Today, I decided to install the mozilla-1.7.2 rpms using yum, just to see how mozilla's been getting along lately. They installed fine; no complaints. But mozilla decided to make itself the default URL handler, which I did not want -- mozilla's just too big for quickly checking URL links. Ok, fine. I'll use the "Preferences...File types and programs" dialog to change it back. So I replace mozilla with "/usr/local/firefox/firefox %s" and test it out. Firefox complained
about my profile being in use and wanted to create a new profile to open the link. Whatever.
I remembered there are some arcane hoops one must jump through to get firefox to use an existing session, so I decided to change the URL handler to something else while I figured it out. "dillo" is a nice, lightweight browser for this type of thing, so I changed it to "/usr/local/bin/dillo %s", tested it and it worked, so I went about my business. Logged back in later, clicked on an email link, and lo
and behold, *firefox* is trying to start up again and complaining about the profile being in use. I check the preferences and sure enough, "/usr/local/bin/dillo %s" has been replaced by "/usr/local/firefox/firefox %s". WTF? I didn't do this. I change it
back to dillo, test it and it works. Test it again later and it's gone back to "/usr/local/firefox/firefox %s" again! What's up with this?
Now it seems that nothing I do with this setting sticks -- it *always* reverts back to "/usr/local/firefox/firefox %s". I've tried everything I can think of -- using the gconf editor instead of the preferences dialog, directly editing the ".gconf/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/%gconf.xml" file to point to dillo, blowing away my user *AND* system gconf directories and restoring from backups. *Nothing* has worked. Gnome is somehow managing to pull the value "/usr/local/firefox/firefox %s" out of thin air someplace and automatically changes my default URL handler without any intervention on my part!
It wouldn't be so bad if "/usr/local/firefox/firefox %s" actually worked the way I hoped it would, but with this value firefox complains about the profile whenever there's already an active firefox session. I still haven't figured out how to get it back to the behavior I prefer (opening links in an existing session, and I can't get my fall-back setting
"/usr/local/bin/dillo %s" to last for more than one session. And even if I do eventually figure out how to get the behavior I want, how can I be sure that it will actually stick, and gnome won't decide to go back to the "/usr/local/firefox/firefox %s" setting that doesn't work?
Anybody have any idea what the h*** is going on here and how to fix it?
--
-John (john@xxxxxxxxxxx)
