some apps don't work after clean install <SOLVED>

[emtea]

Hello,
I've used Linux for some time but my abilities are as a newbie.

I recently did a clean install of Mint Xfce 13 32bit on my old laptop and then restored backed-up data to it which I had previously used with Mint 13 MATE.
Now some apps don't work, namely -

Firefox says - 'Could not initialise the application's security component. The most probable cause is problems with files in your browser's profile directory. Please check that this directory has no read/write restrictions and your hard drive is not full or close to full'

Don't know where that is and if I were to find it and fix it, I'm afraid it will keep happening with more apps. The hard drive has lots of space.

LibreOffice says Failed to updatefile:///home/[ME]/.config/libreoffice/3/user/extensions/bundled/lastsynchronized

Seems to be a permissions issue but don't want to go under the hood without advice.
Never posted code here but can do that for someone to check

Thanks for looking
Cheers friends

[gold_finger]

Did you use the exact same user name on the new install as the old one?

Firefox profile should be found under /home/<your username>/.mozilla/firefox -- note the "." before mozilla indicating it is a hidden file. Click View -> Show Hidden Files when looking with Thunar file manager.

Open a terminal and post back results of the following commands to see what permissions are currently set (copy command from here, paste into terminal and hit enter):

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ls -l .mozilla .mozilla/firefox .config/libreoffice .config/libreoffice/3/user/extensions/bundled/lastsynchronized

[emtea]

Hello again goldfinger,
Yes the user name is the same.
I looked for the hidden files and they are in my /home/<username> directory but also there are hidden files with the same names in the /home directory itself. Should this be? If not it may have been my error if I backed up to these 2 different dirs at different times. Restoring would bring everything back of course.
Results from the terminal mention seamonkey which is the mail client I use. It has it's own browser which does work, but I much prefer firefox and have synced lots of bookmarks with it.

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-rw-rw-r-- 1 steve steve    1 Jun  3 15:55 .config/libreoffice/3/user/extensions/bundled/lastsynchronized

.config/libreoffice:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Nov  5 01:55 3

.mozilla:
total 16
drwxrwx--- 2 steve steve 4096 Mar 11  2013 extensions
drwxrwx--- 5 steve steve 4096 Mar 11  2013 firefox
-rw-rw-r-- 1 steve steve    3 Nov  4 19:05 firefox.last-version
drwxrwx--- 4 steve steve 4096 May 28 18:16 seamonkey

.mozilla/firefox:
total 16
drwxrwx--- 4 steve steve 4096 Jul  4 13:38 Crash Reports
drwxr-xr-x 7 root  root  4096 Nov  5 01:55 jn6gbse2.default
drwxrwx--- 9 steve steve 4096 Nov  8 13:14 mwad0hks.default
-rw-rw-r-- 1 steve steve   94 Nov  4 19:05 profiles.ini

[gold_finger]

Sorry for the wait -- been pretty busy last few days.

For Firefox:
Looks like you have 2 profiles under /home/steve/.mozilla/firefox
One for root and one for steve. Don't think the root file belongs there. You may have created it by accident and it might be causing a conflict. Try renaming it and see if that solves the problem.

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sudo mv /home/steve/.mozilla/firefox/jn6gbse2.default /home/steve/.mozilla/firefox/jn6gbse2.default.bak

For LibreOffice:
Looks like /home/steve/.config/libreoffice is owned by root rather than steve. Change ownership to steve and see if that works.

Code: Select all

sudo chown steve: /home/steve/.config/libreoffice

Post back results. If works, mark post as <Solved> in title.

[gold_finger]

Forgot about this:

I looked for the hidden files and they are in my /home/<username> directory but also there are hidden files with the same names in the /home directory itself. Should this be? If not it may have been my error if I backed up to these 2 different dirs at different times.

No, if they are duplicates of what you have in /home/steve, they don't belong there so you may have accidentally put them there at some point. But that shouldn't be cause of the problems. Try what I listed above. If that works, then should be fine to delete the files you accidentally copied to /home.

[jjaythomas]

Not that it will help BUT...

You may have created it by accident and it might be causing a conflict

Many libs and file location of Xfce are not the same as mate so some configs from one to the other won't work, and/or will create a new config (because the other not found where shoud be) and you end up with 2. And the app itself may check both locations (thus becoming confused with 2 configs/profiles ect..

J.Jay

[emtea]

Thanks goldfinger and J.Jay,

Tried those things and in terminal the reponse to each was just another prompt to enter a command.
Restarted and tried to open the apps and got the same results as previously posted.

I re-entered both codes in terminal [?] and the code meant for Firefox responded:-

mv: cannot stat `/home/steve/.mozilla/firefox/jn6gbse2.default': No such file or directory

the LibreOffice one just gave another prompt.

J.Jay's comment may well point to the cause of the whole problem.
I changed from Mate to Xfce because I was getting frequent crashes, not just apps but the whole system.
I looked at lightweight alternatives and since Xfce is recommended for older machines like mine I went with it.
So far it has been pretty stable, but with these 2 apps not working [and more, I fear]
I wonder whether restoring the home folder, from a backup all at once, was as cool as it seemed at the time.
There was also a 'software selection' list which was restored, at least partially since there were things I saw I didn't need. But now I'm wondering about dependencies...getting cloudy for me...
I still have the data
Any more suggestions welcome
I'm able to check here from time to time today - thanks

[gold_finger]

Not that it will help BUT...

