Dependencies of Firefox

[Ian Burrell]

On 9/26/06, Havard Rast Blok <newsmail1 at hblok.net> wrote:
>
> After updating to 1.5.0.7-1.fc5 (on a rather pristine FC5 installation)
> I got the wildly reported error when trying to access a site over HTTPS:
>
>         Unexpected response from server
>         Firefox doesn't know how to communicate with the server.
>         *   Check to make sure your system has the Personal Security
>             Manager installed.
>
> After much googling, grumbling and yumming, I finally got it working
> with these updates (I'm not sure if the openssl was necessary):
>
>  yum list firefox nss openssl mod_ssl
>
> firefox.i386    1.5.0.7-1.fc5
> mod_ssl.i386    1:2.2.2-1.2
> nss.i386        3.11.3-0.5.fc5
> openssl.i686    0.9.8a-5.3
>
>
> My question is now, why are these packages not updated by yum as
> dependencies of firefox? Surely, accessing https sites is a rather
> common task. Even my mom needs this.
>

My impression is that there is an unstated dependency between firefox
and the exact version of nss that it was built against.  The new
firefox needs the new nss to work correctly.  "yum update firefox"
will only update its depdencies if there is a depdency between the
versions.  Updating just firefox causes a failure. Most people didn't
see a problem because they did "yum update" and updated them together.

 - Ian