.remi.noarch.rpm
- yum –enablerepo=remi update firefox
I have done this twice now without a hitch. These instructions were pretty difficult for me to locate, so I thought I would share them with you!
With these commands you’re setting your system up to look for software on remi.collet.free.fr whenever you run yum, and to trust and install anything that you’re looking for that it happens to find there. Maybe you want to do that, but maybe you don’t — there are security implications. Myself, I don’t know remi.collet.free.fr from Adam, nor have I any idea of how well they safeguard their repository or their signing keys. (I’m paid to be paranoid.)
Ken, if you have an alternate suggestion, please share it here, I will be glad to update the story. – JB
You can use development tree:
yum -y update firefox –enablerepo=development
it will upgrade also yelp so if you have other applications that rely on it probably rpm -e is needed
Well I tried it and it gives me a 404 not found.
Yum does seem to have a problem when trying to resolve the gecko-libs ( and other libs if you use the remi repository ). I have double checked and the libs are actually there with the previous install of firefox. If you get the problem with dependancies, check for the correct libs and then use the following.
yum -y -t update firefox –enablerepo=development
The require libs it is complaining about will come down with the install and voila you have firefox 2.0
The command should be:
yum -y -t –enablerepo=development update firefox
But it still generates error missing the following, although I have
Mozilla 1.7.13 installed.
Error: Missing Dependency: /usr/bin/mozilla is needed by package eclipse-platform
Error: Missing Dependency: mozilla >= 1.7.13 is needed by package yelp
Error: Missing Dependency: mozilla = 37:1.7.13-1.1.fc5 is needed by package mozilla-devel
Error: Missing Dependency: mozilla = 37:1.7.13 is needed by package devhelp
Any idea why?
I finally got it to work. BTW I am running Fedora FC5.
I had to uninstall Mozilla (using YUM Extender application) and then reinstall Mozilla back again, then update the FireFox.
yum -y –enablerepo=updates install mozilla
yum -y -t –enablerepo=development update firefox
(make sure that there are two ‘-’ before option enablerepo).
I guess some packages initially didn’t get installed and forcing a reinstall for Mozilla did the job.
There is NO installation help available for FireFox 2.0 and Simon’s instructions above were very helpful for me. Thanks!
Okay — I did the obvious, which was to download it from the tarball on mozilla.org, then put it into /usr/local/lib/firefox, then create a softlink from /usr/local/bin/firefox to /usr/local/lib/firefox/firefox, then uninstall firefox 1.5. The problem: yum eliminated devhelp, which depends on firefox! Attempts to reinstall devhelp whine and complain about no firefox rpm. Any hints? Must I become an rpm slave if I want to use yum? There must be a way around this….
thanks,
Dan
I found this article in another place, but it was written in French. I tried this and did not get the second command to work. Referencing back to the French page I found the second command should be:
rpm -Uvh remi-release-1-2.fc6.remi.noarch.rpm (vice) rpm -Uvh remi-release-1-1.fc6.remi.noarch.rpm
I have no security concerns; removed the repo after the update.
great article. Thanks,
Troy
I simply downloaded the tar file, and copied the contents of the firefox directory to /usr/lib/firefox-1.5.0.7, since I was in a hurry.
It worked fine.
Can anyone tell me if there are any drawbacks to this approach? Apart from the fact that it seems dumb to have firefox 2.0 files in a directory named firefox-1.5.0.7
[...] There are other costomized/user made version available, Jason Burns writes about one of them. comments | permalink | trackback [...]
I did it a little different. Do these as root (or su).
Download firefox-2.0.0.2.tar.gz from http://www.mozilla.com.
Create /usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.2 directory and extract the tarball there.
Copy any extensions you have in /usr/lib/firefox-1.5.0.9/extensions to /usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.2/extensions.
Change two lines in /usr/bin/firefox:
if [ -x "/usr/lib64/firefox-1.5.0.9/firefox-bin" ] to
if [ -x "/usr/lib64/firefox-2.0.0.1/firefox-bin" ]
MOZ_DIST_BIN=”$MOZ_LIB_DIR/firefox-1.5.0.9″ to MOZ_DIST_BIN=”$MOZ_LIB_DIR/firefox-2.0.0.1″
Now if something doesn’t work for you you can just change /usr/bin/firefox back to point to the 1.5.0.9 directory.
thanks man….
you rock….
it’s not working swholt who suggest u but i want to know that do u have any idea that how to run local intranet sites of local windows server on fedora core 6 machine on a same domain fedora pings those server but not able to open local sites with internet on same network settings
i can’t update my firefox it always stooped so now i’m using Internet Explorer but I like firefox better because i trust it. I can’t Update because of my Update server bacause it has a problem help me fix it i’m waiting for your E-mail. Thank You for your Kindness hope you keep up the good work and fix my Update Server.