FireFox ESR portable - how to start? [SOLVED]

[Barkingmad]

Hello

I've downloaded the portable Firefox package that's available from Mikewalsh's repo but now am not sure how it's meant to be started up.

I made a folder called "Firefox" and unpacked the download archive into it.

First level down is a folder "FF78esr-64. Inside that are folders "firefox64" and "firefox64.bak" and a symlink called "LAUNCH" that apparently points to firefox64/ff. left click on the "LAUNCH" link gives a "profile missing" error ......profile cannot be loaded.........

Inside the the "firefox 64" folder, amongst everything else, there is the file "ff" which is a script which I can't follow but there is also a file "firefox" with a "cog" icon. Clicking on this starts Firefox and all seems to be well, I have made some minor changes eg to the start page and they are remembered so I assume there must be a working profile somewhere.

After all this ramble what I wanted to know is how am I supposed to start this up? Will there be any problem if I just make a symlink, say on the desktop, pointing to the firefox "cog" file?

Thanks for any help
Will

[lizardidi]

Can you post the link from where you downloaded the Portable Firefox?

Which puppy are you using?

[mikewalsh]

Hi, Will.

Oh, dear.....my bad. I AM sorry!

This isn't the first time I've done this. Because I do so many portables for the Puppy community, I sometimes lose track a bit of what I'm doing. I have a main 'Browsers' directory on a remote, auto-mounted partition, OK? I have a 32-bit directory inside that, full of 32-bit portables.....likewise a 64-bit directory.

For ease of swapping-over at upgrade time, each portable has a permanent, absolute sym-link to a third directory on that same partition, where all the various profiles live. I've used an absolute path, rather than a relative one, so that it doesn't matter when I copy a portable to my 'WORK' directory on a different partition, the profile will still be found.....ready for quickly 'testing' that I've built the new version properly.

Still with me?

When I packed this, after building the new version, I obviously forgot to remove the 'profile' sym-link. That's what's causing the 'profile missing" error!

I've corrected the issue - thanks for bringing it to my attention! - and re-uploaded the browser & md5sum.

------------------------------

Do this:- Delete your 'portable' browser directory.....and while you're at it, delete the 'Firefox' directory you put it into, please. I'll explain why in a minute.

Go into /root/.mozilla, and delete the 'firefox' directory you'll find there.

Finally, delete the tarball you originally downloaded.

-----------------------------

Now; download the corrected version.

When you unpack it, you'll initially get the "FF78esr-64.tar.gz.extracted" directory. Click to enter this. Inside is the portable "FF78esr-64" browser itself, with the Firefox icon. THIS is what you move to a location outside the save-file/folder.....just as it is. Don't worry about putting it inside another directory, because it's already self-contained.

Once you've located it where you want it, click to enter.....then simply click on the 'LAUNCH' script. After the usual short delay, it should fire up.

Let us know if that little lot gets you up-and-runing, please.

(Assuming the above works, you can drag the 'LAUNCH'' script to the desktop as your launcher. You can then re-name it to 'Firefox', and tart it up with a suitable icon, if you wish. I've attached one you can use, below. [Right-click->Save image as] Then right-click on the 'LAUNCH' script on the desktop->File 'Firefox'->Set icon.....and drag the downloaded PNG icon into the wee box that comes up. Sorted.)

Mike.

[Barkingmad]

Hello Mike

So far so good. Firefox now starts from the "LAUNCH" link but with some oddities. There are two tabs open, the one in front showing an error about being unable to connect to "localhost:2605" the other is connected to the old Puppy forum. The internet at large is accessible, I can close those tabs, type a URL and browse normally.

I thought I should mention this though as it probably isn't what you intended.

Thanks for your quick service!
Will

[mikewalsh]

Hallo, Will.

Huh. Still not quite right! This bit's easily fixable, though.

Go into the main firefox64 directory. Open the 'ff' script with Geany. It should read as follows:-

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
#
#LAUNCHDIR="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")"; pwd)"
LAUNCHDIR="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "$0")")"
mkdir "$LAUNCHDIR/profile" 2> /dev/null
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LAUNCHDIR/:$LAUNCHDIR/extralibs${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH} "$LAUNCHDIR/firefox" "$@" -profile "$LAUNCHDIR/profile"

Just delete those two web addresses after the final "$LAUNCHDIR/profile". I hadn't modified this since before the old forum went off-line; those URLs were just a way to get the browser to launch with those two tabs already open, that's all.

"Localhost:2605" is a web-interface for a bandwidth monitoring tool I've been using for years.....obviously, the browser is the logical place to have such a thing open, since it's where all your bandwidth consumption occurs.

If you want, you can use the same trick to get the browser to launch with any tab/tabs of your choice, pre-loaded. It's just another wee 'work-around', or 'short-cut', to make life a bit easier..!

Okay? I'll re-pack/re-upload again. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Mike.

[Barkingmad]

Hello Mike

I've just had time to try this and it's all sorted now, thanks for your help.

Thanks as well for the tip about how to open sites along with the browser, that might be useful sometime.

Will

[mikewalsh]

@ Will:-

You can also do this via your desktop launcher, too.

If you right-click on your launcher->Edit, you'll see - near the top - a field marked 'Arguments to pass (for executables)'. If you put your URLs in there (separated by a space if more than one), it'll do the same trick. Whatever order you put your URLs in, that's the order the tabs will open in.

As with so much in Linux - and Puppy in particular - there's always more than one way of performing the same task...

Mike.