Can't start Firefox

This was published 19 hours ago, and I guess I have 2.0.0.4+2-0ubuntu3

What it seems to be doing is not creating a profile directory in the .mozilla/firefox directory. It may be creating a file instead. At any rate, if I manually create a directory (i.e. outside of firefox) and tell it to use that then it works.

On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 05:58:30AM -0000, Mitch Golden wrote:
> What it seems to be doing is not creating a profile directory in the
> .mozilla/firefox directory. It may be creating a file instead. At any
> rate, if I manually create a directory (i.e. outside of firefox) and
> tell it to use that then it works.
>

do you have a lock file somewhere in your profile? (e.g. run find
$HOME/.mozilla | grep -i lock)

 - Alexander

Unfortunately the machine has died and I can't immediately retest or even
see what was on it. However, I can say that this was an entirely virgin
install of gutsy alpha 2, and then an install of Firefox (and other
stuff), and it was the very first time I had tried to open Firefox.

On Thu, 5 Jul 2007, Alexander Sack wrote:

> do you have a lock file somewhere in your profile? (e.g. run find
> $HOME/.mozilla | grep -i lock)
>
> - Alexander
>
> --
> Can't start Firefox
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/123917
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

I have the exact same problem, I just installed Gutsy Tribe 2, installed firefox through aptitude, and i get this exact same error when running for the first time.

I could not find any lock-files, i can tell you that even though i cannot start firefox, the profile-manager does appear to create 2 (0-size) files when i try to make a profile. Hope this helps in some way.

What version of firefox is this being seen on and is this only on gutsy. To find out the version of firefox please type "apt-cache policy firefox" without the " in a terminal.
Is this an upgrade from feisty or fresh install of gutsy, i have reinstalled gutsy 4+ times since repos first opened and i was unable to reproduce this issue.

In my case it was the following:

-> Fresh install of Kubuntu Gutsy with the i386 desktop CD, Tribe 2.
(The machine is an old Sony Vaio PCG XG-19.)

-> Upgrade all packages from the repository.

(I should note at this point that there's something broken about the
repository or Tribe 2, because the Adept tells me it would break packages.
I haven't gotten to the bottom of it yet, but I think it's unrelated.)

-> Use Adept to select a list of other packages. (This was done all at
once.) Of course, other packages may be installed because of this.

*) kde-amusements
*) kde-extras
*) kde-devel
*) kde-devel-extras
*) kde-hal-device-manager
*) koffice
*) kdesvn
*) smb4k
*) wlassistant
*) gxine
*) gxine-plugin
*) lynx
*) wireshark
*) eclipse
*) gfortran
*) dpkg-dev
*) emacs
*) antiword
*) g++
*) autoconf
*) rubygems
*) rdesktop
*) mplayer
*) firefox-mplayer
*) mencoder
*) tcsh
*) firefox

-> Try to start Firefox.

I said in the original bug report, I believe I had 2.0.0.4+2-0ubuntu3.

I will try this all again sometime in the next several days.

Same as for Mitch, it is a fresh install of Kubuntu Gutsy with the i386
desktop CD, Tribe 2 (fresh as in formatted partition).

apt-cache policy firefox yields:

firefox:
  Installed: 2.0.0.4+2-0ubuntu3
  Candidate: 2.0.0.4+2-0ubuntu3
  Version table:
 *** 2.0.0.4+2-0ubuntu3 0
        500 http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

I can actually still reproduce the error by just relocating the .mozilla
directory and then opening firefox.

For completeness, I just noticed that the error I get is not 100% the same,
in the failure code I have twice a "c" instead of "8" at the end. The
complete error for me is:

Profile Creation Failed

Profile couldn't be created. Probably the chosen folder isn't writable.
[Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x8052000c
(NS_ERROR_FILE_ALREADY_EXISTS) [nslToolkitProfileService.createProfile]"
nsresult:
0x8052000c (NS_ERROR_FILE_ALREADY_EXISTS)" location: "JS frame:
chrome://mozapps/content/profile/createProfileWizard.js :: onFInish :: line
233" data:
no]

On 7/12/07, John Vivirito < <email address hidden>> wrote:
>
> What version of firefox is this being seen on and is this only on gutsy.
> To find out the version of firefox please type "apt-cache policy firefox"
> without the " in a terminal.
> Is this an upgrade from feisty or fresh install of gutsy, i have
> reinstalled gutsy 4+ times since repos first opened and i was unable to
> reproduce this issue.
>
> ** Changed in: firefox (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> ** Tags added: mt-needtester
>

I just reproduced this error, starting from a clean install again. I got the same response to apt-cache policy firefox.

Please see bug #125648 for one users profile, extentions, plugins.

This affects live CDs and clean user profiles and is trivial to reproduce: Just remove ~/.mozilla.

firefox (2.0.0.4+2-0ubuntu4) gutsy; urgency=low

  * debian/firefox.install: Resurrect /etc/firefox/profile/. Without it,
    Firefox creates an empty profile as a file instead of a directory, which
    both makes it break, and also would not have our Ubuntu specific
    bookmarks, settings, etc. (LP: #123917)

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:11:59 +0200

Doing quick fix for tribe-3.

I used this debdiff for the tribe. I didn't check it into bzr, nor apply it to the 2.0.0.5 version and such.

Last post was from 2007 has anyone found a solution for this issue? I am experiencing the same bug after fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10, I tried customizing profiles.ini with no success.

I have the same issue in Jaunty Beta (AMD64) fresh install.