Firefox is a stand-alone browser based on the Mozilla codebase.
This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS-8.2 platform.
Download (HTTP): https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/58.0.2/source/firefox-58.0.2.source.tar.xz
Download MD5 sum: a64c6cd4785ba1ae094faae16105dbf2
Download size: 237 MB
Estimated disk space required: 7.4 GB (152 MB installed) without tests
Estimated build time: 20 SBU (with parallelism=4) without tests
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
The build times for this version of firefox (using stylo, the new CSS rendering code) seem to vary widely between different machines. On one old Intel i3 the build took considerably longer. The reason for this is not understood. A build with stylo disabled is typically 1 or 2 SBU quicker and needs 0.8GB less disk space.
Although upstream prefer to use PulseAudio, for the moment Alsa can still be used. Both may need runtime configuration to get sound working.
Optional patch to allow system versions of Graphite2-1.3.10 and HarfBuzz-1.7.5: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/blfs/8.2/firefox-58.0.2-system_graphite2_harfbuzz-1.patch
The tarball firefox-58.0.2.source.tar.xz will
untar to firefox-58.0.2
directory. It will also reset the permissions of the current
directory to 0755 if you have permission to do that. If you do
this in a directory where the sticky bit is set, such as
/tmp it will end with error
messages:
tar: .: Cannot utime: Operation not permitted
tar: .: Cannot change mode to rwxr-xr-t: Operation not permitted
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
This does finish with non-zero status, but it does NOT mean there is a real problem. Do
not untar as the root user in a
directory where the sticky bit is set - that will unset it.
Autoconf-2.13, both GTK+-3.22.28 and GTK+-2.24.32, libnotify-0.7.7, NSS-3.35, PulseAudio-11.1 (or alsa-lib-1.1.5 if you edit the mozconfig; now deprecated by mozilla), in either case please read the Configuration Information, rustc-1.22.1, UnZip-6.0, yasm-1.3.0, and Zip-3.0
ICU-60.2, libevent-2.1.8, libvpx-1.7.0, clang from LLVM-5.0.1 (for stylo), and SQLite-3.22.0
If you don't install recommended dependencies, then internal copies of those packages will be used. They might be tested to work, but they can be out of date or contain security holes.
cURL-7.58.0, dbus-glib-0.110, Doxygen-1.8.14, GConf-3.2.6, FFmpeg-3.4.2 (runtime, to play mov, mp3 or mp4 files), libwebp-0.6.1, OpenJDK-9.0.4, startup-notification-0.12, Valgrind-3.13.0, Wget-1.19.4, Wireless Tools-29, Hunspell, liboauth-1.0.3, libproxy, and (with the patch) Graphite2-1.3.10 and HarfBuzz-1.7.5
User Notes: http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/firefox
The configuration of Firefox is
accomplished by creating a mozconfig
file containing the desired configuration options. A default
mozconfig is created below. To see
the entire list of available configuration options (and an
abbreviated description of some of them), issue ./configure --help. You may also
wish to review the entire file and uncomment any other desired
options. Create the file by issuing the following command:
cat > mozconfig << "EOF"
# If you have a multicore machine, all cores will be used by default.
# You can change the number of non-rust jobs by setting a valid number
# of cores in this option, but when rust crates are being compiled
# jobs will be scheduled for all the online CPU cores.
#mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS="-j1"
