How to Set Up and Run Firefox 3.0b2 as a Different User in Ubuntu

I wanted to test Firefox 3.0b2 on my computer, but I didn’t want it to interfere with my current Firefox profile or even my current system. I decided to create a separate user and use that user specifically for running Firefox. No, that doesn’t mean that I have to sign out and sign back in as that new user every time I want to use it.  I can run Firefox 3.0b2 under its own user at the same time as all of other programs. I can even run both versions side by side for comparing and testing.

  1. The first task is to create a user for our test version of Firefox. Click on the System (Gnome Menu) -> Administration -> Users and Groups.
  2. Click on Add User.
  3. Type in ‘fftest’ for the user name and choose a password. Then, click OK.
  4. Fire up a terminal, su into your new user and go to your home directory by typing the following commands.

    su fftest
    cd ~

  5. Download Firefox 3.0b2:

    wget http://ftp-mozilla.netscape.com/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0b2/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-3.0b2.tar.bz2

  6. Extract the archive.

    tar -jxvf firefox-3.0b2.tar.bz2

  7. Type in this command to tell Firefox not to use an existing session.

    export MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1

  8. Start Firefox

    ./firefox/firefox

  9. If you get an error like this…

    Xlib: connection to “:0.0″ refused by server
    Xlib: No protocol specified

    (firefox-bin:5160): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

    …that means that you need to let the ‘fftest’ user launch applications that interface with the current GUI. In order to do that, you will need to fire up a new terminal that is under your desktop user, and type in the following command:

    xhost +local:fftest

    Then start Firefox again.

    ./firefox/firefox

  10. You should now see the Firefox start page.
    Firefox 3.0b2
    This Firefox session is completely independent from your current version, you can run them side-by-side.
    Both Firefox Versions Together
  11. Repeat steps 7-10 to run Firefox 3.0b2 in the future. When you are done testing, just delete the user ‘fftest’.

If you find any issues or problems with this tutorial, please contact me or post a comment.  I always want to ensure that I’m posting accurate instructions.
Reference: http://www.captain.at/firefox-run-different-versions.php

Posted in: Internet, Linux

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Internet, Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “How to Set Up and Run Firefox 3.0b2 as a Different User in Ubuntu”

matt October 4th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

I created a user called ff
I opened a terminal and did
su ff

while logged into the terminal as ff, I could still access files in /home/matt

(matt is my normal user name)

matt October 4th, 2008 at 5:23 pm

nevermind… I had the ff user in the wrong group.
make sure the ff user is in the ff group that is automatically created in Users and Groups

innusius February 15th, 2009 at 4:28 am

Settings are not working , do you have solution? thanx

error msg: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details -  1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details -  1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details -  1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details -  1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)
Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details -  1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)

Starting firefox under a different user March 11th, 2011 at 1:41 pm

[...] found this: http://pr0gr4mm3r.com/linux/how-to-s…ser-in-ubuntu/ according to the article, the magic seems to look like this: [...]

Roger Dudler April 14th, 2011 at 2:20 am

Thanks man! Perfectly works for use with Jenkins & Selenium Grid (xhost +local:jenkins).
 

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