[Solved] firefox fails to start as user, works fine as root

[gs3user007]

I recently set up this computer to dual boot with linux. I installed 7.10 (all that I had handy), and have fully upgraded to 8.10. When I attempt to run firefox as a user, it silently fails:

benjamin@hplaptop:~$
benjamin@hplaptop:~$ firefox
benjamin@hplaptop:~$ firefox

It will briefly have an entry in the task manager, then after a few seconds, it disappears. There is no lag on the command prompt though. I tried doing an apt-get remove firefox and then doing an apt-get install firefox. That did not fix the problem.

In an interesting twist, if I sudo firefox, it launches without issue as it should. This doesn't make a ton of sense to me, why should it work as one user, but not another?

Ideas on how to fix this somewhat odd error?

[The Liquidator]

Re: firefox fails to start as user, works fine as root

Did you back up your home directory onto a CD and then reinstate it? If so, I have found that unless at the start of the burn process you check the box marked "preserve file permissions" it makes root the user of all the files. That has caught me out more than once in the past!

Try creating a new firefox profile.

Open dolphin and select view/show hidden files. Select your home directory and you will see a folder called .mozilla. Go into that and then the firefox folder and you will see your default profile. Right click on the folder and select rename. Give it a new name (say) by putting .old on the end of the file name. Then launch firefox. Doing so will create a new profile and hopefully firefox will load.

As an alternative you can try changing the permissions of all the files within the profile given you can always reinstate things like bookmarks and extensions sometimes a clean start is best.

[gs3user007]

Re: firefox fails to start as user, works fine as root

Ah. Okay, I did a "sudo dolphin" and changed the owner and group back to me. They had been set to root. I've never run into a problem like this during an upgrade before. Thanks for the help!