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Firefox 3.5.1 Released
alek writes "A day after Slashdot reports about a self-inflicted vulnerability in Firefox 3.5, Mozilla releases 3.5.1. It addresses that security issue, but also fixes the annoying slow-startup on Windows. Bummer the UNIX wars have subsided, because apparently they also had to fix a problem where Firefox on a Sparc platform would crash when visiting www.hp.com!"
But I need build instructions and test instructions and possibly a youtube video, written/made for a student, not for a programmer that already knows a number of things about firefox. That is the way I feel about most open-source projects. I don't want to contribute in huge quantities, but only bugfixes, in any area and not limited to any particular technology. Sadly, I see such build-instructions missing or the build-instructions are too complicated in major open-source projects that could use bug-fixers early in the cycle.
I have yet to see a single blue screen on Linux.
FOSS isn't perfect, it's just a whole lot better than one of the competitors.
and I enjoy my FOSS haven very much, thank you.
-I only code in BASIC.-
Your post says "but also fixes the annoying slow-startup on Windows." which suggests that all Windows users were experiencing slow starts. That's not the case at all. It was only a small fraction of users affected by the now fixed issue. And for the record, the security flaw was already fixed, even before it was lifted from our bug database and turned into a public exploit. It just takes a few days to get everything in order for a release to users.
So what your saying is Microsoft could fix all of their problems by changing the color of the screen?
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
Now I can re-enable TraceMonkey and slashdot will be fast again... sorta.
Actually, the linux blue screen of death is blinking of 2 (or is it three?) of the keyboard leds. Though support for blue screen of death is coming, by the name of kernel mode-settting. It is pretty rare, though.
Lockups I have seen, too, in both linux and windows. Lots of cases is hardware problems, but your problem sounds like a driver issue. Using proprietary drivers, perhaps?
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
I installed it ages ago:
aptitude install firefox-3.5
http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?searchon=names&keywords=firefox-3.5
https://launchpad.net/~fta/+archive/ppa
Just add the fta repository & install "firefox-3.5". They even link to a mozilla daily build repository if that's your thing.
This is true. I've had my share of complete freezes under Linux. Ironically though, SSH access to the box still typically works and I can kill X if ctrl+alt+backspace doesn't work. It's rare to have a freeze that completely evicts all sense of response from the system (though I've had this happen before).
Interestingly, the last unusual behavior I had under Linux was when a video card blew 4 out of 7 or 8 capacitors. That was a real treat.
He who has no
Yes, indeed I do. I wasn't trying to be bashing/trolling here, just pointing out the sub-optimal end-user experience. My ATI card (RV710 [Radeon HD 4350]) is by no means rare and I can't afford to buy another, more "compatible", one.
Make it black and hope people just think they accidently turned their computer off.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
they also had to fix a problem where Firefox on a Sparc platform would crash when visiting www.hp.com!"
Anyone that sees a downside to not accessing hp.com must not use NoScript.
Ahem
Kind of offtopic, but by upgrading to FF 3.5.1, Google Gears is again disabled. Why did Google allowed it to be compatible with only 3.5.0?!
Scroll down to firefox-3.5. Stupidly, this package doesn't overwrite the firefox package, meaning that applications will still use 3.0 to open links. Even if you remove the firefox package, firefox-3.5 is still not used. Changing the webbrowser in preferred applications seems to work on some applications...
Anyway, in the end I just simlinked like so: ln -s /usr/bin/firefox-3.5 /usr/bin/firefox, and everything worked great.
"Now correct me if I'm incorrect, but was I told it's untrue that people in Springfield have no faith? Was I not misinformed?"
You can hardly call it a complete freeze if "only" X is frozen. Still pretty annoying but as you say you can usually recover by killing and restarting X.
So - who got brave, and installed FF 3.6? Am I that brave, or am I not? Hmmmm........
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Ironically though, SSH access to the box still typically works...
