[Sussex] SuSE 9.3 more curious behaviour.

[Steve Dobson]

John

On Wed, Jun 29, 2005 at 01:26:07AM +0100, John D. wrote:
> Steve Dobson wrote:
> >On Tue, Jun 28, 2005 at 08:22:39PM +0100, John D. wrote:
> > >I installed firefox, thunderbird, opera, mozilla to name but a few. All 
> > >these apps will start as root, but not as user.
> >
> >How did you install them?  And what user were you when you installed them?
> > 
> >
> The system asks for a root password for installing. The firefox and 
> thunderbird came as tar.gz which is untarred and then you just run the 
> installer. The mozilla was on the install discs and the Opera was 
> downloaded as a "SuSEised" rpm. Both the mozilla and Opera seem to be 
> installed properly as they have put listings in the menu, which, when 
> clicked  do the usual i.e. start flashing with timer icon/cursor, but 
> then just stop. The firefox and thunderbird, well I'd normally have made 
> a link to application on the desk top which equates to clicking the 
> executable files, but in this instance I get no indication whatsoever.

That sounds quite reasonable - there wasn't a README file or anything
else giving futher instructions I assume.

> >The fact that files are showing as owned by your user account suggests
> >that you ran the install as yourself.  Did you follow the instructions
> >on how to install to the letter?  It maybe that the installer needs to
> >be run as root, or that some files need to be moved or modified if not
> >installed as root.  There are so many possibilities that I can't event
> >begin to think what the problem is.
> >
> >You could try running one of these apps from the command line.  It is
> >likely that it is reporting an error, if you are trying to run it from 
> >the GUI then that error report may be getting lost.
> 
> I'll try that, as it's the only thing I have thought of (being a "child 
> of GUI"). Ok, tried that. Mozilla just drops me back to a prompt, Opera 
> tells me that theres a segmentation fault and then drops me at a prompt 
> - I can't try thunderbird or firefox as I don't know what the commands are.
> 
> But, if I'm su'd to root, the Opera and mozilla start fine.

If they run okay as root but not as a user then this suggests a permissions
problem somewhere.  It maybe a library, it may be a device.

First run ldd on the apps as both yourself and as root.  This will list
the libraries used by the application - This list should be the same for
both.  I'm don't think there will be a problem here, but lets cover as
many bases as we can.

The way I would debug the problem is to run the application under 
strace.  This is a system call and signal tracer.  It will show you
what the application is doing.  "Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!"
You will get tons and tons and tons of output.  So before running 
strace first use the command "script /tmp/firefox.log".  This will
start a new shell in which all command line input and output is logged.
Then run the strace command, and then when you get your command prompt
back after firefox (or whatever) bombs out hit Ctrl-D.  There is now
a file in /tmp which has all that lovely output that you couldn't
read.

  $ script /tmp/firefox.log
  Script started, file is /tmp/firefox.log
  $ strace mozilla-firefox
  execve("/usr/bin/mozilla-firefox", ["mozilla-firefox"], [/* 31 vars */]) = 0
  uname({sys="Linux", node="sylvester", ...}) = 0
  brk(0)                                  = 0x80e6000
  old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7fe9000
	.
	.
	.
  $ <Ctrl-D hit> Script done, file is /tmp/firefox.log
  $ less /tmp/firefox.log
  Script started on Wed Jun 29 08:12:00 2005
  steve at sylvester$ strace mozilla-firefox
  execve("/usr/bin/mozilla-firefox", ["mozilla-firefox"], [/* 31 vars */]) = 0
  uname({sys="Linux", node="sylvester", ...}) = 0
  brk(0)                                  = 0x80e6000
  old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7fe9000

Send me that file.  It takes an expert to read and understand it and
I don't think your "nugget" expertise is up to it - there will be 
errors in it and some of them are purfectly okay (like some missing
libraries - that's okay as the program is looking for them and as long
as it finds one then that's okay.
 
Steve
-- 
In the beginning there was nothing.  And the Lord said "Let There Be Light!"
And still there was nothing, but at least now you could see it.
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