Fedora Looks Fresh and Functions Well

[Benjy Grogan]

On 3/30/06, Rudolf Kastl <che666 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/3/30, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org>:
> > On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 04:28 -0500, Benjy Grogan wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I'm really enjoying using FC5.  Tomboy is a great tool for jotting
> > > down ideas.  I actually put together this email using a few tomboy
> > > notes.  I have a few suggestions -- that you can take or leave -- that
> > > I wanted to share to help out with 'Fedora's way forward'. :)  Here
> > > they are:
> > >
> > >
> > > 1) A welcome to Fedora (or RHEL) tutorial for new accounts and even
> > > maybe a tips section everytime you log in.  DAC would be a really good
> > > topic for new users.
> >
> > Do you want to help with that? . Docs project has a number of people who
> > introduce themselves but then dont contribute. So the actual
> > contributors are extremely low now.
> >
> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
> >
> >
> > >
> > > 2) Have a place in Preferences set up for the two or three available
> > > Javas (Sun's and the OSS ones).  Then when you have installed Sun's
> > > Java you have a place to switch back to the old one, and vice versa.
> > > (Question: Is a compiled Azureus the same if it's based on Sun or
> > > GCJ?)
> > >
> >
> > Fedora wouldnt ship Sun Java. Azureus is GCJ compiled.
> >
> > http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc5/#sn-Java
> >
> > The alternatives mechanism already allows you to switch between any
> > implementation of Java as long as it is appropriately packaged. Check
> > out the third question in
> >
> > http://www.redhat.com/magazine/001nov04/departments/tips_tricks/
> >
> >
> >
> > > 3) I have a question on codecs.  Is it possible to get all OSS codecs
> > > these days based on the GStreamer plugin system?  I think the whole
> > > audio/video codec problem would go away if there was a GStreamer Codec
> > > management system where OSS codecs would be there by default and then
> > > the user would go out and get all the proprietary GStreamer codecs
> > > he/she is missing.  It should be simple to look at a Fedora system,
> > > and say "alright, got those ones, but missing these ones (like
> > > mp3/avi).  And I can figure out where to get them."  And this
> > > presupposes a future where there are only Gstreamer codecs.
> >
> > Thats exactly how it is supposed to be working. We are almost there at
> > this point.
> >
> > >
> > > 4) Since Firefox is one of the most important pieces of the Linux OS
> > > these days, it would be great to have all of the alphas, betas and RCs
> > > available in update-testing.  That would allow some users to test
> > > Firefox for bugs over an extended period of time before 2.0 or 3.0
> > > comes out.  Obviously, under some guidance from Fedora with all the
> > > patches they put into it.
> >
> > fedora updates-testing repository is just for testing updates that would
> > almost always be later pushed out as actual updates. Having a
> > experimental repository might be a good idea but the current usage of
> > updates-testing repository is low enough to not deviate into that.
>
> That wouldnt fit though into the definition of the experimental
> repository proposal i am still working on unless the experimental ff
> is packaged in a way to coexist with current stable releases (wouldnt
> even be bad for regression testing then.). i will add it to the
> argumentation chain.

I'm currently trying to get a CVS build of Firefox 2.0 to run on FC5. 
The build compiled fine in my home directory.  And when I go to the
executable and run it to determine the version I get:

$ ./firefox --version
Mozilla Firefox 1.6a1, Copyright (c) 1998 - 2006 mozilla.org

But if I then run it as

$ ./firefox

all that happens is the default firefox 1.5.0.1 loads up.

The exact same thing occurs if I d/l the tarball from the Bon Echo
release homepage and follow the instructions:

Extract the tarball and run ./firefox:

tar -xzvf bonecho-alpha1.tar.gz
cd firefox
./firefox

... so I'm guessing there is some configuration I have to do.  If
anyone can enlighten me I would appreciate it.

I found Bug 157133
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=157133> useful
in showing me how to fix some selinux problems I had with the
libraries libxpcom_core.so, libxpcom.so, libmozjs.so, and libxul.so.

Before I could run firefox, I had to deal with this message on each of
those libraries:

$ ./firefox
./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: ./libxpcom.so:
cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied

The solution was to follow some advice from Dan Walsh in Bug 157133
and do as so:

# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t ./libxpcom_core.so
# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t ./libxpcom.so
# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t ./libmozjs.so
# chcon -t texrel_shlib_t ./libxul.so

Yet, now I'm dealing with the problem of Firefox automatically
redirecting to the version of Firefox that comes with FC5.

Any help would be appreciated,
Thanks,
Benjy