That is not ironic: it is good design...
will obviously rise the new Desktop OS, the Unix peace will mark year of BSD on desktop!!
God's gift to chicks
This is exactly what I was going to suggest. SSH usually runs fine, or using CTRL+ALT+Backspace... if X crashes you won't be able to CTRL+ALT+FX I'm pretty sure.
I've only ever had Linux hard lock when I've been testing out early alpha stuff on a sandbox (used to be an old machine, now it's just a VM).
If you can't bring it back and you're not doing something stupid then it's probably hardware, so you might want to run some diags.
Great. Iceweasel 3.5 just entered Debian Experimental... I'll likely have to continue to run with jit off for another month.
[/ half joking ]
RES PUBLICA NON DOMINETUR
As I said in the "Blue screen" post, I can't even use the "Magic SysRq key". I've invested several days in solving this. I'm definitely not doing something stupid. It definitely isn't the hardware. It's a problem between ATI's drivers and the rest of the OS.
"...fix a problem where Firefox on a Sparc platform would crash when visiting www.hp.com!" Much like the memory leak to nowhere, It wasn't a problem - it was a feature!
Ubuntu uses update-alternatives to select between different packages providing the same functionality
to see which browsers are installed:
/usr/bin/firefox-3.5
update-alternatives --list x-www-browser
to select firefox-3.5:
update-alternatives --set x-www-browser
> Still pretty annoying but as you say you can usually recover by killing and restarting X.
:).
a) If you are a "Desktop Linux" user running actual Desktop applications, that means you lose most of your unsaved work (if there is a way to not lose the unsaved work, please let me know).
b) If you use X as just a way to run screen/vi/emacs and browsers, then you are less affected.
Basically if I let my mom/uncle/aunt use "Desktop Linux" and X locks up, it's effectively as bad as a BSOD for them.
Saying X freezing is not a problem since you can usually recover by killing and restarting it is like saying that Windows 95 is stable as long as you regularly shutdown/exit to dos and type win to restart it[1].
[1] you could actually do that in the old days of Win 95
Going by previous versions of firefox, shouldn't it be 3.5.0.1 rather than 3.5.1?
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/
First Firefox starts depending on the IE security settings, now this - has it started using the IE temporary internet files as well? I'm starting to wonder if Mozilla are being paid by MS to promote their line that IE and the OS's networking model are one and the same thing.
Scroll down to firefox-3.5. Stupidly, this package doesn't overwrite the firefox package, meaning that applications will still use 3.0 to open links. Even if you remove the firefox package, firefox-3.5 is still not used.
In Jaunty, this is because Firefox 3.0 remains the default version of Firefox (and the firefox package always points towards the default version of Firefox for that release). In Karmic, this is because the developers haven't switched the default from 3.0 to 3.5 yet, though they will soon.
Fuck this open source shit! This just proves that your precious bullshit has vulnerabilities as well.
Slashdot is the haven for FOSS fags.
Jeez Bill, it's really easy to tell when you haven't had *your* coffee in the morning.
Obama-mode
so can anyone tell me why Firefox felt like it had to scan my hard drive in the first place? i had it set to delete history on exit. why then did it feel like it had to go looking in *other* programs' folders for history files?
What Unix war? There is the normal bantering from people saying their version of Unix is better then the rest (Which for the most part is normally the version of Unix they know the best) but a Unix war. I haven't heard anything about it. Other then OS X all the other Unixes are in heavy competition against Linux and Windows for its survival.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
gpg --verify "Firefox Setup 3.5.1.exe.asc"
gpg: Signature made 07/15/09 19:56:19 using DSA key ID 17785FE8
gpg: Good signature from "Mozilla Software Releases <releases@mozilla.org>"
gpg: Note: This key has expired!