You may have created it by accident and it might be causing a conflict

Many libs and file location of Xfce are not the same as mate so some configs from one to the other won't work, and/or will create a new config (because the other not found where shoud be) and you end up with 2. And the app itself may check both locations (thus becoming confused with 2 configs/profiles ect..

J.Jay

Think J.Jay is right on this.

I re-entered both codes in terminal [?] and the code meant for Firefox responded:-

mv: cannot stat `/home/steve/.mozilla/firefox/jn6gbse2.default': No such file or directory

the LibreOffice one just gave another prompt.

Firefox file was renamed when command entered first time, so no longer existed under previous name when tried second time. LibreOffice one just does what asked and does not give interactive response. But apparently these things were not the problem. J.Jay's response is likely the cause if your restored backup included the config files from Mate.

Let's see if just deleting the config files for those programs works. Doing that would cause the programs to create new ones on their next start-up. You'll have to redo any special settings you may have implemented in the programs, but not a big deal. Just in case the following doesn't work, rather than actually deleting, we'll just move the files to a newly created backup folder. That way you can just move them back if this turns out not to be the solution.

First, let's reverse what was done from prior post to get everything back to original state.

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sudo mv /home/steve/.mozilla/firefox/jn6gbse2.default.bak /home/steve/.mozilla/firefox/jn6gbse2.default

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sudo chown root: /home/steve/.config/libreoffice

Now create a backup folder in your home (first line makes sure you are in /home/steve before creating the directory with the second line's command):

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cd ~
mkdir backups

Backup your Firefox bookmarks to the backups folder before continuing so you can at least avoid having to redo those. (While in Firefox: Bookmarks -> Show All Bookmarks -> Import and Backup -> Backup and point the destination to backups.)

Now we'll move the Firefox and LibreOffice config files to the new backups folder. But I'm not sure if doing so will affect the Firefox program if you have it running at the time of the change. So, just in case that would cause problems, copy the following code lines into gedit text editor for your reference and close out Firefox (and LibreOffice if it's running) before entering commands into the terminal.

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sudo mv /home/steve/.mozilla /home/steve/backups

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sudo mv /home/steve/.config/libreoffice /home/steve/backups

Now try running Firefox and LibreOffice and see if they work properly. If yes, then restore your saved bookmarks back into Firefox. Other custom settings you had made for each program will just have to be re-done manually. If this solved problem, keep this thread bookmarked for reference in case you happen to stumble on other programs in your installation that don't work properly. You can try applying same procedures for them.

Good luck. Let us know how it turns out.

[emtea]

Both apps now open properly, thanks goldfinger!
Firefox fires up it's start page, bookmarks are restored but can't see them. Maybe they'll appear next start up.

LibreOffice - all ok. Just doesn't have my recent docs but no big deal, there are only a few that I frequently use.

One odd thing, I've been using Midori to use the forum until Firefox is fixed.
Lately, whenever I opened it a message also came up telling me that LibreOffice could not be opened - well, I didn't want it to anyway.... So I had to click to cancel before I started browsing.
Now, after your fixes, when I open Midori the LibreOffice start window appears as well...!?
The 2 are now linked somehow..but dunno

I'm delighted to have FF and LibreOffice working now and will bookmark the thread as you suggest because I think I may have to use the code a few more times yet.
Thanks goldfinger for your time and expertise here. As someone new to posting on the forum I particularly appreciate the clarity of your replies.
Thanks also to J.Jay for just sayin'...

[gold_finger]

@emtea,
You're welcome -- glad it worked out. Much credit goes to jjaythomas for reiterating what I should have paid more attention to in the beginning.

If you decide to switch flavors of Mint again or switch distro's entirely, you now know to beware that conflicts can occur between how both handle config files even when dealing with same applications. I've read of the possibility, but have not experienced it myself. In the future, if you want to set up your system to be more easily switchable to other distros you should set-up one large data partition to hold just your data (documents, music, pics, etc.) -- no config files -- that automounts on startup. Then do one of two things:

1.) Make a single smallish (15-20GB) partition for / on which the entire install is done. Then symlink your Documents, Pictures, etc. folders from /home/<username> to data partition. This way your config files (which don't take up much space) stay on /home/<username> and will be replaced with new ones during install; but your docs, pics, etc. end up going straight on to data partition and remain untouched.

or

2.) Make small / and /home partitions and one large data partition. Then follow same procedure linking folders from /home to data partition. Under this scenario, you can attempt to keep config files on a new install by using the same / and /home partitions by making sure NOT to check the box to format the /home partition upon installation. If no conflicts occur after new install, then you're good to go and don't have to re-configure anything. If conflicts do occur, then just re-install and check box to format /home as well second time around. This method is most likely to work when upgrading from one version of the same environment to another -- Mint 15 Xfce to Mint 16 Xfce, for instance. As we both just found out, it may not work out so well when switching DE's. This happens to be how I set up my laptop drive. Currently it has / and /home for two distros, empty space available for adding one more, and one large data partition. If I were to start over, I think I'd just go with option 1 above. Here's a link to pic of the drive if you want to see it: [url]http://forums.linuxmint.com/download/file.php?id=14951[/url]

Note: Under either scenario don't forget to make a swap partition.

[emtea]

Very interesting goldfinger
Yes, I see that having data separated from system [config] files does make sense if any change of distro was wanted or needed.
Will consider this in future.
Thanks again for taking the time.