Feb

27

Upgrade Ubuntu Firefox to Version 3.6 – Reader Questions

February 27, 2010 | By: UbuntuLinuxHelp | 2 Comments
Posted in Q & A - Ubuntu

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Erica from Canada asks:

"... I'm using Ubuntu 9.04... the "Check for Updates" in Firefox is grayed out and apt-get does not upgrade Firefox... I'm stuck at 3.0.18, how can I get upgraded?..."

This is an issue, I've encountered before. The newest versions of Firefox are not yet in the repositories, and the "Check for Updates" is disabled on purpose. I tried upgrading Firefox via PPA's on a couple occasions, butthe updates failed and I ended up with broken packages! In my opinion, the following steps might serve as a safer way to upgrade.

In your existing Firefox version (3.0.18), install the following extension manager, named FEBE, in case something happens to your extentions, you'll be able to reinstall them:

FEBE: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2109

Use FEBE to backup your extensions.

Also, just in case something happens to your saved passwords, you can back those up as well with an extension named "Password Exporter": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2848

Backup up your passwords.

Finally, don't forget to backup your bookmarks in case something goes wrong.

In a Terminal, run the command:

which firefox

You should see this answer displayed:

/usr/bin/firefox

This guide is based on the pathing above. If the steps below are not followed properly, then this will not work! ALWAYS make sure you have BACKUPS of data you do not want to lose, in case something in your system goes terribly wrong.

Now, let's use the Terminal to move into Ubuntu's temporary (working) directory:

cd /tmp

Download  Firefox 3.6 for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty):
wget "http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.6&os=linux&lang=en-US"

(The above is for the North American version, you can change that to meet your needs).

Extract the contents:
tar xvjf firefox-*.bz2

We are going to copy the new version of Firefox to a directory called "firefox-3.6" (instead of "firefox"), this way we can  revert back to the original Firefox 3.0.18 is needed.

Copy the executable to /usr/lib/:

sudo cp -r firefox /usr/lib/firefox-3.6

Move the older version (3.0.18) to "firefox.old":
(This way you can revert back to it if needed)

sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox.old

Create the links to the correct verion of Firefox will run:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox-3.6/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-3.6
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/firefox-3.6 /usr/bin/firefox

Now open Firefox and you should be running version 3.6. If not, then some of the steps above were not followed (or Firefox was not in "/usr/bin/firefox").

If you ever need to revert back to your older version of Firefox, you can run the commands below in a Terminal:

Backup the existing:
sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox.bak

Now restore the older version:
sudo mv /usr/bin/firefox.old /usr/bin/firefox

You should notice that your settings, bookmarks, passwords are all intact (as they are stored in your user profile - /home/<username>/.mozilla). We backed them up just in case there was an issue.

I hope this helps!

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Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. Ron Ron on March 24, 2010 4:25 am

    +1 on FEBE. It’s excellent.

    I’ve been using Unutuzilla for the last three or four Firefox/Thunderbird upgrades. Works great.

    http://sourceforge.net/apps/me.....=Main_Page

    You have a very good website, by the way.

    Ron

  2. UbuntuLinuxHelp UbuntuLinuxHelp on April 3, 2010 8:32 am

    @Ron,

    Yes, nice! Only… No 64 Bit packages. :(

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