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kamil1
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 5:15 am    Post subject: 32-bin firefox-bin 5.0? Reply with quote

I noticed that firefox-bin 5.0 installs a 64-bit version now rather than the 32-bit one as it always did in the previous versions.

Apparently, this is intentional. Personally, I find it a pointless change (the whole reason to install firefox-bin for me was to have the 32-bit version for the few crappy websites that won't work correctly with the 64-bit one).

Anyway, could somebody more familiar with portage please suggest the magic /etc/portage/packages.* lines that will let portage forget about the prebuilt 64-bit version and pick up the 32-bit one instead? I tried everything I could think of but to no avail...
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ppurka
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 7:33 am    Post subject: Re: 32-bin firefox-bin 5.0? Reply with quote

kamil1 wrote:
Anyway, could somebody more familiar with portage please suggest the magic /etc/portage/packages.* lines that will let portage forget about the prebuilt 64-bit version and pick up the 32-bit one instead? I tried everything I could think of but to no avail...
You can't do it this way. You will have to write your own ebuild.
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Chiitoo
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 9:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

How about building a binary package yourself (-b or -B)?
Maybe that's really not what you're looking for at all... I think I'm not quite seeing it, but just a though here!
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marschw
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 08, 2011 3:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Using flash through nspluginwrapper is the only reason I ever have to reboot. Changing firefox-bin to 64-bit on amd64 seems to eliminate firefox-bin's usefulness almost entirely. All it's good for now is saving a little compile time. And, really, if compile time is such an issue, you probably shouldn't be using gentoo...

I used to maintain a 32-bit chroot just so I could use 32-bit firefox, but since I switched to firefox-bin, I got rid of it. Is it going to be necessary to go through that again so that I can have non-crashy flash? Firefox seems like a complicated-enough build that making my own ebuild would be unwise...
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Alanw
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 7:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is really unfortunate. I have documentation for work that doesn't work through anything but 32bit firefox because of a java applet it uses. Looks like I'm not going to have the luxury of using portage for this app anymore.

I wonder why the maintainer would do such a thing? I thought the whole point of firefox-bin was that it's 32bit.
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ppurka
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 7:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alanw wrote:
This is really unfortunate. I have documentation for work that doesn't work through anything but 32bit firefox because of a java applet it uses. Looks like I'm not going to have the luxury of using portage for this app anymore.

I wonder why the maintainer would do such a thing? I thought the whole point of firefox-bin was that it's 32bit.
Except that mozilla now released a 64bit binary with version 5. So, it makes little sense to install all the 32 bit binary on a 64 bit system, especially when you also have to install a big bunch of emulation software.
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 2:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Similar to the now-defunct mplayer-bin ebuild, the 32 bit firefox-bin allowed you to use 32 bit plugins without nspluginwrapper. It is not the only purpose of the binary package, but one feature that made many users install firefox-bin.
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Alanw
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 3:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ppurka wrote:
Except that mozilla now released a 64bit binary with version 5. So, it makes little sense to install all the 32 bit binary on a 64 bit system, especially when you also have to install a big bunch of emulation software.


A lot of users need the emulation software. 64bit Linux simply isn't ready to live in a world without it.

As chithanh already mentioned, 32bit firefox is the only solution that allows you to use 32bit flash + java natively. Any other solution (nspluginwrapper) leads to a buggy experience. Certainly nothing I would put on production boxes.
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DaggyStyle
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 6:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alanw wrote:
ppurka wrote:
Except that mozilla now released a 64bit binary with version 5. So, it makes little sense to install all the 32 bit binary on a 64 bit system, especially when you also have to install a big bunch of emulation software.


A lot of users need the emulation software. 64bit Linux simply isn't ready to live in a world without it.

As chithanh already mentioned, 32bit firefox is the only solution that allows you to use 32bit flash + java natively. Any other solution (nspluginwrapper) leads to a buggy experience. Certainly nothing I would put on production boxes.

are you kidding me?????

the two last companies I've worked for (one of them is internationally known) used linux servers for production and in all cases they had 64 bit linux installed on them.

I'm using 64 bit firefox with 64 bit java and 64 bit flash without any problems.

why would production boxes will need flash?
firefox, ok. java, ok.
but why flash is needed?
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Alanw
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 7:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

DaggyStyle wrote:
Alanw wrote:
ppurka wrote:
Except that mozilla now released a 64bit binary with version 5. So, it makes little sense to install all the 32 bit binary on a 64 bit system, especially when you also have to install a big bunch of emulation software.


A lot of users need the emulation software. 64bit Linux simply isn't ready to live in a world without it.

As chithanh already mentioned, 32bit firefox is the only solution that allows you to use 32bit flash + java natively. Any other solution (nspluginwrapper) leads to a buggy experience. Certainly nothing I would put on production boxes.

are you kidding me?
I'm using 64 bit firefox with 64 bit java and 64 bit flash without any problems.

why would production boxes will need flash?
firefox, ok. java, ok.
but why flash is needed?



I'm not trying to make a big deal out of this. I do realize somebody was spending their own valuable free time to maintain a package that they didn't have to. I'm thankful for that. They obviously figured the only people using firefox-bin were people who didn't want to compile it. Thats fine.

My main show stopper was java, but we do have web apps written entirely in flash. So, no I wasn't kidding.

I'm giving 64bit java / firefox a try now. I haven't had a crash yet, so I'm hopeful.

edit: and sorry, I'm not talking about servers, but production workstations. Nearly every studio in visual effects for film uses Linux workstations for their artists and technical directors.
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nitie
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 2:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

[quote="DaggyStyle"]
Alanw wrote:
ppurka wrote:
Except that mozilla now released a 64bit binary with version 5. So, it makes little sense to install all the 32 bit binary on a 64 bit system, especially when you also have to install a big bunch of emulation software.


