Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I have Bionic Pup in a frugal install on my hard drive. I installed the firefox.sfs from the menu, and it worked as expected. But then some time later, having gotten Firefox notifications that it should be updated, I thought I'd try re-installing the firefox.sfs in case the sfs had been updated. But now while Firefox appears in the Menu>Internet, when I click to start it, it never opens. Nothing. No sign that anything is going on. So I restarted X, nothing. I restarted the laptop, again nothing. I think at one point, I also tried deleting the sfs file, and reinstalling it: same problem. Firefox never opens. I'm using Light, for now, but would prefer to use Firefox. Does anyone have any ideas about what I did wrong, or what went wrong, and how I can fix it? Thanks in advance.

What specific version of Bionicpup?
Bionicpup32 8.0 or Bionicpup64 8.0?

When you say you tried to delete the Firefox SFS.
How did you exactly do it?

I thought I'd try re-installing the firefox.sfs in case the sfs had been updated. But now while Firefox appears in the Menu>Internet, when I click to start it, it never opens. Nothing.

I am going to guess you have now got two completely different Firefox SFS installed.
The menu entry is getting confused as to which one to run.
Look in /mnt/home/ and see if there is more than one Firefox SFS.

Check in menu->Setup->SFS-load-on-the-fly
What are you seeing for loaded SFS's?

It's Bionicpup 32
To delete, I found the sfs in the folder, right-clicked and selected delete.
I did check the sfs load-on-the-fly, and saw only one firefox.sfs loaded.
I tried unloading the sfs, then loaded it again. I actually tried this a couple of times. I always see only one firefox.sfs, and only one appears in the Internet menu, but it never actually opens.
Despite what I wrote above, is it still possible that there are two, and while I only see one, where else could it be? I remember that when I installed, I got a prompt about where to put it. There were two options for where to put the sfs. If one location is mnt/home/, where might the other be (if there is another?)
Thanks for your help.
(I can't actually look at the folders right now, as I don't have the laptop with me.)

use SFS-load-on-the-fly and unload any Firefox SFS loaded.

Use Pfind program to do a search for Firefox.
Select where to search: System files
This should find any Firefox files.

I am wondering if you actually installed a Firefox version.
Run menu->Setup->Puppy Package Manager(PPM)->Uninstall
Any Firefox showing in the PPM uninstall?

Hello, I will follow these suggestions when I get home this afternoon and let you know what I find.
I'm pretty sure I didn't install a Firefox version, but I will check PPM to verify. I seem to recall, that as an experiment, I tried installing the prompted update from within Firefox itself, and I think I recall that nothing seemed to happen, which is why I then tried the sfs download. But maybe the update actually did download and is confusing things somehow. Anyway, I check all this out this afternoon. Thanks again for the help.

Well, I'm all set now. The firefox.sfs was not only not loaded, but I removed it. I used PFind and found some Firefox files, which I deleted. Then I did the sfs install again, and loaded the new sfs. Firefox works, and while I was setting it up, it started an auto update, which had me worried, but the update must have put all the files in the right location, because it restarted and still works fine.
So thanks again for your help. I do appreciate it.

@engenulf :-

to the "kennels"..!

For future reference:-

When working with SFS packages, to use them they must first be 'loaded'. Either rt-clk->SFS load-on-the-fly, and follow the instructions, or simply click on the SFS package (and follow the instructions!)

Before moving, or deleting an SFS package, always, always, ALWAYS UN-load it first. If you don't, you risk corrupting your save-file/folder. Which then means starting all over again with a new one.....

(Pup's a bit "odd" in some ways, even by Linux standards. She has her quirks, but she's well worth persevering with, trust me. You'll soon get the hang of things; if the worst comes to the worst, a re-install only takes a matter of minutes..!)

Mike.

Updating modern Firefox is bane because Mozilla forces it. We joke about it being fascist. .sfs amplify the problem because they're not technically installed, just loaded.

Updating a temporarily loaded app isn't smooth going.

There are ways to resist but for this reason also I would recommend installing a Firefox .pet instead (which is about as easy to uninstall). Disconnect your Internet and in your settings choose "Check for updates..."

This is an old version I'm using. The last option "Never" is gone in a new Firefox, but you can hold Mozilla off with the second while you're using an .sfs.

After the second option is checked, reconnect Internet.

When loading .sfs I won't save my PUPSAVE, either automatically or manually, and I will only save it manually if I intend to keep an installed .pet or .deb in the PUPSAVE.

There you can update it or not at your discretion.

Firefox also runs well standalone, which just means unpacking or copying it to the directory of your choice, usually outside of the operating system.

JASpup wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 3:03 am

Updating modern Firefox is bane because Mozilla forces it. We joke about it being fascist.

