Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.6, users cannot start Firefox 3.6

Question

i installed firefox 4 and downloaded firefox 3.6 because molybdenum is not available for ff4!

firefox 3.6 is located /usr/local/share/firefox-36/firefox (only root can run ff3.6).

if the user "peter" goes to /usr/local/share/firefox-36/ and run firefox, firefox 4 startsup instead of firefox 3.6!

Is there any workaround to start ff36 as "peter"?

• EDIT:

If i use --debug this get prited to console

peter@muhahaha:/usr/local/share/firefox-36$ ./firefox --debug
./run-mozilla.sh -g ./firefox-bin
MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=.
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.:./plugins:.
DISPLAY=:0.0
DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=.:.
     LIBRARY_PATH=.:./components:.
       SHLIB_PATH=.:.
          LIBPATH=.:.
       ADDON_PATH=.
      MOZ_PROGRAM=./firefox-bin
      MOZ_TOOLKIT=
        moz_debug=1
     moz_debugger=
/usr/bin/gdb --args ./firefox-bin
GNU gdb (Ubuntu/Linaro 7.2-1ubuntu11) 7.2
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "x86_64-linux-gnu".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>...
Reading symbols from /usr/local/share/firefox-36/firefox-bin...(no debugging symbols     found)...done.
(gdb) 

• Update: A few days later the versions switched: i can start ff4 only as root, users always start ff36 now!

Answer 1

Firefox usually check for compatibility as standard procedure when installing new plugins, you can disable this by using an add-on like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/?src=api or using the appropriate flag under about:config .

Running 2 different versions of Firefox can lead to unwanted behaviours or worst to the loss of your personal data.

Answer 2

To have two versions of firefox to run - you'll need to create separate profiles. If you don't, you will get clashing addons and possibly a corrupted shared profile.

I'm not sure how you installed firefox 4 - it no longer appears in the mozilla releases folder

On my computer I have the standard firefox 8.0 installed with Natty.

I downloaded firefox 3.6 tar file from the Mozilla releases folder and untar'ed it:

cd Downloads
tar xjf firefox-3.6.24.tar.bz2
cd firefox

Then create a profile for firefox 3.6

./firefox -ProfileManager

call the profile firefox36 - note the ./ is significant to run the local copy of firefox.

When you want to run firefox 3.6

cd ~/Downloads/firefox
./firefox -P firefox36

Similarly create a profile for firefox 8

firefox -ProfileManager

call the profile firefox8

When you want to run firefox 8 run

firefox -P firefox8

the only caveat - dont run both browsers at the same time.

---

You've possibly permissions/corruptions due to running Firefox as root - if you run Firefox as root, then various files can be updated with root permissions. When you use firefox as a standard user, the same files will fail to update.

These steps below should give you a clean start with no profiles and incorrect file permissions.

1. I would purge your current firefox (sudo apt-get purge firefox) -and then reinstall.
2. I would remove your /user/local/share version of firefox - and install firefox 3.6 locally as per my answer.
3. I would rename/remove the .mozilla folder in your home folder.