[mythtv-users] OT - Unkillable Firefox Thread Problem

[Ma Begaj]

2009/2/18 R. G. Newbury <newbury at mandamus.org>:
> Members of this list have lots of arcane knowledge about linux, so maybe
> someone can help me.
>
> I moved the office desktop to Fedora 10 a week ago. I did an update from
> firefox 3.04 to 3.0.6 (don't know if that is important or not...I deleted
> the /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.4 folder) And late last week I lost the ability to
> launch Firefox. I get an error box, saying that Firefox is already running,
> and I must close the existing process or reboot.
>
> Problem is:
> 1) 'ps -amx' shows NO firefox processes running, nor even any mozilla
> processes.
> 2) there is one <defunct> Xsession, which top shows as a zombie (but I have
> the same zombie process on the laptop, at about the same thread pid
> number...and firefox opens fine on the laptop
> 3) there are NO unexpected lock files ANYWHERE
> 4) there are NO unexpected pid files ANYWHERE
> and
> 5) REBOOTING DOES NOTHING TO DELETE THE 'existing' PROCESS...
>
> What's going on here? Clearly the zombie process is being reinstated on
> boot, but where/how? I have tried various cutdowns, including turning off
> most daemon services but no joy...
>
> So I have no idea where this weird process comes from, nor do I know how it
> gets started and no idea what it is....since it does not appear to show up
> in the process list. It must be hiding under some other process name, but
> what? What process would call/start a browser?
>
> Ideas anyone?
>

try to start in the command line in safe-mode:
$ firefox -safe-mode

it will maybe show some errors.

although you say that there are no "lock" files, check your profile
folder for lock files. it should look something like this:
xx at yy:~/.mozilla/firefox/sid7h8aw.test$ ls -l | grep lock
drwxr-xr-x  2 xx xx      280 2009-02-17 12:45 adblockplus
-rw-r--r--  1 xx xx        2067 2009-02-17 11:52 blocklist.xml
lrwxrwxrwx  1 xx xx          16 2009-02-17 12:45 lock -> 127.0.1.1:+15116

check /usr/lib/firefox for the same files.


try to run:
$ firefox http://www.google.com

and if it starts, update your addons and click on "Restart Firefox"