Primary key fingerprint: 8D6F 1BA4 A340 4DDB 3F2F D080 7447 4499 8123 47DD
Subkey fingerprint: 3338 E6BA FF10 3B3D A6A9 E424 B57B 5484 1778 5FE8
Although you've already found a solution, for anybody else having this problem, there is an arguably easier way to upgrade Firefox on Ubuntu short of using the 'Shiretoko' branded version. Just download the 'Ubuntuzilla.py' script ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuzilla/files/ ) and then at the command line run 'ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p firefox' and follow any prompts.
Hrm? It seems that X completely locked up with no way to reset it. The fact that other processes such as sshd are unaffected is of small consolation if you don't have another terminal to access them. A better design would be to allow the user some way to kill/restart X on the same machine (most people only have one machine.) The fact that if X goes down, it also eats all user input (except the power/reset button) seems not such a good design to me...
"The Flash menu takes AGES to open. Hell, it even slows down opening the context menu from the titlebar!"
Do you have any URLs that demonstrate this slowdown?
I use Ubuntu, but until it's upgradable via the standard mechanism I'm not interested. I'm suprised it's not available yet, to be honest. What's the hold up?
On the macintosh version at least, the 'check for updates' menu item is in the Help menu. Because that's clearly where it belongs. I only found it because I was just about to search the help for advice on where to find it.
I have yet to see a single blue screen on Linux.
I have. I've also seen the sad mac face, Apple ][ corruption, kernel panics, etc.
Joking aside, I've had the equivalent of a BSOD on Linux several times on different types of hardware. All but one case was bad hardware, one was a kernel bug (fixed upstream in two days).
I was raised by two men, you insensitive clod!
If your app is written sensibly, it will either autosave periodically or will write what it's got open to disk if you "kill -term" its PID.
The latter's no help for naive users, of course.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
That's not a "complete freeze". When the machine literally hangs (infinite loop in a driver or something) or shuts off spontaneously or kernel panics and halts, that's a complete freeze. I assure you that ssh is not functioning in this situation. I've certainly had both happen to me. I hear that a lot of the "beachballs" on the Mac these days are similar, and if you have the ssh daemon running and another machine to log in with, you can at least restart safely if not kill the offending program. OTOH I've had beachballs where ssh wasn't working, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So what your saying is Microsoft could fix all of their problems by changing the color of the screen?
Microsoft tried that twice on the Xbox 360, and people continued to complain about the red ring of death (general hardware failure) and the green screen of death (E74 error).
I'm an ex-Amigan non-fanboy who has seen plenty of crashes and Lockups on Linux. I am currently sitting at Windows Vista but I do have a Debian system running. It's a cute little DT Research DT168, a sub-ten-watt Geode LX system that shares out my MyBook (XFS-formatted and loving it) to the Xbox and other Windows systems in the house.
I tried to run Linux on this system, but there are two major problems. One, HP uses the microsoft tools to create things like ACPI configurations. These tools are deliberately constructed to create barely-compliant or even noncompliant configurations which are nonetheless understood by Windows. Two, nVidia continues to be incapable of putting out a driver for Linux which even approaches the quality of the Windows driver. I have an allegedly professional-level graphics card (Quadro 2700M) but numerous features do not work correctly under Linux, like HDMI out, or multi-monitor configurations (disconnect external display, can't use X until you bang on the X config. WTF?)
What I'd really like is to use something like Moblin, down the road. But so far Intel is doing their best to make sure I won't want to run it. Even on my lady's intel-all-the-way Dell laptop, the graphics support was glitchy and the wifi card was unsupported. Why would they focus on netbooks to the exclusion of related hardware? It's almost like they don't want me to see any value in buying intel.
Anyway, I have been using Linux since Kernel 1.1.47 and have seen more than my share of lockups and crashes. But just installing Linux on this laptop and trying to use it correctly will produce them. It's not really Linux's fault, but pretending that it "just works" for as many people as Windows does is just not reasonable. Once you get it working, it is much more stable in most cases, but getting it there is beyond many people's reach.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've been using the OS X version of Firefox 3.5 on a Mac Pro and I've experienced a problem where the browser freezes (spinning beach-ball icon) every time I log onto my EasyNews account and do a search or request a list of content in a newsgroup that has a large number of results.
