a few days ago I had the unfortunate idea to run “zypper up” on two of my systems running openSUSE 11.4 32 bit (a Dell Precision M65 laptop, and a Dell Optiplex GX280 deskop). Everything went well, apparently, with the exception of Firefox: it crashes on startup (startup page set to opensuse.org), and on most sites except for the simplest ones.
Even starting firefox as a file browser, it eventually crashes after a few minutes, even if I don’t touch it (see below).
Among the things I have tried to diagnose / fix the problem:
Start firefox in safe mode.
Create a fresh test account, and use firefox from there.
Downgrade to Firefox 9 (the up-to-date version is Firefox 10).
An example of console output showing some warnings and error messages, as well as the “timed” crash even without user intervention after a few minutes:
> date && firefox -safe-mode file://~
Sat Feb 18 15:53:19 CET 2012
*** nss-shared-helper: Shared database disabled (set NSS_USE_SHARED_DB to enable).
GLib-GIO-ERROR **: Settings schema 'apps.gecko-mediaplayer.preferences' is not installed
aborting...
GLib-GIO-ERROR **: Settings schema 'apps.gecko-mediaplayer.preferences' is not installed
aborting...
> date
Sat Feb 18 15:57:27 CET 2012
The problem occurred after an upgrade I made on February 16. The last time I had upgraded the laptop was last november, but I have been updating the desktop more frequently.
On February 17, updates for flash-player and gecko-mediaplayer became available, but installing those patches did not help.
Final notes: I am using KDE 4.6. I don’t have GNOME installed on my machines, so I couldn’t make a test with that desktop environment. On another, newer machine with openSUSE 12.1 installed there is no problem, it seems.
I’m considering to submit a bug report, but if anyone has some suggestions on what’s going on and how to fix this problem, I’ll be very happy.
the point is, when you have any repos other than only these four: oss,
non-oss, update and packman, and do ‘zypper up’ there is a chance of
pulling in a dizzying array of conflicting apps and libs…
if you did that: sorry, i do not know how to easily undo the
clash…and, therefore advise to not do that (zypper up with wrong
repos) in the first place…
The thread mentioned was closed because it had become a personal debate between some members forgetting there was an OP.
I’m not going to explain what’s wrong with “zypper up” either, since there IMHO is nothing wrong with it. “zypper up” is a documented, supported command to update your packages. If that fails once, that’s not a reason to suggest better not to use it. Like a single Firefox crash is no reason to suggest not using Firefox at all.
On 02/20/2012 10:26 AM, Knurpht wrote:
> forgetting there was an OP.
the op had left the referenced thread satisfied he had received good
advice, but showing a lack of understanding about YaST Online Update and
what the “zypper up” he had been advised to use…
you are correct in there is nothing wrong with using “zypper up” but it
is not a documented way to provide security patches and bug fixes only
from the update repo…
giving advice to do “zypper up” without first checking what repos are
enabled, and determining whether or not the user wishes to upgrade
applications rather than just installing patches and bugfixes is
irresponsible…
as you are now doing for this OP…
as it turned out a helpful, long standing, and highly experienced
contributor to openSUSE quit the forums–not because of the “a personal
debate” but because of the way the thread was cut short…
I can go more into details about the various attempts I made to fix the problem, if anyone is interested. But the short story is the following.
Preamble: in addition to the standard repositories (openSUSE + Packman), I normally include Education (because of Stellarium) and some basic KDE3 package like kdegraphics3-tex (because of Kdvi) and kde3-kbibtex-svn (because of KBibTeX). There was the possibility that some package from those repositories could be the culprit, so the first thing I did was to remove all those packages and disable those repositories.
In fact, the problem remained even with only the standard openSUSE repositories enabled. For instance, I’ve upgraded one of the desktops from 11.4 to 12.1. And firefox kept crashing (not even Packman was enabled).
Adding the Packman repository did not help, but in the process zypper tipped me off about some left-over, obsolete library (libpostproc51, originally in the Packman repository) that I then guessed might be conflicting with the most recent version of the firefox.
So, the solution I eventually found was to call Yast, and switch again system packages to Packman, even if I had already done it in the past, as in the case of the laptop. Being asked to remove a few packages (including libpostproc51), I accepted.
Firefox now works, both on the laptop (still with 11.4) and on the desktop (with 12.1).