45 comments by 1 or more people

1. Tim Baum

   Works great but I noticed the “theme” is just an ugly grey and the lines are very harsh. Almost like a very old version of gnome.

   Perhaps another settings is needed before launch?

   21 Jun 2008, 20:41

2. Mike Willis

   That sounds rather like how the Linux version of Linux looks by default to me. Although SLED 10 defaults to Gnome I use KDE and this Firefox theme – http://www.tom-cat.com/mozilla/firefox.html with the toolbar customisation setting ‘use small icons’ selected to make Firefox less drab. I’ve tried running my Firefox 3 build with no third party theme under Gnome and KDE and it looks the same under both.
   

   22 Jun 2008, 21:55

3. Kogi Kaishakunin

   I tried doing this on SLES 10 SP2. I am getting the following error saying that I don’t have the correct GTK version. Do you know if I need to do anything different on SLES 10?

   Error
   -—
   We’re sorry, this application requires a version of the GTK+ library that is not installed on your computer.

   You have GTK+ 2.8.
   This application requires GTK+ 2.10 or newer.

   Please upgrade your GTK+ library if you wish to use this application.

   23 Jun 2008, 19:57

4. Mike Willis

   I’ve not tried on SLES but far as I’m aware the procedure should be no different. SLED and SLES are I believe both derived from a common base. I know they share many packages in common.
   If you’re still getting the “We’re sorry, this application requires a version of the GTK+ library….” message then Firefox isn’t seeing the new version of GTK. Are you launching Firefox 3 using a wrapper script that specifies the necessary value of LD_LIBRARY_PATH? Are you sure GTK built and installed successfully?

   23 Jun 2008, 21:59

5. Flyzone

   The trick worked but…...........I’m using KDE, not gnome…so…instead using the KDE settings like in the old GTK application, with GTK2.10 and this trick the theme is the default gnome, the shortcut also, and the mail-program clicking on mailto is thunderbird also if i have set KMAIL in firefox!!!!! It’s not reading my settings…why???

   24 Jun 2008, 00:01

6. Kogi Kaishakunin

   Yes, I am using the wrapper script to launch firefox3. I got no errors during the gtk+ install. I installed everything in /usr/local/. I did change the exports appropriately. These are gtk+ files I see in /usr/local/lib:

   l /usr/local/lib/gtk
   rw-r-r—1 root root 836 Jun 23 19:45 /usr/local/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.la
   lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jun 23 19:45 /usr/local/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so -> libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0.1200.10*
   lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jun 23 19:45 /usr/local/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 -> libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0.1200.10*
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 15013122 Jun 23 19:45 /usr/local/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0.1200.10*

   /usr/local/lib/gtk-2.0:
   total 6
   drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 96 Jun 23 14:37 ./
   drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 6064 Jun 23 19:46 ../
   drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 160 Jun 23 14:37 2.10.0/
   drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 80 Jun 23 14:37 include/

   24 Jun 2008, 00:52

7. Anon

   Thanks, the instructions worked great !!

   24 Jun 2008, 11:29

8. mn

   thanks, works great!
   The minimalist list of required things to build was a great help.
   Those firefox devs are just crazy releasing their major new version
   in a way that requires you to update your linux to too-new distros.

   24 Jun 2008, 15:51

9. Mike Willis

   #5 – I also use KDE not Gnome. For me the QT theme is applied to Firefox 3 same as for other GTK apps so I don’t know why it isn’t in your case. As for your mailto handler, can’t comment on that either. I suggest you seek help regarding that on a Firefox related forum.

   #6 – What you list doesn’t look like what I have. I have /local/op/gtk-2.0 which has the same two items under it as your /usr/local/lib/gtk-2.0. You appear to have a dir called /usr/local/lib/gtk and I do not have a dir called /local/opt/lib/gtk. The files you list under /usr/local/lib/gtk I have in /local/opt/lib/

   24 Jun 2008, 17:34

10. Anonymous

    While installing gtk+-2.12.10 I got the following error:

    checking for cups-config… /usr/bin/cups-config
    checking cups/cups.h usability… no
    checking cups/cups.h presence… no
    checking for cups/cups.h… no
    configure: error: * Sorry, cups-config present but cups/cups.h missing.

    What should I do?

    27 Jun 2008, 02:10

11. Mike Willis

    #10 – Either build GTK without CUPS support (look at the config options) or figure out which package you need to install to to get it to build with CUPS. At a guess I’d say that would be cups-devel. I didn’t encounter that error though.

