[GRLUG] Could not initialize application's security component (Firefox)

[Michael Mol]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 11:09 AM, Eric Beversluis
<ebever at researchintegration.org> wrote:
> I can check those things, but why would any of them have changed since
> the last time I opened Firefox?

I once had my configuration puke on me because I moved my /home from a
Debian-based system to a RH-based system. On Debian, normal-user
accounts started at UID 1000. On RH, they started at 500.

Similar problems can occur if you're using an incorrectly-configured
(or have incorrectly joined) username mapping system, such as the
default Samba/AD service configuration, or a funky LDAP scenario.

>
> On Thu, 2012-09-27 at 10:16 -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 10:05 AM, Eric Beversluis
>> <ebever at researchintegration.org> wrote:
>> > I'm trying to re-open Firefox and am getting this strange message. Any
>> > idea what it means or what I should do about it? Firefox 15.01 on Fedora
>> > 17.
>> >
>> > "Could not initialize the application's security component. The most
>> > likely cause is problems with files in your application's profile
>> > directory. Please check that this directory has no read/write
>> > restrictions and your hard disk is not full or close to full. It is
>> > recommended that you exit the application and fix the problem. If you
>> > continue to use this session, you might see incorrect application
>> > behaviour when accessing security features."
>>
>> Follow the instructions. First, make sure your disk isn't full.
>>
>> df -h
>
> Plenty of room:
> rootfs                   50G  4.7G   45G  10% /
> devtmpfs                1.8G     0  1.8G   0% /dev
> tmpfs                   1.8G  244K  1.8G   1% /dev/shm
> tmpfs                   1.8G  1.4M  1.8G   1% /run
> /dev/mapper/vg-lv_root   50G  4.7G   45G  10% /
> tmpfs                   1.8G     0  1.8G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
> tmpfs                   1.8G     0  1.8G   0% /media
> /dev/sda2               485M   63M  397M  14% /boot
> /dev/sda1               200M  284K  200M   1% /boot/efi
> /dev/mapper/vg-lv_home  239G   25G  202G  11% /home
>
>>
>> Make sure that ~/.mozilla and subdirectories are accessible to you and only you.
>>
>> 1) Close firefox
>> 2) find ~/.mozilla -type d -exec chmod 0700 '{}' \; # directories
>> should be executable.
>> 3) find ~/.mozilla -type f -exec chmod 0600 '{}' \; # files should not
>> be executable.
>
>> 4) Start firefox
>>
>> If the problem still persists, maybe your filesystem is read-only.
>>
>> mount
>
> Looks like it's all rw. And I've been writing all kinds of other stuff
> to the fs.
>>
>> If the problem _still_ persists, are you sure you own the files in question?
>>
>> ls -l ~/.mozilla
>>
> Yup.
>
> I wonder if it has to do with turning off SELinux? I had to do that as
> it was messing with my WordPress functionality and I don't have time to
> learn SELinux now. I don't have time to be messing with this either, but
> I shouldn't have to be. I've shut off SELinux in the past without any
> trouble.
>
> These are the instructions I found online:
> cp /et/selinux/config  /etc/selinux/config.bak
> sed -i s/SELINUX=enforcing/SELINUX=disables/g  /etc/etc/selinux/config

That's probably the source of your trouble, yeah. And I can't help you
fix it; SELinux isn't something with which I'm good at educated
guesses.

-- 
:wq