Typically, it will quickly display the first page full of results, then freeze a second or two after that. If I wait long enough (several minutes or more) and come back to the browser, then sometimes I find it's no longer frozen and I can scroll on down to the bottom of the page. Other times, it seemed to be permanently frozen (but I honestly never tried waiting HOURS or anything to see if it ever un-froze).
I anxiously applied the 3.51 update, hoping it addressed this problem ... but nope. Exact same issue.
Oddly enough, my friend using a 24" iMac says he can't replicate my problem in Firefox at all, though we're both on the same version of OS X and both have EasyNews accounts.
I already tried the usual "Mac troubleshooting" ... running a "repair permissions" in Disk Utility, deleting all the "prefs" files related to Firefox, etc. No luck.
I'm running it now. Works pretty ok... every now and then something flakes out (like, once every month at most) and I use it as my primary/only browser.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I suspect kmail/kontakt does autosave periodically, but apparently it's broken in some way: http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-bugs-dist&m=122605713921371&w=2
Anyway the last I used it, when I try to save an email draft while working on it, it closes the draft. The KDE people seem to think that just because I want to save my work it means that I want to close it too.
Then there's Openoffice:
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10604&hilit=autosave
It should probably be fixed by now, but what it shows to me is how seriously they value their users work - not seriously enough.
As it is, I'm going to have to assume that most apps are NOT written sensibly.
FWIW, so far my windows, Linux and *BSD machines have not crashed on me for months :). But back when I was using Opensuse 10.x, it did lock up on me a few times, maybe it was an interaction with vmware GSX (which I was running on it).
If you are a "Desktop Linux" user running actual Desktop applications, that means you lose most of your unsaved work (if there is a way to not lose the unsaved work, please let me know).
man tee
Other then OS X all the other Unixes are in heavy competition against Linux and Windows for its survival.
Linux is UNIX too.
on the Acid3 test, lagging both Opera and Safari which have reached 100% on this fun benchmark. About 50% faster on avg when I "thumb in the air" tested it (ran 10X and wrote down the times, then averaged them than Firefox was as little as six months ago, so this release is definitely one to pick up in terms of browser security and performance, though.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
I just had one yesterday. It was repeatable with the same hardware. I Added another harddrive to a system. Ran gparted, put a label on it (mac label as it is eventually going to be used as an external drive for a mac system), then try to mount the drive: says bad label. Okay maybe the kernel can't mount it but gparted should see it because it made the label right? So I open gparted again and ... the system hangs. I was able to repeat it and noticed that once I put the mac label on the disk gparted wouldn't let me delete it (had to format it with a different system and put it back in). I ended up putting a msdos label then mounting it and everything was happy. All I wanted to do was make the drive internal so a "dd" wipe would run faster ... alas. Now I have a system and only 90 more drives to go :)
I mean, I've given up on scaling fonts lager on the fly (as opposed to zoom), but how about 'paste and go' for urls - like opera has had for years (and now chrome)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Microsoft, Together We Can!
Its nice to be important but its more important to be nice
I very much agree. Your X is froze and user doesn't know how to restart. Another user (his friend perhaps) can ssh into the box and fix it for him (by way of restarting X for him or shutting down the system). I agree that this is a really good design.
Its nice to be important but its more important to be nice
So why does the main Mozilla.com page still list 3.5 and not 3.5.1?
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Well, I don't think Jaunty will ever have it except possibly through backports because Ubuntu freezes major version numbers for each release. Why the firefox package doesn't point to 3.5 in karmic, I don't know.
It's ironic in the sense that while you may have lost all of your work, you still have access to the machine to (hopefully) correct the problem that caused it.