    27 Jun 2008, 08:40

12. Anonymous

    Thanks Mike. I installed cups-devel and it went further. Now I am having the following problem while building ‘gtk+-2.12.10’. Any help will be appreciated.
    :
    /bin/sh ../libtool—mode=link gcc -g -O2 -Wall -L/local/opt/gtk/lib -o gtk-query-immodules-2.0 queryimmodules.o libgtk-x11-2.0.la ../gdk-pixbuf/libgdk_pixb uf-2.0.la ../gdk/libgdk-x11-2.0.la
    gcc g -O2 -Wall -o .libs/gtk-query-immodules-2.0 queryimmodules.o -L/local/opt/gtk/lib ./.libs/libgtk-x11-2.0.so -L/local/opt/lib /root/downloads/gtk+-2.12.1 0/gdk/.libs/libgdk-x11-2.0.so -L/usr/X11R6/lib /local/opt/lib/libatk-1.0.so -L/opt/gnome/lib /opt/gnome/lib/libgobject-2.0.so /opt/gnome/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so /opt/gnome/lib/libglib-2.0.so ../gdk-pixbuf/.libs/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so ../gdk/.libs/libgdk-x11-2.0.so -lXrandr -lXinerama /local/opt/lib/libpangocairo-1.0.so / local/opt/lib/libpangoft2-1.0.so /local/opt/lib/libpango-1.0.so /local/opt/lib/libcairo.so -lSM -lICE -lpng12 /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so /usr/lib/libfreetype.so -lz /usr/lib/libexpat.so -lXcursor -lXrender -lXext -lXcomposite -lXdamage -lXfixes -lX11 /root/downloads/gtk+-2.12.10/gdk-pixbuf/.libs/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so / local/opt/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so -ldl /local/opt/lib/libgobject-2.0.so /local/opt/lib/libglib-2.0.so -lm -Wl,-rpath -Wl,/local/opt/lib
    ./.libs/libgtk-x11-2.0.so: undefined reference to `g_bookmark_file_get_title’
    ./.libs/libgtk-x11-2.0.so: undefined reference to `g_bookmark_file_get_is_private’
    /local/opt/lib/libpango-1.0.so: undefined reference to `g_unichar_get_script’
    :
    ./.libs/libgtk-x11-2.0.so: undefined reference to `g_sequence_iter_prev’
    collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
    make⁴: * [gtk-query-immodules-2.0] Error 1
    make⁴: Leaving directory `/root/downloads/gtk+-2.12.10/gtk’
    make<sup>3</sup>: * [all-recursive] Error 1
    make<sup>3</sup>: Leaving directory `/root/downloads/gtk+-2.12.10/gtk’
    make²: * [all] Error 2
    make²: Leaving directory `/root/downloads/gtk+-2.12.10/gtk’
    make<sup>1</sup>: * [all-recursive] Error 1
    make<sup>1</sup>: Leaving directory `/root/downloads/gtk+-2.12.10’
    make: * [all] Error 2

    27 Jun 2008, 19:57

13. Olli

    Thanks a lot. I followed the instructions, added the cups-devel package and
    it works.

    30 Jun 2008, 10:15

14. Srinivas

    First of all thanks to share to your Experience….
    I have tried these instructions but i am not succeed in this issue.
    Please Help me.
    I am trying install it on SLES10, i have followed ur instruction but am not able to install Gtk and other depends I have posted those error messeages below.
    ERROR#1
    checking for Carbon/Carbon.h… no
    checking for CAIRO… no
    no
    configure: error: * Could not enable any of FreeType, X11, Cairo, or Win32 backends.
    • Must have at least one backend to build Pango.

    ERROR#2
    ”/work/savesets/downloads/pango-1.12.1/pango/.libs/lt-pango-querymodules: symbol lookup error: /work/savesets/downloads/pango-1.12.1/pango/.libs/libpango-1.0.so.0: undefined symbol: g_intern_static_string”.

    Thanks & Regards
    Srinivas

    30 Jun 2008, 15:06

15. Mike Willis

    #12 – I had errors that were the either the same or at least similar at one point. IIRC I solved them by building ATK. Look at your output. (Or least It’s try, you’ve somehow managed to strike most of it out.) There’s mentions in there of stuff being used out of /opt/gnome/lib/. E.g. /opt/gnome/lib/libglib-2.0.so which belongs to the version of Glib that ships with SLED 10. The GTK build should be using /local/opt/lib//libglib-2.0.so. Make sure that exists and if it doesn’t check your Glib build worked. It may also help to do ‘make clean’ for GTK then configure and build again.

