[CentOS] [OT] Firefox loses plugins, anyone else? Bug? Known?

Tue Dec 23 15:58:04 UTC 2008
William L. Maltby <CentOS4Bill at triad.rr.com>

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

-- 
Bill