[SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

nilesh · 2013-07-28 18:08:23

I got a new Arch x86 (!64) installation with KDE.

I'm unable to install extensions in Firefox. When Firefox starts up first time, it gives this error -

I tried the solutions for the same as mentioned at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/co … -component.
After removing cert8.db and restarting, the error appeared again.

New profile doesn't let me install extensions either.

When I install extension, it'll either download fine and install (and ask for restart). After restart it's vanished.
Otherwise it gets stuck at install... progressbar (the one that appears after downloading ext).

% ls -ld /home                                                                                                                                                                                                           13-07-28 - 23:26:23
drwxrwxr-x 7 root root 97 Jul 28 22:12 /home


% ls -ld /home/nilesh                                                                                                                                                                                                    13-07-28 - 23:35:33
drwxr-xr-x 62 nilesh nilesh 4096 Jul 28 23:36 /home/nilesh


% ls -ld /home/nilesh/.mozilla                                                                                                                                                                                           13-07-28 - 23:36:27
drwx------ 4 nilesh nilesh 49 Jul 28 23:24 /home/nilesh/.mozilla

Something on FS related - my /home is a bind mount to /data/home.

Last edited by nilesh (2013-07-29 14:31:02)

cfr · 2013-07-28 22:36:04

Are other customisations you make persistent?

nilesh · 2013-07-29 01:49:48

cfr wrote:

Are other customisations you make persistent?

Yes, the settings in preferences seem to stick.

Last edited by nilesh (2013-07-29 01:51:05)

cfr · 2013-07-29 01:59:40

nilesh wrote:

I got a new Arch x86 (!64) installation with KDE.
I'm unable to install extensions in Firefox. When Firefox starts up first time, it gives this error -
http://i.imgur.com/OSTUZ5K.png

Does not seem to be a link. Which error?

EDIT: OK. It is a link now I've quoted it for some reason. So that makes more sense now.

Can you post the output of ls -lR ~/.mozilla?

Are you using Arch's firefox package? Do you have any extensions installed as Arch packages? If so, do they work normally?

Last edited by cfr (2013-07-29 02:00:54)

nilesh · 2013-07-29 02:03:10

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla:
total 0
drwx------ 2 nilesh users  6 Jul 29 00:22 extensions
drwx------ 3 nilesh users 48 Jul 29 00:22 firefox

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/extensions:
total 0

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox:
total 8
-rw------- 1 nilesh users   94 Jul 29 00:22 profiles.ini
drwx------ 8 nilesh users 4096 Jul 29 07:23 ygsteh2z.default

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default:
total 13772
-rw------- 1 nilesh users   524288 Jul 29 00:23 addons.sqlite
drwx------ 2 nilesh users       38 Jul 29 00:22 bookmarkbackups
-rw------- 1 nilesh users    65536 Jul 29 07:23 cert8.db
drwx------ 2 nilesh users        6 Jul 29 00:22 chrome
-rw------- 1 nilesh users      157 Jul 29 00:22 compatibility.ini
-rw------- 1 nilesh users   229376 Jul 29 00:22 content-prefs.sqlite
-rw------- 1 nilesh users   524288 Jul 29 07:23 cookies.sqlite
-rw------- 1 nilesh users    98304 Jul 29 00:22 downloads.sqlite
drwx------ 3 nilesh users       27 Jul 29 00:22 extensions
-rw------- 1 nilesh users      119 Jul 29 00:22 extensions.ini
-rw------- 1 nilesh users   458752 Jul 29 00:22 extensions.sqlite
drwx------ 2 nilesh users        6 Jul 29 07:21 healthreport
-rw------- 1 nilesh users  1146880 Jul 29 07:23 healthreport.sqlite
drwx------ 3 nilesh users       19 Jul 29 00:22 indexedDB
-rw------- 1 nilesh users    16384 Jul 29 07:23 key3.db
-rw------- 1 nilesh users     3523 Jul 29 07:23 localstore.rdf
-rw------- 1 nilesh users     3775 Jul 29 00:22 mimeTypes.rdf
-rw------- 1 nilesh users    65536 Jul 29 00:23 permissions.sqlite
-rw------- 1 nilesh users 10485760 Jul 29 00:23 places.sqlite
-rw------- 1 nilesh users      537 Jul 29 07:20 pluginreg.dat
-rw------- 1 nilesh users     4424 Jul 29 07:23 prefs.js
-rw------- 1 nilesh users    10467 Jul 29 00:22 search.json
-rw------- 1 nilesh users    16384 Jul 29 00:22 secmod.db
-rw------- 1 nilesh users      566 Jul 29 07:20 sessionstore.bak
-rw------- 1 nilesh users      520 Jul 29 07:23 sessionstore.js
-rw------- 1 nilesh users   327680 Jul 29 00:22 signons.sqlite
-rwx------ 1 nilesh users       29 Jul 29 00:22 times.json
-rw------- 1 nilesh users      154 Jul 29 07:20 urlclassifierkey3.txt
drwx------ 2 nilesh users       25 Jul 29 07:20 webapps
-rw------- 1 nilesh users    98304 Jul 29 07:20 webappsstore.sqlite