You are the only one who calls firefox updates "fascist" - not "we". And where the "joke" is supposed to be I don't understand!
Please stop - you diminish real fascism with such ridiculous attribution.

Maybe this will help:

https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... f&start=15

peace

one wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 6:56 am

Please stop - you diminish real fascism with such ridiculous attribution.

We doesn't mean everyone, and unwarranted hostile criticism with a "peace" closing is CCCP.

That is the social, least important part of my post, not to be taken seriously. Pick yourself up.

If anyone has better advice, if not simply more popular, I defer.

You want fascism? I'm a Californian. This is real fascism: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/califor ... virus.html

Conservatives don't have enough education to get it, and no one cares.

hello all,

Im not sure with your Puppy-Version,
I had read something about UpupBB, which is based on Bionic.

If you have UpupBB, then its the same as i my UpupEF:
The standardbrowser is stored in the file
adrv_upupef_20.04.sfs
in the same place, where the booting puppy_upupef_20.04.sfs stays.
These 'adrv_....' files are mountet to the System at bootup.
Maybe your "Update Browser"-action has changed that adrv_upupef_20.04.sfs
with wrong files.
In my personal version of Upup-EF i had
saved a empty adrv_upupef_20.04.sfs
put the new Browserfiles in the main-boot-file puppy_upupef_20.04.sfs

If you have the puppy Upup-BB, then
check where puppy_upupef_20.04.sfs is stored
check if in that place there is also a file adrv_upupef_20.04.sfs
if so,
- rename it - for example to adrv_upupef_20.04.sfs.original
- go to console
- there type cd / # jump to rootposition of filetree
- mkdir empty # create a directory named empty
- mksquashfs /empty adrv_upupef_20.04.sfs # make a .sfs from that empty directory, stored at /
- exit # leave console
- copy that fie '/adrv_upupef_20.04.sfs' at the place, where puppy_upupef_20.04.sfs is stored
- boot your Upup-BB, try to 'install' the firefox.sfs and start firefox
if that works, it should be possible, to put your firefox.sfs as adrv_upupef_20.04.sfs in the booting folder.
But my problem was: adrv_upupef_20.04.sfs seems to get mounted read-only,
changes to firefox bring errors with meaning 'can't save bla bla bla',
thats why I had left adrv_upupef_20.04.sfs empty and include the browserfiles in the main sfs puppy_upupef_20.04.sfs

hope it helps

When you load a SFS file, it is like inserting a CD ROM. When the SFS is mounted/loaded, it's contents is visible to your computer. In your case, you had a SFS file that contained the Firefox application. When you removed/unloaded/unmounted this SFS, the Firefox application was no longer available.

When you did have Firefox up and running, and Firefox did an update, only Firefox related files that have changed will be downloaded and updated. So you need your original Firefox SFS loaded so that files not updated are available to your computer.

In the future, you can try one of the following alternatives:
1. Download an updated Firefox SFS (if you can find one)
2. Disable Firefox updates in settings
3. Tell Puppy Linux to install, not load, the SFS file. This way all of the Firefox files will be saved inside your PupSave file. You won't need the SFS anymore and updates to Firefox will just work.
4. Remaster Puppy Linux...let's not go over those details justyet

snoring_cat wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:49 pm

<...../snip>
In the future, you can try one of the following alternatives:
1. Download an updated Firefox SFS (if you can find one)
2. Disable Firefox updates in settings
3. Tell Puppy Linux to install, not load, the SFS file. This way all of the Firefox files will be saved inside your PupSave file. You won't need the SFS anymore and updates to Firefox will just work.
4. Remaster Puppy Linux...let's not go over those details just yet.
<snip/.....>

@engenulf :-

If you want to be able to update an application, there's only two real alternatives here.

• One, you install it fully, via .pet or deb or whatever, to the system.....which means it's permanently taking up space in your save-file/folder. Or:-

• Two, you run it as a 'portable' application. This is able to fully update itself in the normal way, but every component of the browser can be situated outside the 'save'.....it can even run from a flash drive, if required.

In this respect, a 'portable' browser is superior to one 'loaded' from SFS. The only way round this with an SFS is to temporarily unpack the SFS, allow the browser to run its update sequence and upgrade all the necessary components, then re-pack the SFS again. And this would have to be done every time an update is issued.....

The 'portable' is fully unpacked all the while, and runs in this condition at all times. But it can be run from anywhere.....

Mike.

@engenulf,

what I personally do is download the newest version of Firefox from their website, and uncompress this .tar.bz2. Then I repack it as an SFS file. Problem solved. (To help others, I have been thinking of creating a Puppy Linux repository with all of these new SFS and PET files.)

Your "portable" solution is similar to what I just posted, as well as my option 1.

Regarding your first point, I agree, that a solution that loads Firefox into a savefile does take up savefile space. However, it does make updates easy and relatively transparent for new users. In fact, you can tell Puppy Linux to remaster the frugal install by moving apps from the savefile into the new master. This is more geeky and more advanced.