    #14 – I’m guessing you need a devel package installed. xorg-x11-devel and/or freetyp2-devel maybe. Check if they’re installed.

    30 Jun 2008, 19:38

16. Nic

    Why are you point CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS at /local/opt/gtk – there doesn’t seem to be any part of the ./configure that is installing things there ?

    01 Jul 2008, 17:07

17. Mike Willis

    #16 – Um…... good point. I don’t actually have a /local/opt/gtk directory. This would seem to suggest that the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS aren’t actually needed. I don’t recall what made me think I needed them set to /local/opt/gtk.

    01 Jul 2008, 19:13

18. Nic

    I’m also having the gtk 2.6 error on Suse 10.1. I’ve got what I think are good installs of all the libraries, but firefox is still being a pain.

    LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/users/nic/local/firefox3/opt/lib

    straces is showing this:
    11806 open(”/users/nic/local/firefox3/opt/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0”, O_RDONLY) = 3
    11806 read(3, ”\177ELF\2\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0\320\35\10”..., 512) = 512
    11806 close(3) = 0
    11806 open(”/opt/gnome/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0”, O_RDONLY) = 3
    11806 read(3, ”\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\360\3\5”..., 512) = 512
    11806 fstat64(0×3, 0xff818a4c) = 0
    11806 mmap2(NULL, 3095756, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0xfffffffff6f10000

    It looks like it is rejecting the built library for some reason. Thoughts ?

    01 Jul 2008, 21:44

19. winnie

    Hello Nic,
    we need the 32Bit libraries, not 64bit.
    to be done with extra options “—build=i586—x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib” but that’s not all.
    I haven’t solved this, also

    07 Jul 2008, 20:02

20. Sontaya

    Hello All,

    —SLED—-
    1. mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-old
    2. vim /usr/bin/firefox
       #!/bin/bash
       export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/local/opt/lib
       export MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH=/local/opt/firefox/plugins:/usr/lib/browser-plugins
       /local/opt/firefox/firefox $1
    3. chmod 644 /usr/bin/firefox

    It’work opening on all applications
    Sample. message links from Evolution

    http://www.susethailand.com

    11 Jul 2008, 02:53

21. Hu Xiang

    Hi Mike,

    I think there’s something wrong in your commands to set some environment variables.
    When I installed GTK, there’s also an error prompt about cups.h:
    checking for cups-config¡­ /usr/bin/cups-config
    checking cups/cups.h usability¡­ no
    checking cups/cups.h presence¡­ no
    checking for cups/cups.h¡­ no
    configure: error: * Sorry, cups-config present but cups/cups.h missing.

    So…I downloaded a cups-1.3.7-source.tar.bz2(http://ftp.easysw.com/pub/cups/1.3.7/cups-1.3.7-source.tar.bz2) and installed it into /local/opt. Then I tried to configure GTK again, but this issue could be reproduced. Then I tried to search cups.h in my SUSE via “find / -name cups.h”, the result is ”/local/opt/include/cups/cups.h”. And I can’t find gtk under ”/local/opt” So I guessed my environment variables were wrong, and led to above error.

    I changed your last two commands to:

    $ export CPPFLAGS=”-I/local/opt/include”
    $ export LDFLAGS=”-L/local/opt/lib”

    Then GTK could be configured and installed successfully. At last, I could run FireFox 3.0 via your wrapper script!

    Thank you very much for your article!

    17 Jul 2008, 05:33

22. Mike Willis

    #21 – If you read through the comments you’ll see someone else had the same errors regarding cups and they they just installed the cups-devel package to resolve it. That seems a lot easier than downloading the source for a version of cups that is actually different to the one provided with SLED 10 (SLED 10 includes cups 1.1.23 – you download source for 1.3.7) then changing environment variables.

    17 Jul 2008, 09:25

23. Greg

    I absolutely hate trying to install anything on any type of unix machine. It is always hit or miss. You either have what is needed or you don’t and 9 times out of 10 you don’t. I have wasted hours here at work trying to get all the different packages to install hoping the next version of firefox won’t be as limited as the last. But, every time I finally get one thing to work then I have to screw around with the next one.

    Thank God I can go home to Windows Vista and have a computer system that actually works!