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/bookmarkbackups:
total 4
-rw------- 1 nilesh users 3137 Jul 29 00:22 bookmarks-2013-07-29.json

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/chrome:
total 0

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions:
total 0
drwx------ 3 nilesh users 77 Jul 29 00:22 staged

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions/staged:
total 8
drwx------ 7 nilesh users 4096 Jul 29 00:22 support@lastpass.com
-rw------- 1 nilesh users 1936 Jul 29 00:22 support@lastpass.com.json

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions/staged/support@lastpass.com:
total 20
drwx------ 2 nilesh users   33 Jul 29 00:22 chrome
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users 6462 Apr 30 23:28 chrome.manifest
drwx------ 2 nilesh users  121 Jul 29 00:22 components
drwx------ 3 nilesh users   32 Jul 29 00:22 defaults
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users 6241 Jun 10 07:28 install.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users 3509 Jun 10 07:43 install.rdf
drwx------ 2 nilesh users   75 Jul 29 00:22 META-INF
drwx------ 4 nilesh users   63 Jul 29 00:22 platform

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions/staged/support@lastpass.com/chrome:
total 1924
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users 1966240 Jun 10 07:43 lastpass.jar

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions/staged/support@lastpass.com/components:
total 924
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users   2718 Jun 10 07:43 lastpassext.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users 927986 Jun 10 07:43 lastpass.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users   3632 Jun 10 07:43 lastpasssearch.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users    198 Jun 10 07:43 lpjs.xpt
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users   2284 Jun 10 07:43 lp.xpt

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions/staged/support@lastpass.com/defaults:
total 0
drwx------ 2 nilesh users 32 Jul 29 00:22 preferences

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions/staged/support@lastpass.com/defaults/preferences:
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users 42 Sep 10  2012 defaults.js

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions/staged/support@lastpass.com/META-INF:
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users 1810 Jun 10 07:44 manifest.mf
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users 4319 Jun 10 07:44 zigbert.rsa
-rw-r--r-- 1 nilesh users 1918 Jun 10 07:44 zigbert.sf

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions/staged/support@lastpass.com/platform:
total 0
drwx------ 3 nilesh users 31 Jul 29 00:22 Linux_x86_64-gcc3
drwx------ 3 nilesh users 31 Jul 29 00:22 Linux_x86-gcc3

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions/staged/support@lastpass.com/platform/Linux_x86_64-gcc3:
total 0
drwx------ 2 nilesh users 38 Jul 29 00:22 components

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions/staged/support@lastpass.com/platform/Linux_x86_64-gcc3/components:
total 2768
-rwxr--r-- 1 nilesh users 2832776 Jun 10 07:44 lpxpcom_x86_64.so

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions/staged/support@lastpass.com/platform/Linux_x86-gcc3:
total 0
drwx------ 2 nilesh users 31 Jul 29 00:22 components

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/extensions/staged/support@lastpass.com/platform/Linux_x86-gcc3/components:
total 2248
-rwxr--r-- 1 nilesh users 2301232 Jun 10 07:44 lpxpcom.so

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/healthreport:
total 0

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/indexedDB:
total 0
drwx------ 3 nilesh users 32 Jul 29 00:22 chrome

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/indexedDB/chrome:
total 0
drwx------ 3 nilesh users 53 Jul 29 00:22 idb

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/indexedDB/chrome/idb:
total 512
drwx------ 2 nilesh users      6 Jul 29 00:22 846562544phus
-rw------- 1 nilesh users 524288 Jul 29 00:22 846562544phus.sqlite

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/indexedDB/chrome/idb/846562544phus:
total 0

/data/home/nilesh/.mozilla/firefox/ygsteh2z.default/webapps:
total 4
-rw------- 1 nilesh users 2 Jul 29 07:20 webapps.json

Just a slight change there, I stopped bind-mounting and set home directory directly as /data/home to be sure that bind mount wasn't causing the problem.

I'm using firefox from Pacman repos, no ext installed directly from repo.