Just now thinking that this brings up another alternative that borders on hacking (since Puppy Linux by default doesn't normally do this). You can make a disk image using dd, format it and then mount it. This disk image will look like a regular mount (with read write access), and you can install Firefox there. But who would do this other than hackers?

Whenever possible use portables!! Firefox --all mozilla & its forks-- will offer to auto-update.
With the exception of two or three small files [/usr/share/applications/...desktop; pixmap, and a wrapper 'on the path' which calls the binary--the latter can sometimes be avoided by spelling out the path in the desktop's Exec=argument] portables are self-contained in their own folder. That includes book-marks, addons, and the files cached from the web. You can locate that folder anywhere. It can be located on /mnt/home, which is in on your storage media and, so, does not occupy RAM.
It can also be located in /opt, requiring no more RAM than installing a pet/deb/tar.xz. That has the advantage in that --if you use the Save2SFS module of nicOS-Utiity-Suite, viewtopic.php?f=106&t=1694-- your Puppy on a USB-Key can be unplugged after boot-up. But doing that has the disadvantage that the adrv.sfs or ydrv.sfs has to be re-built in order to update.
Which is just as well. Sometimes an update will break the application. That's the case with the current firefox-esr I downloaded. [firefox-quantum updated without a problem. But the updated version of firefox-esr didn't run and complained of a missing dependency. See below. Wonder what I did wrong. ]. So my new modus operandi is to first copy the portable's entire folder and update the copy. [If available, Right-Click>Duplicate will copy an entire folder]. If without problem, I'll use the updated version; if there's a problem, I'll try to resolve it or wait for an 'update' which functions: a couple minutes spent to avoid hours of aggravation.
If like snoring_cat you want to most recent version, or if you've already updated to an disfunctional version, all is not lost. Thanks to the pioneering work of fredx181, watchdog and MikeWalsh, any version of the following can be 'portablized': firefox, seamonkey, palemoon, waterfox. In addition to the download link for the newest version, those publishers maintain 'old version' repositories. Download your chosen version. Then see this post for the files you'll need: https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... e1#p978010. Copy your old 'profile' folder before deleting your disfunctional version. It might work. It did for me.
[Untested: perhaps the "Menu Add" scripts Mike Walsh has recently begun including in his portable-chrome-etc packages can be flinched, modified and used to simplify the creation of menus].
Edit: Well, that's what I get for reading from the Top to the Bottom. I see that Mike Walsh has just implemented the above thought and provided a new build of all firefoxes. viewtopic.php?p=37559#p37559. Thanks, Mike
To use it with albeit an older/other version of firefox, seamonkey, palemoon or waterfox, download an appropriate firefox build and your chosen 'mozilla-or-clone/fork', substitute its files/folders for those in Mike's package and edit launch scripts and wrappers. Should work.
Hopefully, Mike's firefox-esr doesn't have the problem I ran into with mine. Great. It doesn't.

snoring_cat wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 2:30 am

Regarding your first point, I agree, that a solution that loads Firefox into a savefile does take up savefile space. However, it does make updates easy and relatively transparent for new users. In fact, you can tell Puppy Linux to remaster the frugal install by moving apps from the savefile into the new master. This is more geeky and more advanced.

Just now thinking that this brings up another alternative that borders on hacking (since Puppy Linux by default doesn't normally do this). You can make a disk image using dd, format it and then mount it. This disk image will look like a regular mount (with read write access), and you can install Firefox there. But who would do this other than hackers?

.....which is, to put it bluntly, a load of messing-around bordering on obsession. Why the hell would you even want to, hmm..?

Still; each to their own. I've never used encryption with Puppy (or any other Linux, come to that), OR gone out of my way to be "extra-careful", and in almost 8 years, the only issues I've ever had with Puppy have been of my own making...

(If "the Man" is really 'out to get you', he will, one way or another. You can put obstacles in his way, but ultimately, you can never stop him. He'll get you sooner or later..!)

It's a known fact that those who use all this encrytion/deception/mis-direction, AND as many 'security' apps as they possibly can, actually make themselves stick out like a sore thumb. The very fact that you're trying to 'hide' stuff makes you a more interesting target. You might just as well paint a bullseye on your back...

Mike.

I have lost USB drives and also found them. I have even had my laptop stolen. In all cases, things like credit card information, account logins, etc. were compromised. Many grandparents have shown me their computers withtext files that they use to store ALL of their online account information, including passwords. Regarding privacy, let's not talk about people's ex-spouses and friends.

I don't think using encrypted savefiles and encryption. is a bad idea. With Firefox browser specifically, it is really easy for anyone to go into settings and see all stored website URLs, logins, passwords,etc. of another person.