    17 Jul 2008, 21:34

24. Michele

    I have Suse linux 10.1×86_64 .. I tried to follow your instructions, but when I try to compile cairo and pango I have problems with the png library:
    /usr/lib64/libpng12.so: file not recognized: File format not recognized

    So I pointed the png library to the 32 bit version, in /usr/lib. In this way I can compile cairo, but when I try to compile pango I have a lot of these errors:
    /michele/opt/lib/libcairo.so: undefined reference to `png_set_gray_1_2_4_to_8’

    Any suggestion?

    Thanks in advance

    18 Aug 2008, 18:52

25. Killing Joke

    Had a real pain to build GTK.
    My error was “Cairo was not compiled with support for the xlib backend”

    In order to resolve this problem i had to reconfigure Cairo with the additionnal flag :
    —x-libraries=/usr/lib

    Then make again and make install again cairo

    Then reconfigure and rebuild GTK and this time everything was ok (of course before that i had to install a lot of *-devel packages, and fontconfig and freetype).

    Thank you anyway for this great post : i was exactly in the same environment (SUSE enterprise, root access, but not willing to install on my system a new GTK version, but willing to work on firefox 3 …)

    28 Aug 2008, 20:37

26. Arthur McLean

    I’m on SLES 10. I think I’ve followed all the instructions (three times, just to be sure). I’ve got the wrapper script, but when I start up Firefox (using the wrapper script) it keeps telling me I’ve got GTK+ 2.8.

    I’ve read all the comments carefully, but I don’t see where I’m going wrong. Any suggestions?

    Thanks for the help.

    16 Sep 2008, 21:36

27. winnie

    Got it running on SLES10 SP2 x86_64.
    Most important point is to compile everything on another SLES10SP2 i586 !!!
    Had to add some configure options:
    cairo: —enable-xlib=yes
    gtk+: —includedir=

    The compiled libs are working together with current firefox 3.0.2

    24 Sep 2008, 11:38

28. winnie

    I wanted to say:
    gtk+: —includedir=/path/to/your/cairo/src

    24 Sep 2008, 19:36

29. geitost

    It worked out for me. I’m using SuSE 10.0×86_64 so i had to compile everything on a x86 box to make it work, with winnie’s flags.
    Thank you all !!

    03 Oct 2008, 19:10

30. Jon Scobie

    Had to build on a 32 bit SLES 10 box to get it to work on 64 bit but it all went well. Thanks for the info.

    24 Oct 2008, 10:33

31. Andy

    Just wanted to confirm that building it on a 32-bit system and then transferring the installation to a 64-bit system works. Building it on a 64-bit system did not work for me. It still complained that it could not see th GTK+2.12 installation.

    I installed all the updated libraries into a subfolder, /opt, of firefox3. If people are interested, I’ll gzip the folder and try and find a place to host the link.

    05 Dec 2008, 13:41

32. Aleksej

    hi, i’m Alex from Italy.

    I’ve tried your tutorial on my sled 10 sp2 and it works fine. I only have troubles with flash plugin!!
    I’ve installed flash 10 but first time i open Firefox i see Flash 10, other times i see flash 7 (i presume it’s released with Firefox)
    i’ve tried with disable/enable, using simbolic links, copying the .so, using flash 9, unistalling flash and re-installing 9 AND 10, but i see new plugin one time, and the others only flash7.
    Any ideas?

    thanks in advance!
    Ale

    09 Dec 2008, 17:43

33. Mike Willis

    #32 – No idea. Firefox does not include any version of Flash. Look in the plugins directory after you unpack it and you won’t find Flash in there. I can’t imagine where you’re getting Flash 7 from given that SLED 10 SP 2 includes Flash 9.

    10 Dec 2008, 19:12

34. Aleksej

    Hi!
    In the plugins directory after unpack there is only libnullplugin, but if i open the plugin menu in firefox, i see ShockWave Flash 7.0 r69 ….
    After installing Flash 10 i get both ShockWave Flash 7.0 r69 and ShockWave Flash 10.0 r12

    :-((

    Thanks again!

    16 Dec 2008, 11:06

35. Aleksej

    Solved!

    In the /home/myname/.mozilla/plugins there were flash 7.0 files! Now all works fine! Thank you!