Last edited by nilesh (2013-07-29 02:03:47)

cfr · 2013-07-29 02:25:49

You said that even with an entirely clean profile, you can't install extensions, right?

Your permissions are slightly more restrictive than mine but not in ways which should matter, I don't think. I was wondering about the "staged" extension but if you can't install even with a clean profile, it can't be that.

I would try two things:
1) I would try installing an extension from the repo just to see if that behaves normally e.g. noscript is certainly available as an official package but there may be others.
2) I would create a new user account, log into that account and run Firefox from there. See if you can install extensions successfully in that case.

I'm not suggesting you should switch user accounts - just that it will tell you whether the problem is something in the system set up or in the configuration of your account and that at least will narrow it down a little.

EDIT: I take it you are not short of space? What does df -h give?

Last edited by cfr (2013-07-29 02:27:24)

nilesh · 2013-07-29 02:29:13

cfr wrote:

You said that even with an entirely clean profile, you can't install extensions, right?
Your permissions are slightly more restrictive than mine but not in ways which should matter, I don't think. I was wondering about the "staged" extension but if you can't install even with a clean profile, it can't be that.
I would try two things:
1) I would try installing an extension from the repo just to see if that behaves normally e.g. noscript is certainly available as an official package but there may be others.
2) I would create a new user account, log into that account and run Firefox from there. See if you can install extensions successfully in that case.
I'm not suggesting you should switch user accounts - just that it will tell you whether the problem is something in the system set up or in the configuration of your account and that at least will narrow it down a little.
EDIT: I take it you are not short of space? What does df -h give?

878G available on /data. Also /data/var is bind mounted to /var, if it matters.

I already tried the new user account thing as suggested by some on IRC yesterday, but I had the same problem there on the new account as well. I'll try installing ext from repo and report back.

thisoldman · 2013-07-29 02:29:20

nilesh wrote:

% ls -ld /home/nilesh/.mozilla
drwx------ 4 nilesh nilesh 49 Jul 28 23:24 /home/nilesh/.mozilla

The size of the .mozilla directory is 49. There is something wrong there. The default for ext2, 3 or 4 filesystems is 4096. Yes the directory is probably full. I don't know why the directory is so small or why it is not expanding. Could it be because of the mount permissions?

I have no idea if this would work, but I would try moving or renaming the current '.mozilla' directory and then creating a new '.mozilla' directory. Then I would copy all files and directories from the old directory into the new one and, finally, restart firefox. If that did work, I wouldn't have to be bothered with restoring passwords or bookmarks.

nilesh · 2013-07-29 02:35:10

thisoldman wrote:

nilesh wrote:
% ls -ld /home/nilesh/.mozilla
drwx------ 4 nilesh nilesh 49 Jul 28 23:24 /home/nilesh/.mozilla
The size of the .mozilla directory is 49. There is something wrong there. The default for ext2, 3 or 4 filesystems is 4096. Yes the directory is probably full. I don't know why the directory is so small or why it is not expanding. Could it be because of the mount permissions?
I have no idea if this would work, but I would try moving or renaming the current '.mozilla' directory and then creating a new '.mozilla' directory. Then I would copy all files and directories from the old directory into the new one and, finally, restart firefox. If that did work, I wouldn't have to be bothered with restoring passwords or bookmarks.

My disk setup is like this -

sda - SSD - /boot - ext2, / - xfs
sdb, sdc, sdd - HDD - /dev/md127 striping, 4k chunk size

/dev/md127p1 - swap 4G
/dev/md127p2 - /data 1.1T xfs

I tried creating a new mozilla dir and moving, still doesn't help.

Last edited by nilesh (2013-07-29 02:41:10)

cfr · 2013-07-29 02:40:48

@thisoldman,
Interesting. I never thought about those numbers like that for directories. But if that's the problem, there must be something else going on because lots of the directories under ~/.mozilla are also less than 4K and it wouldn't explain why the same problem occurs in a clean user account, would it?

@OP,
What is the filesystem on /data?

Last edited by cfr (2013-07-29 02:42:42)

nilesh · 2013-07-29 02:42:07

cfr wrote:

Interesting. I never thought about those numbers like that for directories. But if that's the problem, there must be something else going on because lots of the directories under ~/.mozilla are also less than 4K and it wouldn't explain why the same problem occurs in a clean user account, would it?

Exactly. Also chromium is working fine, so definitely something else is the problem. If it was a disk issue, chromium should also b0rk.

cfr · 2013-07-29 02:43:31

See EDIT above. What's the file system on /data?

