I figured I better post a SOLVED for this. In the main thread it is still open as to whether a new bug should be posted.
Short form: don't have FF check and set itself as default browser, rather run
gnome-default-applications-properties
and select the firefox icon rather than "Custom" command.
On Tue, 2008-12-23 at 10:58 -0500, William L. Maltby wrote:
On Mon, 2008-12-22 at 18:49 -0500, William L. Maltby wrote:
SYNOPSIS: Bug between Firefox and
gnome-default-applications-properties
somewhere.
When FF is set to check to see if it is the default browser and it is not and the user selects "Yes" to make it the default, FF writes the full path to the /usr/lib instance in the command and sets the preferred browser to "Custom".
This causes the symptoms that have been seen, including the truncation of pluginreg.dat.
If the user responds "No" when FF asks if it should be the default browser, the settings that were selected in
gnome-default-applications-properties
hold and the adverse symptoms are not seen.
WORKAROUND: tell firefox "No" or to _not_ check to see if it is the default browser after running gnome-default-applications-properties and selecting it there.
CONCLUSION: The gnome-default-applications-properties apparently gets the binary in /usr/bin while FF itself bypasses this binary and goes directly to the /usr/lib/ firefox instance. In this case the adverse symptoms are seen.
Bug somewhere, I presume FF since the
gnome-default-applications-properties
settings work OK and it accesses the binary in /usr/bin.
More detail that you ever wanted to know follows.
<snip>
BTW, I forgot to pull a basic check, so here it is.
$ rpm -qf /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.5/firefox /usr/bin/firefox firefox-3.0.5-1.el5.centos.i386 firefox-3.0.5-1.el5.centos.i386