Following the recent thread on Firefox memory consumption, and reading
today about Mozilla releasing 3.5.1 fixing a 'zero day' potential
exploit in 3.5 [1], I thought moving to FF3.5.1 was worth a go. [2]
However: 3.5 is not yet available under 8.10. So off we go to
mozilla.org.
a. Going to the Mozilla site is really not very helpful. There is a
big 'Download Now - Free' button on [3] but zero instruction on what
to do with the .bz2 file that you get. If you look on that page under
the 'Installing' bullet point it says only "..that installing Firefox
3.5 will overwrite your existing installation of Firefox.."
b. Looking over the Support pages I find [4]
To upgrade Firefox in place on Linux, you will need wait for your
distribution's package manager to repackage and offer the upgrade.
If your copy of Firefox is from Mozilla instead of the package
managerTo upgrade from Firefox 3.0.x, open the Help menu and click
Check for Updates.... You will then be taken through the Firefox
Update process. For more information, see ...
c. Firefox Help->Check for Updates is greyed out. Support pages tell me that
Firefox's software update feature can be disabled on some Linux
systems because the distribution itself handles upgrading Firefox. To
update Firefox on these systems, you'll need to use your
distribution's package management utility (for example, Synaptic
Package Manager, Adept Manager, or Yum).
...
To make Check for Updates... enabled permanently, change the
permissions on the Firefox installation directory.
d. So, in /usr/lib as root, chgrp -R victor firefox and chmod -R g+w
firefox* . Help->Check for Updates then becomes available.
e. But when I run Help->Check for Updates I am told "Software Update.
No Updates Found.There are no new updates available. Firefox may check
periodically for new updates. [Finish]"
Can anyone see why, having got the access rights to /usr/lib, the
update to 3.5.1 is not visible?
Alternatively, a pointer to a reliable howto on installing from the
firefox-3.5.1.tar file could be handy. (though the thought of all that
manipulation and moving does feel a bit retro)
Thanks,
[1]
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135617/Mozilla_quashes_first_critical_bug_in_Firefox_3.5_beats_Microsoft_to_patch_punch
[2] for those who followed the previous thread, my ff memory stats
gathered with {top -b -d 600 -n 1000000 -p `pgrep firefox`|grep `pgrep
firefox`} currently are that it routinely uses around 8-900 MB
virtual, 4-600MB resident at startup; this typically rising to e.g.
(1103m 490m) (1235m 694m) (1125m 641m) (1311m 551m) by the time it
gets stopped/restarted.
[3]
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/3.5.1/releasenotes/
[4]
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Upgrading+to+Firefox+3·5