He who has no
This is ridiculous. If we're going to split hairs over semantics, then I would suggest that the OP should have stated that he was suffering from kernel panics. You'll notice that I didn't specify what "completely froze." Had I the foresight to consider that a number of posters would be complaining about my choice of words, I would have specified a "complete freeze of X."
To be honest, I've very seldom had kernel panics that weren't the result of my omission of something important, like building a controller module into the kernel. I think the last panic I suffered as a result of some driver weirdness was probably in 2000-2001. My current Gentoo install has only suffered a "complete freeze" as a result of borked NVIDIA drivers.
But yes, complaining about semantics aside, I agree. My choice of words could have been better.
He who has no
Thank you for point this out. That was more or less what I was hoping readers would have garnered from my statements, but evidently they're too busy focusing on slightly incorrect (I'll admit it it!) semantics in my choice of words. Never mind, as you said, the end result is identical for end users who haven't a clue how X works.
I deeply appreciate that you have the insight to have caught this and clarified in terms I could not. Thank you.
He who has no
tee? Really? What the hell sort of DESKTOP APPLICATIONS produce all of their output on the terminal? OpenOffice? GIMP? KMail? GVim?
No, the only solution is the Jesus rule. Save your files. Save them early, save them often. Not just because the system is going to crash, but because you never know when the power will fail, lightning will strike, or a cow-orker will trip over your power cord.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Don't forget to install the firefox gnome support package along with it, or you'll have a browser that doesn't play nice with other apps. I had this problem and I'm not sure why gnome support wasn't a dependency, seeing how I had gnome installed already...
3.5.1... really?! That's not Mozilla-style at all. It should be 3.5.0.0.0.0.0.2467!
Then-again, sometimes office crashes when saving a document. If it's not saved right, office won't open it, but open office can recover some of the information.
mysql> SELECT * FROM `places` WHERE `place` LIKE 'home`; Empty set (0.00 sec)
Really? If you write the file whilst the power goes down then you've just written a corrupted file and lost everything. If your autosave gets corrupted, at-least you still have the original. Personally, I'd suggest a balance, preferably on a machine running ZFS.
mysql> SELECT * FROM `places` WHERE `place` LIKE 'home`; Empty set (0.00 sec)
Definitely good to stay modular, and it's a good way for businesses to run as there should probably be a 'friend' (read tech support) around (possibly even in another country) with SSH access.
All OO.org needs is some external, low-level, interface allowing the support to prompt a save. If a save's not possible, then perhaps a memory dump of the application from which the document might be recovered.
mysql> SELECT * FROM `places` WHERE `place` LIKE 'home`; Empty set (0.00 sec)
who got brave, and installed FF 3.6?
I've been running Firefox nightly builds for years. I recently switched from Windows to Kubuntu, found a 64-bit build (I think http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu), and got right back on the nightly rough edge, currently called Firefox 3.6a1pre and codenamed Namoroka.
It's definitely not for most people; you have to watch planet.mozilla.org to track what's going on, you give up on some extensions, and there are occasionally snafus where you have to look at the firefox builds forum on mozillazine to find out what's up and maybe revert to using an earlier browser for a day or so. But by and large nightly builds work. Mozilla's investment in build farms and try servers and test suites means most stuff that's checked in to the trunk is working.
Tip: use /path/to/old/firefox -no-remote -ProfileManager to simultaneously run a second instance using a blank profile to see if it's just the new version or your profile or a particular extension that's causing problems.
=S
Maybe it's the software for that hardware that isn't compatible, .. if it works on one platform why wouldn't it work on an other.
yeah i like the Full Option Science System as well
stay anonymous.....coward
I can't say about your hardware there. But I've got 3 systems currently running linux. One fedora 11 one ubuntu 9.04 and another with xubuntu and not one of these has had a single system lockup. I've installed linux on many friends systems and none had problems with system crashes. Not all of them stuck with linux thanks to lack of support for software they wanted to run.....but none left because it was a buggy mess. Really the only problems I've had with linux in the last 3 years have been driver related....plenty of those however.