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After upgrading my Ubuntu installation (now running 14.04 LTS) my java plugin for firefox ceased to work. It does not report an error or anything it just tells me that I need to install a plugin to run that content.

I tried all the tricks I found on google, like purge and reinstall icedtea, the jdk etc. bu without success. Eventually I renamed my ~/.mozilla directory so that I start with a fresh user configuration and that worked!.

However I don't want to loose all my bookmarks etc. How can I figure out what in my user settings prevents the icedtea plugin to be loaded?

I tried to just search through about:config for java and found plugin.state.java=1 but according to google that means "always ask before running that plugin" which would be fine.

1 Answer 1

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Why rename your .mozilla folder?

On Debian (Ubuntu and derivatives are based Debian), you will need to open a shell or terminal as root (elevate with sudo -s or use su). From there, do apt-get update to ensure you have a complete, current package list.

On Debian 8, I simply did: apt-get install default-jre icedtea-plugin. If Ubuntu has differing names for its packages, simply do aptitude search icedtea, etc. and request the packages that match your criteria instead.

Once the packages are installed, open Firefox. Open the Add-ons Manager. Go to Plugins, and change IcedTea (or Java) to "Ask to activate" or "Activate" to make the plugin active. The next time a site requests this plugin, you should see a plugin/lego badge and/or a popup asking to confirm it, depending on your plugin preferences.

If doing that still doesn't solve things, then first make sure you've synced your Firefox data, and reset Firefox. Then, remove and reinstall the above packages, and clear out your .mozilla, .firefox, and other related folders in your home folder (use Ctrl-H in Gtk filers or just to rm -rf .mozilla, etc. in a shell. Try again.

And if that doesn't work, then you will have to do whereis firefox, (the folder should be in /usr/lib, /usr/share, or /lib), and manually install the Java plugins yourself (guides are available elsewhere on the web for this). While it isn't recommended, if your system (browser) isn't seeing the plugins any other way, you'll have to do this.

Good luck; this should work, if not come close to solving your problem.

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  • "Why rename your .mozilla folder? [..] clear out your .mozilla". Renaming and clearing out should have about the same effect. So yes, that helps but I knew that beforehand. The bad thing is that all my bookmarks etc go away.
    – yankee
    Mar 11, 2015 at 22:16

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