I'm using 64 bit firefox with 64 bit java and 64 bit flash without any problems.

why would production boxes will need flash?
firefox, ok. java, ok.
but why flash is needed?


One example: Juniper's NetworkConnect application, when launched (via Java plugin) attempts to load libncui.so, which is shipped with it. You guessed it -- that library is 32bit and thus cannot be loaded into the 64bit JVM, invoked by the plugin. The solution here was simple -- have emul-linux-x86-java (+nsplugin) and 32bit firefox-bin, and the thing simply worked. I would really appreciate an emul-linux-x86-firefox here ...
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Princess Nell
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 9:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

(This is really weird - clicking "reply" for this particular thread dumped me back into the forum view; firefox bug? I just replied to another thread in a different forum and it worked fine. Using chromium for this reply.)

The 64-bit Linux desktop has improved much, but unfortunately the web browsing experience is still fraught with bugs and stupid behaviour, mostly on behalf of the dreadful binary-only plugins. At work, under CentOS 5, I had to switch to the 64-bit version of firefox because the 32-bit, new generation Sun/Oracle java plugin crashes on a 64-bit system, where the old plugin worked fine. This was at a time when there was no or only a beta flash plugin. At least the new 64-bit flash plugin (11.x) works pretty well.
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slaterson
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 8:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nitie wrote:
One example: Juniper's NetworkConnect application, when launched (via Java plugin) attempts to load libncui.so, which is shipped with it. You guessed it -- that library is 32bit and thus cannot be loaded into the 64bit JVM, invoked by the plugin. The solution here was simple -- have emul-linux-x86-java (+nsplugin) and 32bit firefox-bin, and the thing simply worked. I would really appreciate an emul-linux-x86-firefox here ...


this is show stopper for me using gentoo, basically. to work from home i have to vpn in. we use juniper's networkconnect. i can no longer connect to the vpn because i can't get firefox to run in 32 bit mode.

is there anyway to force firefox to start using 32 bit instead of 64bit? i downloaded the bin from mozilla, even it is starting in 64 bit. :( i'm dreading the thought of having to either revert to a 32 bit system or have a dedicated 32 bit environment (likely a dual boot) just for work purposes...

this was a horrible change.
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kernelOfTruth
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 8:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

slaterson wrote:
nitie wrote:
One example: Juniper's NetworkConnect application, when launched (via Java plugin) attempts to load libncui.so, which is shipped with it. You guessed it -- that library is 32bit and thus cannot be loaded into the 64bit JVM, invoked by the plugin. The solution here was simple -- have emul-linux-x86-java (+nsplugin) and 32bit firefox-bin, and the thing simply worked. I would really appreciate an emul-linux-x86-firefox here ...


this is show stopper for me using gentoo, basically. to work from home i have to vpn in. we use juniper's networkconnect. i can no longer connect to the vpn because i can't get firefox to run in 32 bit mode.

is there anyway to force firefox to start using 32 bit instead of 64bit? i downloaded the bin from mozilla, even it is starting in 64 bit. :( i'm dreading the thought of having to either revert to a 32 bit system or have a dedicated 32 bit environment (likely a dual boot) just for work purposes...

this was a horrible change.



build yourself a 32-bit chroot :)

that should help

last time I did (afaik a few years ago - how the time flies by 8O ) it worked perfectly fine with firefox
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slaterson
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 18, 2011 6:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i found a very simple solution this evening.

run
Code:
linux32 firefox-bin
instead of
Code:
firefox-bin
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knowisdom
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 2012 3:00 am    Post subject: Juniper Network Connect on 64-bit Gentoo, few lines of code. Reply with quote

Guys, I too don't understand why firefox-bin was changed to 64-bit, but I love Gentoo so much, i'm not going anywhere. I am more upset that I can't (as of yet) develop my own work arounds to what I believe are simple problems... For those stuck at this issue because of Juniper Network Connect. I found below in an ubuntu forum post:

Quote:
I also had quite some trouble getting Juniper to run on a new 64-bit Linux installation (Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty").
Using a 32-bit chroot works, but is quite cumbersome.

After a lot of investigation and trial and error, I realized that the - only - problem is that ~/.juniper_networks/network_connect/libncui.so is a 32-bit library, thus it cannot be used by 64-bit Java.
Shame on Juniper that they do not provide a 64-bit version of the library! This would be the only thing they'd need to do to support 64-bit Linux systems out-of-the box.

First note that JNC will only work with the Java Runtime Environment from Sun/Oracle. In case your installation uses another JRE as default, you may use the command sudo update-alternatives --config java to switch to java-6-sun.

My workaround for a 64-bit installation is as follows.

Additionally install the 32-bit variant of Java: aptitude install ia32-sun-java6-bin .
Assuming that Java is installed at /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/ and at /usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-6-sun/jre/bin/ ,
rename /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java as /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java.orig and
save the following shell script as /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java :

Code:

#!/bin/bash
if [ $3x = "NCx" ]
then
/usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-6-sun/jre/bin/java "$@"
else
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java.orig "$@"
fi
--------------------------------------------------------------
This totally worked for me! And i'm ashamed I didn't think of it before because I knew of the issue! So if this is holding you up, come back and give it a try and as long as you have tun enabled in the kernel as a module and xterm installed, you should be good to go Network Connect wise.

Happy Gentoo-ing :)!

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