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pythonscript

Member

From: Edinburgh, Scotland

Registered: 2009-07-10

Posts: 68

[SOLVED] Compress firefox binary with upx - "not a regular file" error

I'm following the instructions on the wiki page about Firefox tweaks to compress the Firefox binary using upx. The instructions, modified for my system's Firefox, where firefox-bin is located in /usr/lib/firefox, are to backup the binary and compress it, per these commands:

sudo cp /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin.backup
sudo upx -9 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin

However, this returns an error:

upx: /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin: IOException: not a regular file -- skipped

Although it's not in the wiki, I tried compressing /usr/bin/firefox as well, with similar commands:

sudo cp /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox.backup
sudo upx -9 /usr/bin/firefox

Same problem, though. Listing the files in the directory, I see that there is a firefox *and* a firefox-bin. Running

sudo cp /usr/lib/firefox/firefox /usr/lib/firefox/firefox.backup
sudo upx --9 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox

doesn't return any errors. Neither does using

sudo upx --best /usr/lib/firefox/firefox

Question: Are the last commands listed dangerous to run? Should I update the wiki to include them, or does anyone else have any other suggestions? The last set of commands does not return any errors, but I don't want to update the wiki with problematic commands. It should at least be updated to reflect that firefox's files are no longer stored in /usr/lib/firefox-5.0/

Last edited by pythonscript (2012-05-27 18:40:51)

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Lenovo SL510 Thinkpad / Asus EEEPC 1005HA
No hables a menos que puedas mejorar el silencio. - Neruda
La sabiduría nos llega cuando ya no nos sirve de nada. - Márquez

xduugu

Member

Registered: 2008-10-16

Posts: 292

Re: [SOLVED] Compress firefox binary with upx - "not a regular file" error

The wiki article seems to be outdated since /usr/lib/firefox/firefox is indeed the only binary.

$ file --mime-type /usr/bin/firefox /usr/lib/firefox/firefox*
/usr/bin/firefox:             inode/symlink
/usr/lib/firefox/firefox:     application/x-executable
/usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin: inode/symlink

pythonscript

Member

From: Edinburgh, Scotland

Registered: 2009-07-10

Posts: 68

Re: [SOLVED] Compress firefox binary with upx - "not a regular file" error

I updated the wiki article with:

sudo pacman -S upx
sudo cp /usr/lib/firefox/firefox /usr/lib/firefox/firefox.backup
sudo upx --best /usr/lib/firefox/firefox

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Lenovo SL510 Thinkpad / Asus EEEPC 1005HA
No hables a menos que puedas mejorar el silencio. - Neruda
La sabiduría nos llega cuando ya no nos sirve de nada. - Márquez