    17 Dec 2008, 14:48

36. tob

    Realy great, thanks

    03 Feb 2009, 04:12

37. Anatoliy

    There nice method!
    To use you’re default Gnome theme in sled10 you must copy all files(with out file libpixmap) from (gtk2-engines) folder:

    /opt/gnome/lib/gtk-2.0/2.4.0/engines/.
    to
    /local/opt/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/engines/

    Also copy folder /opt/gnome/share/themes/Clearlooks
    to
    /local/opt/share/themes/

    Start Firefox3.

    02 Mar 2009, 16:05

38. Rich M

    I had to install the cups and tiff (which yast depended on jpeg) devel packages too before gtk would build.

    26 Jun 2009, 10:10

39. ulrich

    Hello,

    I did everything like it is explored above.

    When i run ./firefox I get the following message:
    firefox-bin: symbol lookup error: /opt/ff3/firefox/libxul.so: undefined symbol: g_slice_set_config

    I double checked my PATH and LIB variables and can’t see anything wrong. Unfortunately I don’t have any “gtk” directory in ”/firefox/opt/”
    I guess there’s missing a link to the new gtk libs somewhere. How can I find out where?
    Thanks in advance!

    07 Sep 2009, 18:01

40. Mike Willis

    #39 If you haven’t got the gtk directory where you expect it then I can only assume that you have either not actually installed it or you installed somewhere other than where you expected to install it. As it says at the start of my post, SLED 10 now includes Firefox 3 anyway. Just install all outstanding updates and you’ll get it. No need to mess around with the method I describe.

    07 Sep 2009, 20:12

41. Ed Sabol

    I successfully used the above information when Firefox 3.0 was released last year in order to get it up and running on some RHEL (actually Scientific Linux) 4.4 computers at work. Has anyone figured out the same for Firefox 3.5? libdbus-1.2 is a sticking point. My efforts at compiling it on RHEL 4.4 have been so far unsuccesful. Wondering if anyone is in the same boat and has any words of wisdom regarding libdbus and Firefox 3.5…. Thanks!

    22 Sep 2009, 21:00

42. Stefan B.

    Hi.

    The above receptive seems to work fine, for the most part.
    However the latest patch version should probably be used, instead of the listed versions, it you are even a bit security conscious.

    Further, the following is also seems to be needed on SLED10sp2pl2, to start firefox 3.5:
    http://dbus.freedesktop.org/releases/dbus/dbus-1.2.22.tar.gz

    However there are some remaining errors, that cab de solved by also installing:
    http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/gnome/sources/gtk-engines/2.12/gtk-engines-2.12.2.tar.bz2
    http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.8/cmake-2.8.1.tar.gz
    http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gtk-qt-engine/gtk-qt-engine_0.8.orig.tar.gz
    Note: The INSTALL_PATH_KCONTROL_MODULE, CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX parameters in CMakeCache.txt is not set correctly when gtk-qt-engine is configured, and may need manual adjustment before building the engine.

    22 Mar 2010, 18:42

43. Mike Willis

    @42 – Novell have already released packages for Firefox 3.5 in the SLED 10 SP 2 update channel. Just install all outstanding updates, don’t mess around with the method I described, it’s not necessary.

    22 Mar 2010, 20:41

44. Vyom

    Hello Mike

    I am using SLED10 [64bit] and running as root. I installed the way in which you have mentioned and was a successful installation. I then export the library path and tried to run ’./firefox’. I am getting an error:
    You have GTK+ 2.8.
    This application requires GTK+ 2.10 or newer.

    Please upgrade your GTK+ library if you wish to use this application.

    I then understood that firefox is not able to see the installed gtk higher version. I then also tried opening vi firefox and putting the export command. Nor that did work for me and came with same error.
    All my library files are as told by you, while compiling i loaded the path also. Compilation of gtk is fine.

    The thing which i wanted to say. My old firefox was crashed it always gives a segmentation fault. I didnt remove that folder nor changed any path.

    But i was thinking is there anything inside the firefox which goes back and take the old gtk?
    Is there any additional things which i have to do. Well i cant go for a reinstallation of the OS, because a lot of other things are depended.

    It would be helpful if you could help me for the same. I tried google and find but couldnt get it.
    Only one more guy has explained to make firefox 3.0 in suse10 but that gtk compilation failed for me.

    Thank you in advance for the help. Well i rate myself as begginer in suse/linux.

    02 May 2010, 11:04

45. Mike Willis

    @44 – I can’t offer any advice on this as I stopped using SLED 10 nearly a year ago. Also see comment 43.

    02 May 2010, 16:14