# If you have installed dbus-glib, comment out this line:
ac_add_options --disable-dbus
# If you have installed dbus-glib, and you have installed (or will install)
# wireless-tools, and you wish to use geolocation web services, comment out
# this line
ac_add_options --disable-necko-wifi
# API Keys for geolocation APIs - necko-wifi (above) is required for MLS
# Uncomment the following line if you wish to use Mozilla Location Service
#ac_add_options --with-mozilla-api-keyfile=$PWD/mozilla-key
# Uncomment the following line if you wish to use Google's geolocaton API
# (needed for use with saved maps with Google Maps)
#ac_add_options --with-google-api-keyfile=$PWD/google-key
# Uncomment these lines if you have installed optional dependencies:
#ac_add_options --enable-system-hunspell
#ac_add_options --enable-startup-notification
# Uncomment the following option if you have not installed PulseAudio
#ac_add_options --disable-pulseaudio
# and uncomment this if you installed alsa-lib instead of PulseAudio
#ac_add_options --enable-alsa
# If you have installed GConf, comment out this line
ac_add_options --disable-gconf
# Stylo is the new CSS code, including the rust 'style'
# package. It is enabled by default but requires clang.
# Uncomment this if you do not wish to use stylo.
#ac_add_options --disable-stylo
# Comment out following options if you have not installed
# recommended dependencies:
ac_add_options --enable-system-sqlite
ac_add_options --with-system-libevent
ac_add_options --with-system-libvpx
ac_add_options --with-system-nspr
ac_add_options --with-system-nss
ac_add_options --with-system-icu
# If you are going to apply the patch for system graphite
# and system harfbuzz, uncomment these lines:
#ac_add_options --with-system-graphite2
#ac_add_options --with-system-harfbuzz
# Stripping is now enabled by default.
# Uncomment these lines if you need to run a debugger:
#ac_add_options --disable-strip
#ac_add_options --disable-install-strip
# The BLFS editors recommend not changing anything below this line:
ac_add_options --prefix=/usr
ac_add_options --enable-application=browser
ac_add_options --disable-crashreporter
ac_add_options --disable-updater
# enabling the tests will use a lot more space and significantly
# increase the build time, for no obvious benefit.
ac_add_options --disable-tests
# Optimization for size is broken with gcc7
ac_add_options --enable-optimize="-O2"
ac_add_options --enable-official-branding
# From firefox-40, using system cairo caused firefox to crash
# frequently when it was doing background rendering in a tab.
# This appears to again work in firefox-56
ac_add_options --enable-system-cairo
ac_add_options --enable-system-ffi
ac_add_options --enable-system-pixman
ac_add_options --with-pthreads
ac_add_options --with-system-bz2
ac_add_options --with-system-jpeg
ac_add_options --with-system-png
ac_add_options --with-system-zlib
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/firefox-build-dir
EOF
Compile Firefox by issuing the following commands:
If you have installed system versions of graphite2 and harfbuzz and
wish firefox to use those instead of its shipped versions, apply
the patch and uncomment the appropriate entries in the mozconfig file.
patch -Np1 -i ../firefox-58.0.2-system_graphite2_harfbuzz-1.patch
If the geolocation APIs are needed:
The Google and Mozilla API Keys below are specific to LFS. If using these instructions for another distro, or if you intend to distribute binary copies of the software using these instructions, please obtain your own keys following the instructions located at http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/api-keys and https://location.services.mozilla.com/api respectively.
echo "AIzaSyDxKL42zsPjbke5O8_rPVpVrLrJ8aeE9rQ" > google-key echo "d2284a20-0505-4927-a809-7ffaf4d91e55" > mozilla-key
If you are compiling Firefox in
chroot, make sure you have $SHELL
environment variable set or prepend SHELL=/bin/sh.
./mach build
The mozconfig above disables the
tests because they use a lot more time and disk space for no
obvious benefit. If you have nevertheless enabled them, you can run
the tests by executing ./mach
gtest. This will require a network connection, and
to be run from within an Xorg session - there is a popup dialog
when it fails to connect to ALSA (that does not create a failed
test). One or two tests will fail. To see the details of the
failure(s) you will need to log the output from that command so
that you can review it.
Now, as the root user:
./mach install && mkdir -pv /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins && ln -sfv ../../mozilla/plugins /usr/lib/firefox-58.0.2/browser
./mach build: Firefox now uses this python2 script to run the build and install.
./mach build --verbose: Use this
alternative if you need details of which files are being compiled,
together with any C or C++ flags being used.
mkdir -p
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins: This checks that
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins exists.
ln -sv ...
/usr/lib/firefox-58.0.2/browser: This command
creates a symbolic link to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins. It's not really needed,
as Firefox checks /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins by default, but the
symbolic link is made to keep all the plugins installed in one
folder.
If you use a desktop environment like Gnome or KDE
you may like to create a firefox.desktop file so that Firefox appears in the panel's menus. If you
didn't enable startup-notification in your mozconfig change the
StartupNotify line to false. As the root user:
mkdir -pv /usr/share/applications &&
mkdir -pv /usr/share/pixmaps &&
cat > /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop << "EOF" &&
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Firefox Web Browser
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
GenericName=Web Browser
Exec=firefox %u
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=firefox
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=application/xhtml+xml;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;text/mml;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;
StartupNotify=true
EOF
ln -sfv /usr/lib/firefox-58.0.2/browser/icons/mozicon128.png \
/usr/share/pixmaps/firefox.png
The application settings for firefox are accessible by keying about:config in the address bar.
With this version of firefox, getting working sound can be a problem. Although upstream prefers pulseaudio, on balance using Alsa may be easier.
If you enabled Alsa for sound, you may need to alter one variable to get working sound. If you run firefox from a term and try to play something with sound you might encounter error messages like:
Sandbox: seccomp sandbox violation: pid
3941, tid 4030, syscall 16, args 48 2147767296 139909894784796 0
0 0.
That was on x86_64, on i686 the syscall number is 54. To allow this syscall, in about:config change security.sandbox.content.syscall_whitelist to 16 (or 54 if using i686).
If you use pulseaudio in a Desktop
Environment, it might already be started by that DE. But if it is
not, although firefox-57 managed to start it, firefox-58 does
not. If you run firefox from a term, trying to
play sound will encounter error messages warning Can't get cubeb context!
The fix for this is to close firefox, start pulseaudio to check
it does start (if not, read the information on Configuring in
PulseAudio-11.1) and restart firefox to
check it is working. If it now works, add the following to your
~/.xinitrc: pulseaudio --verbose
--log-target=journald& (unfortunately, on some
systems this does not work).
You may wish to use multiple profiles within firefox. To do that, invoke firefox as firefox --ProfileManager. You can also check which profile is currently in use from about:profiles.
Last updated on 2018-02-17 15:35:13 -0800