[mythtv-users] OT - Unkillable Firefox Thread Problem

R. G. Newbury newbury at mandamus.org
Wed Feb 18 14:52:28 UTC 2009


Ma Begaj wrote:
> 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"

Same error on every one of your suggestions (which I had not tried), and 
no lock files in those folders, either.

Still very weird as I cannot figure out what could be calling firefox on 
startup, that it would fail and hang, invisibly.

Geoff



          Tux says: "Be regular. Eat cron flakes."


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