Another EDIT: Try writing something under ~/.mozilla. If that's the problem, you shouldn't be able to, I guess. At least, not if you write something decently sized (at least extension-sized as it were).

Last edited by cfr (2013-07-29 02:45:14)

nilesh · 2013-07-29 02:44:34

cfr wrote:

See EDIT above. What's the file system on /data?

xfs

nilesh · 2013-07-29 02:46:11

cfr wrote:

See EDIT above. What's the file system on /data?
Another EDIT: Try writing something under ~/.mozilla. If that's the problem, you shouldn't be able to, I guess. At least, not if you write something decently sized (at least extension-sized as it were).

nilesh@home:~/.mozilla
% dd if=/dev/zero of=dummy.img bs=1M count=10                                                                                                                                                                             13-07-29 - 8:15:35
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
10485760 bytes (10 MB) copied, 0.0249786 s, 420 MB/s

cfr · 2013-07-29 02:54:03

So presumably xfs is quite different in this respect as there certainly doesn't seem to be a problem with writing to that directory. (And we know it isn't directory specific if it occurs in a clean user account.)

I'll be curious to know what happens with a packaged extension, though. Maybe that will cast some light on the situation. You also could look in Firefox's error console. Unfortunately, I can't remember if this is part of Firefox itself or an add on. journalctl might also include errors but obviously you have to sift to find the relevant ones in that case.

EDIT: Have you tried starting Firefox from the command line so you can look at any errors produced?

Last edited by cfr (2013-07-29 02:54:36)

nilesh · 2013-07-29 02:57:05

cfr wrote:

So presumably xfs is quite different in this respect as there certainly doesn't seem to be a problem with writing to that directory. (And we know it isn't directory specific if it occurs in a clean user account.)
I'll be curious to know what happens with a packaged extension, though. Maybe that will cast some light on the situation. You also could look in Firefox's error console. Unfortunately, I can't remember if this is part of Firefox itself or an add on. journalctl might also include errors but obviously you have to sift to find the relevant ones in that case.
EDIT: Have you tried starting Firefox from the command line so you can look at any errors produced?

Firefox doesn't emit any errors in terminal.
How do I find journalctl errors?? I'm new to systemd.

cfr · 2013-07-29 02:59:50

Since these are for your user account, journalctl will let you scroll through the logs. journalctl -b will restrict it to messages since the last boot. journalctl -b | grep -i firefox might be a place to start. At least, it seems worth a look unless somebody comes up with a better idea.

EDIT: That command spews stuff for me so it should show something even if it doesn't include relevant errors.

Last edited by cfr (2013-07-29 03:01:06)

nilesh · 2013-07-29 03:03:23

cfr wrote:

Since these are for your user account, journalctl will let you scroll through the logs. journalctl -b will restrict it to messages since the last boot. journalctl -b | grep -i firefox might be a place to start. At least, it seems worth a look unless somebody comes up with a better idea.
EDIT: That command spews stuff for me so it should show something even if it doesn't include relevant errors.

Got nothing in journalctl -b except a few pam-su messages (which were obviously by me).

cfr · 2013-07-29 03:05:34

Try running it as root. I thought it would be in the user journal but maybe not.

nilesh · 2013-07-29 03:06:50

cfr wrote:

Try running it as root. I thought it would be in the user journal but maybe not.

Still nothing, except pacman messages about installation/deinstallation of firefox.

nilesh · 2013-07-29 14:30:24

Apparently it is a bug in Firefox. It cannot handle 64bit inodes on xfs (the mount option for 64bit inodes is enabled by default). http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.fi … eral/54172

Mounted with inode32 as option and working fine now

Arch Linux

#1 2013-07-28 18:08:23

[SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#2 2013-07-28 22:36:04

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#3 2013-07-29 01:49:48

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#4 2013-07-29 01:59:40

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#5 2013-07-29 02:03:10

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#6 2013-07-29 02:25:49

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#7 2013-07-29 02:29:13

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#8 2013-07-29 02:29:20

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#9 2013-07-29 02:35:10

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#10 2013-07-29 02:40:48

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#11 2013-07-29 02:42:07

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#12 2013-07-29 02:43:31

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#13 2013-07-29 02:44:34

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#14 2013-07-29 02:46:11

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#15 2013-07-29 02:54:03

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#16 2013-07-29 02:57:05

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#17 2013-07-29 02:59:50

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#18 2013-07-29 03:03:23

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#19 2013-07-29 03:05:34

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#20 2013-07-29 03:06:50

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

#21 2013-07-29 14:30:24

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to install extensions in Firefox

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