Installing Mozilla Firebird
Written by Collins Richey on 2003-May-17


MozillaFirebird 0.6 (previously Phoenix) is the latest incarnation of the browser-only branch of Mozilla, and Mozilla has stated that this will become the Mozilla Browser.


Here's a brief HOWTO for installing the binary packages. (You want the binary packages if you hope to use Mozilla compatible plugins)


1) Go to http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firebird/release-notes.html#install and get the 0.6 release or google for the location of the "almost" nightly CVS builds.

2) Unpack the source (tar xvzf thebuildtarball) under your favorite directory (/opt is a good choice). This will give you /opt/MozillaFirebird.

3) Add the following script to /usr/local/bin or some suitable directory and make it executable (chmod 755 mozfb). Original script for Phoenix by Dhruba Bandopadhyay <dhruba@codewordt.co.uk>. I've named mine 'mozfb'.

#!/bin/sh
export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME="/opt/MozillaFirebird"
MOZILLA_PATH="/opt/MozillaFirebird"
# Seems like pidof resides in /sbin on some boxes
# Modifying the PATH to reflect that
PATH="/sbin:${PATH}"
if [ -z "`pidof MozillaFirebird-bin`" ]; then
# No MozillaFirebird running
${MOZILLA_PATH}/MozillaFirebird $@
else
# MozillaFirebird running - open a new tab/window
${MOZILLA_PATH}/MozillaFirebird -remote "openURL($@ ,new-tab)"
# or if you prefer use "...,new-window)"
fi

4) Update your mailer preferences (ex. Sylpheed -> Other - > "mozfb %s") and/or your window manager menus to invoke 'mozfb'.


5) Copy your mozilla plugins or create symlinks under /opt/MozillaFirebird/plugins. You can do this while the browser is running. My directory looks like this:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 856 May 17 20:17 flashplayer.xpt
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 62 May 17 20:18 javaplugin_oji.so -> /opt/blackdown-jre-1.4.1/plugin/i386/mozilla/javaplugin_oji.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1464736 May 17 20:18 libflashplayer.so
-rwxrwxr-x 1 8482 8482 19856 May 16 17:45 libnullplugin.so
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 44 May 17 20:20 mplayerplug-in.so -> /usr/lib/nsbrowser/plugins/mplayerplug-in.so
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 42 May 17 20:22 nppdf.so -> /opt/Acrobat5/Browsers/intellinux/nppdf.so
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 May 17 20:20 plugger.so -> /opt/netscape/plugins/plugger.so
-rwrr-xr-x 1 root root 24 May 17 20:21 rpnp.so -> /opt/RealPlayer8/rpnp.so

6) MozillaFirebird "seems" to use the ~/.phoenix directory. I couldn't get the procedure warning about creating a new profile to work ("seems" to be a Windows procedure), and my existing Phoenix setup works without a hitch, but I'm prepared to preserve my bookmarks and to trash the ~/.phoenix directory, if problems arise.

Enjoy.