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Firefox and Jessie Backports [Solved]

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larry77
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Firefox and Jessie Backports [Solved]

#1 Post by larry77 »

Dear All,
I run debian stable on several platforms and I installed firefox (release version) from the backports.
In time, it gets updated regularly.
I have this line in my /etc/apt/sources.list

Code: Select all

 deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ jessie-backports firefox-release
but now, when I try to update my system, I get this error message

Code: Select all

W: Failed to fetch http://mozilla.debian.net/dists/jessie-backports/Release  Unable to find expected entry 'firefox-release/binary-amd64/Packages' in Release file (Wrong sources.list entry or malformed file)
Indeed from this page

https://mozilla.debian.net/

if I select debian jessie and firefox release, there is no installation candidate.
What happened? Anyone can tell me?
Cheers
Last edited by larry77 on 2017-04-10 21:07, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#2 Post by Ardouos »

There is already a discussion about this. Sadly no one knows why this has happened so far... :?

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=132092
There is only one Debian | Do not break Debian | Stability and Debian | Backports

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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#3 Post by stevepusser »

I managed to get my own backports built from the Sid source on the openSUSE build service, with ALSA sound support compiled back in. Hang on a few hours and I will add links, am on phone ATM.

There's also a tweak that can be done for 52 that will restore support for NPAPI plugins other than Flash, like Java...
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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#4 Post by larry77 »

Thanks a lot, very appreciated. I am not techie enough to do this myself.
Yet, FF52 may have been dropped from the Jessie backports for a variety of good reasons I ignore, but all the more a word of explanation from the maintainer would have been in order.

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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#5 Post by stevepusser »

Something is currently broken in the OBS in that it's not creating a link to the instructions to add the repo, and you can imagine I'm not anxious to manually upload all 94 source packages again to one of my existing repos, so if you want the single deb for my backported Firefox 52 which also supports alsa, you'll have to download and install the deb file from the appropriate amd64 or i386 folder in this repository: http://download.opensuse.org/repositori ... ebian_8.0/

I originally set it up to try a Wheezy backport, but 52 turns out to require gcc-4.8 minimum, and that ruled out Wheezy's gcc-4.7. Rather than manually reupload all 94 files again, I converted it to a jessie-backports repo, which only required changing a couple small files, but I had to keep the original name with wheezy in it.
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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#6 Post by larry77 »

Thanks a lot!
That is good enough for me.
Just a few question: what does OBS stand for?
And also: how sustainable is all of this? Firefox releases quite often and I wonder if now it is all to your goodwill to package a backport...
Keep up the good work!

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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#7 Post by stevepusser »

The OBS is the openSUSE Build Service. Along with a lot of rpm-based distro support, they also offer the user the current ability to build from source and host in a repository Debian 7 and 8 packages, along with Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, and 16.10 packages. They are free and it's easy to set up one or more accounts there. Basically I upload debianized source packages in their web interface and it takes over from there.

You bring up a good question about continuing support. It would be great if more people learned to take advantage of the OBS; I wrote a guide for it based on what I've managed to glean from trial and error, and it's in the HowTo section here. But it helps a lot to have some experience backporting on your local machine, too, since Jessie is ageing and many packages won't backport without some tweaks. That said, Firefox 52 didn't need any, as it has a complicated system already set up by Debian to automatically handle the tweaking for a Jessie backport version already--the tedious part was manually uploading all those .orig source files to the OBS in my browser. There's a simple command (apt-get source <packagename>) to get them all from Sid, though. So it would actually be easier to build a backport on your local machine if it's not really ancient, and you ran it overnight or something...Edit: Oh yeah, I also had to regenerate the source files as explained in my guide--that let that internal stuff make the changes required for a Jessie backport. Almost all other backports don't require that step on a local machine. And we lucked out that Firefox is a single deb, since most other Debian programs are split up into several interdependent deb packages.

