Xubuntu 24.04.1: Firefox fails to start

[jeff at cjsa.com]

On 18.10.2024 11:09, Jeffery Small wrote:
> Firefox was working fine on Xubuntu 22.04. The OS upgrade completely
> failed and I am now rebuilding a new Xubuntu 24.04.1 system. I
> uninstalled the snap package and installed the latest version of
> Firefox from the mozillateam ppa
> (131.0.2+build1-0ubuntu0.24.04.1~mt1). Any attempt to start
> /usr/bin/firefox results in the pop-up message:
> 
> "Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or
> inaccessible."
> 
> This is not true. The same profiles exist in ~/.mozilla/firefox and
> even attempting to specify a specific profile with -P fails. This
> problem seems commonly reported on other versions of Linux but not
> Ubuntu. I tried removing the entire ~/.mozilla directory but that did
> nothing. I tried starting in safe mode, but same results. However,
> there are also other start-up messages:
> 
>> 17-> /usr/bin/firefox
>> [Parent 29355, Main Thread] WARNING: Failed to parse
>> /u/jeff/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini: Permission denied: 'glib
>> warning', file
>> 
> /build/firefox-E8vObn/firefox-131.0.2+build1/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:187
>> 
>> (firefox:29355): Gtk-WARNING **: 09:37:42.425: Failed to parse
>> /u/jeff/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini: Permission denied
>> [Parent 29355, Main Thread] WARNING: Theme parsing error:
>> gtk.css:1:0: Failed to import: Error opening file
>> /u/jeff/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css: Permission denied: 'glib warning',
>> file
>> 
> /build/firefox-E8vObn/firefox-131.0.2+build1/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:187
>> 
>> (firefox:29355): Gtk-WARNING **: 09:37:42.426: Theme parsing error:
>> gtk.css:1:0: Failed to import: Error opening file
>> /u/jeff/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css: Permission denied
>> [Parent 29355, Unnamed thread 74eea8386ca0] WARNING: Failed to get
>> cache content /u/jeff/.cache/gtk-3.0/compose/8bedc2de.cache: Failed
>> to open file “/u/jeff/.cache/gtk-3.0/compose/8bedc2de.cache”:
>> Permission denied: 'glib warning', file
>> 
> /build/firefox-E8vObn/firefox-131.0.2+build1/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:187
>> 
>> (firefox:29355): Gtk-WARNING **: 09:37:42.732: Failed to get cache
>> content /u/jeff/.cache/gtk-3.0/compose/8bedc2de.cache: Failed to
>> open file “/u/jeff/.cache/gtk-3.0/compose/8bedc2de.cache”:
>> Permission denied
>> [Parent 29355, Unnamed thread 74eea8386ca0] WARNING: Failed to open
>> file “/u/jeff/.XCompose”: Permission denied: 'glib warning',
>> file
>> 
> /build/firefox-E8vObn/firefox-131.0.2+build1/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:187
> 
>> firefox:29355): Gtk-WARNING **: 09:37:42.732: Failed to open file
>> “/u/jeff/.XCompose”: Permission denied
> 
> None of this makes sense as all these files exist and are readable.
> This may be an underlying gtk problem.
> 
> Has anyone else run across this and any suggestions as to what needs
> to be done.
> 
> Thanks.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.  The problem was not due to any
residual snap package, my home directory location, or file/directory
permissions.

I did solve the problem -- sort of.  In previous versions of the OS I 
had
been using an old tarball installation of Firefox which has been 
updating
itself over the years.  I copied this installation over to my 
usr/local/lib
directory and the tried to run that version of Firefox and it started up
immediately without any problems.

So there does seem to be a GTK library problem with the mozillateam 
build,
At least with this installation of the OS.  I've reported the bug and
hopefully the Mozilla engineers will be able to track it down.

I appreciate the input from everyone here.