Re: [tlug] Browser blues

[Josh Glover <tlug@example.com>]

Quoth Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon (Mon 2004-06-07 10:55:59AM +0900):

> Josh Glover wrote:
> 
> >As a fellow Mozilla / Firefox "dual-booter", how did you get around
> >the fact that running 'mozilla' (/usr/bin/mozilla on my machine)
> >starts up Firefox (or vice-versa, depending on which you installed
> >last)? I run /usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin, but is there a better way?
> 
> I'm red-faced and embarrassed to give you the answer to that - as it 
> exposes what a bloody idiot I am regarding the way I installed Firefox.  
> When I originally downloaded Firefox, I put it in a user folder I have 
> for software downloads.  After uncompressing it and saving the opened 
> version in a folder (uncompress? decompress?  What's the correct 
> terminology?),

Either is OK. I tend to use "uncompress" or "unzip" or "gunzip".

> I attempted to install it and found instead that it fired 
> up and was running from that location!  So... lazy and stupid bugger 
> that I am, I just kept using it from there!

Obviously you downloaded a binary package. There is nothing wrong with
installing software to your home directory--this is yet another way in
which Unix lets the user do what he wants without affecting anyone else.

So no need for the red face. :)

> In the case of Mozilla (I was going to skip this part, but I decided
> I better give you the whole picture), I created a new folder for it -
> but again under user.  This is totally the wrong way of doing things
> I realize,

Nope, you realised wrong. ;) Like I said, this is a valid way of
installing software in Unix.

> but allow me to ask a couple of questions regarding this setup:
> 
> 1) Security-wise, is it more or less safe to have the browser installed 
> in a user folder?  I know that this method means the installation is 
> only usable by that one user, but that's not a problem on the machine I 
> set up that way as I (nearly) always operate the computer as the same 
> user.  At the time I set it up, I ignorantly reasoned that if the 
> browser was set up under the user, that the vital program stuff 
> accessible under root would be further away and thus safer from attack.  
> As time goes by however, I have begun to suspect (without knowing why) 
> that the opposite may be the case.

There is no difference from a security point of view. Unless Mozilla
contains any setuid root binaries (and it better hadn't--checking now:
'find /usr/lib/mozilla/ -perm +u+s' returns no output, we are golden),
it is running whichever user invokes it (you, in this case) and can
thus only affect that user's account.

> 2) After upgrading from SuSE 9.0 to SuSE 9.1, I began to have a problem 
> where Firefox would just vaporize from time to time... no error message, 
> no warning, no lock-up, it would just be there one second and gone the 
> next!

The technical term for this is "segfault and die", or just "segfault":

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/segfault.html
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/segmentation-fault.html

> So, my installation of both Mozilla and Firefox is totally unscientific 
> and sloppy, but they do seem to run totally independent from one 
> another, as well they might I suppose, being that they are not installed 
> correctly, but are running from independent folders under user......
> 
> For security reasons, should I overhaul this setup?

Nope, you inadvertantly stumbled upon The Unix Way. And whoever said
that Unix is not user friendly!? :)

> >See RFC 2616, [1] section 13.2:
> 
> Please forgive my extreme ignorance, but I don't understand what "RFC 
> 2616" is.  Is this part of the "man pages" I've heard of but been too 
> embarrassed to ask about?

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/R/RFC.html

And here is an introduction to man pages, since you mention them. Open
a shell and type:

man ls

You will now be presented with the manual pages (see, "man page"?)
for the ls(1) command. Try this with a few more commands that you
regularly use. Try 'man man' to read the man pages for man(1)
itself!

Now, next time you get stuck at the shell prompt, use man! :)

> Thanks for you help, and I swear I'll be able to provide some more 
> meaningful contribution to the list over time.

Actually, you do contribute. Just starting threads like this one is a
contribution, because a people other than you benefit. Had you not
started this thread, I would have not thought to copy settings over
from my Mozilla prefs.js to my Firefox one, and Jim Tittsler would not
have informed me about the existence of the magical 'about:config' URI.

And you are moving slowly down the path that leads to enlightenment.
You must realise that Windows is suffering, and renounce all desire to
use it...

-- 
Josh Glover

Gentoo Developer (http://dev.gentoo.org/~jmglov/)
Tokyo Linux Users Group Listmaster (http://www.tlug.jp/)

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