I'm just a hobbyist packager, though I'm the official head packager for the Debian derivative MX Linux, which is also created and run by an enthusiast community. There's no big bucks or conferences involved, that's for sure. We just have to hope I don't get hit hit by a truck tomorrow or something! :)
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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#8 Post by sunrat »

stevepusser wrote:... We just have to hope I don't get hit hit by a truck tomorrow or something! :)
+1. Be careful out there!
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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#9 Post by larry77 »

Hello,
I got word from the maintainers of the FF backport. The problem is the future adoption of RUST technology by FF from (if I recall correctly) 54 onwards.
There is no rust compiler in Jessie, so I believe that soon FF upgrades will stop for good in the backports.
Sigh!

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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#10 Post by swirler »

stevepusser wrote:(...)

There's also a tweak that can be done for 52 that will restore support for NPAPI plugins other than Flash, like Java...
That could be interesting, would you please explain that when you have some time ?

Would this apply to the gecko-mediaplayer plugin as well ?

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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#11 Post by stevepusser »

I saw it described in this blog post:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/03/forc ... pi-support

Though it's an Ubuntu blog, the tweak should apply to any Linux build of Firefox. It is supposed to restore support for all NPAPI plugins, so I'd guess that gecko-mediaplayer should work again.
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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#12 Post by larry77 »

I like a lot "your FF52", since it does not force me to install pulseaudio. Maybe it was bad luck, but in some cases it really messed up my audio and if I can avoid it, it is soooo much better.
Thanks!

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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#13 Post by stevepusser »

In meantime, I've also packaged apulse 0.1.9 for Jessie in my multimedia repository: https://software.opensuse.org//download ... age=apulse

It might be easier to just install the deb packages directly; the links to the debs are at the bottom of the instruction page. If Debian starts making Firefox depend on pulseaudio, I should be able to work around that by having apulse provide pulseaudio to the apt system.
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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#14 Post by steve_v »

stevepusser wrote:I managed to get my own backports built from the Sid source on the openSUSE build service, with ALSA sound support compiled back in.
Thanks dude, I was tracking down some sources to fix my sudden lack of audio, but now I think I'll just grab your .deb


This whole PulseAudio thing is really starting to yank my chain, why on earth does anyone need the thing anyway?
Apart from network audio (and there are alternatives for this corner-case anyway), I'm at a loss for any convincing reasons to use pulse at all. All I have ever managed to get out of it is dumbed down mixer controls, horrific latency and a tendency to louse up my DE (KDE) and anything else with a mixer.

I have a nasty feeling that I'll have to install pulseaudio someday or loose audio in a bunch of "modern" apps (SystemD all over again?) :twisted: so on the off chance that someone knows how (and doesn't bite me for thread-jacking), here's what I need:

Default PCM downmixed to stereo, simultaneous output on analogue out (hw0,0) and PCM SPDIF (hw0,1). Software volume control on SPDIF with double resolution (200 ticks) and approx -60 - -20 dB range.

I have this working nicely with the vdownmix, multi and softvol ALSA plugins. Am I better to go with pulse (assuming it can do what I need it to) or apulse (which looks a little kludgy TBH) feeding alsa?
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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#15 Post by stevepusser »

The new firefox-esr 52.0.1 update from mozilla-debian.net also has re-enabled alsa support for the time being, plus it patches that pwn2own security hole, so I recommend people use that for now.
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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#16 Post by larry77 »

stevepusser wrote:The new firefox-esr 52.0.1 update from mozilla-debian.net also has re-enabled alsa support for the time being, plus it patches that pwn2own security hole, so I recommend people use that for now.
I see, but in any case I believe the backport people will not go beyond version 52 due to the rustc compiler issue.
Seen that you plan to go on further, is there any way to add "your" firefox repo to the apt sources so that it gets updated automatically?

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Re: Firefox and Jessie Backports

#17 Post by stevepusser »

I will try and keep an alsa-compatible version updated as long as I can when it's no longer available in a standard repository. I'm reluctant to just reinvent the wheel when the same version is already in another repository, especially when it involves a rather tedious manual upload of 94 source packages, one by one.
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