Still feeling my way around, I clicked on a Firefox system file (firefoxrc), after which I could not launch Firefox. Full error message as follows:
Could not launch application failed to execute child process “/etc/firefox/firefoxrc” (permission denied)
I found this on the Ubuntu forum
to rectify permission problem:
chmod o+x /etc
or if that fails
chomod o+r, o+x /etc
I tried both eg
sudo chmod o+r,o+x /etc/firefox/firefoxrc
It solved the permission problem, but then Firefox simply wouldn’t launch.
At this point I was totally fed up, but here’s how I solved it.
Go to your home folders and click on View/Show hidden files. Then find .mozilla. back up the profiles.ini file in
/home/username/.mozilla/firefox
just in case.
then click on the default folder which should look something like
xxxxx.default. (random letters and numbers)
Inside this resides the prefs.js file. Back this up by moving it out of harms way. (You can copy and paste it somewhere safe).
Now delete everything inside the
xxxxx.default folder except prefs.js. Open your windows folder and copy everything except prefs.js over into the Ubuntu xxxx.default folder.
You should now be able to launch Firefox with all of your bookmarks, passwords and extensions. The only problem is that some extensions will need to be deleted and reinstalled, as they will have windows paths.
The same principle as above should work in setting up complex folders in Thunderbird.
See entry on same.
NB Some windows paths may survive in the about:config. See View and Edit Source files in Firefox
