OpenBSD Journal

Yes Mozilla can run on OpenBSD...

Contributed by jose on from the --disable-shared--enable-static dept.

Some big news came across the OpenBSD ports list today. Schubert was happy to report that OpenBSD can run Mozilla 1.1! shiva writes :
" http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-ports&m=103056138109510&w=2 "
Some notes from the thread on the subject :
  • you have to compile it yourself, no package yet. Some people who have been working on Mozilla are working on it.
  • SSL enabled sites seems to crash it.
  • form submissions (including entering Google terms) seem to barf it, too.
This is really preliminary, but it's good news for getting a modern Netscape browser on OpenBSD. While some people said this was known previously (Mozilla working if you build it statically), when I tried it previously (with 1.0 and 0.99) I had failures. Hopefully a package will move along more quickly now!

Make sure you read the whole thread, there are a lot of notes you'll need to be aware of. But we are a lot closer!

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Ben Goren () ben@trumpetpower.com on http://www.trumpetpower.com/

    If I weren't off to a symphony rehearsal, I'd try this right now. Finally! Three cheers! Hip-hip hooray!

    Now, gimme OppenOffice! Gimme, gimme, gimme!

    Ahem....

    I'm sure we'd also all appreciate reports if other browsers that use the Gecko engine can be gotten to work, but this is plenty good enough for me for now (assuming it works).

    Cheers,

    b&

  2. By schubert () on

    Check the mailing list archives of ports@ someone reported a patch to the source to fix SSL and form submission.

  3. By Jeff Flowers () on

    What really bothered me was that no one would say exactly why OpenBSD couldn't run Mozilla. To me, this is troubling, especially since every other BSD can.

    So what is it, specifically, that make Mozilla problematic for OpenBSD?

  4. By Anonymous Coward () on

    Does Mozilla on OpenBSD have the thread related issue with top like it does on Linux???

    Namely, all threads show the same memory in use, so it appears that it is using much more memory than it really is. I.E if mozilla is using 20 MB of memory and if it is running 5 threads it shows 20 MB times 5 threads which looks like 100 MB in use. Aack!

  5. By Matt Behrens () on

    Back when I was trying to get Moz to work on OpenBSD, and noted that most of the troubles were related to shared libs.

    Frankly, I didn't think it was worth it if the results were a gigantic statically-linked binary that was incapable of running any extensions or plugins (the latter is the case, isn't it?) without being recompiled.

  6. By M. () on

    Nope, this is disgusting. There must be a native Mozilla port for OpenBSD. Developing websites, a DOM-knowing browser is a must. Period. I hope they can provide a rock-stable Mozilla for OpenBSD. While waiting I use Debian, and WinXP of course.

    M.

  7. By Ben Bucksch () ben.bucksch.web@beonex.com on http://www.beonex.com/communicator

    I suggest you try building Beonex Communicator instead of Mozilla. It is in the mozilla.org CVS , branch tag BEONEX_0_8_BRANCH (for the Mozilla 1.0.1-based version) or BEONEX_0_9_BRANCH (for the Mozilla 1.1-based version).

    I think it would be interesting for OpenBSD users, because Beonex emphasizes security and privacy, by tweaking Mozilla to increase security where possible/reasonable. That already helped preventing at least one exploit in the past (the XMLHttpRequest one).

  8. By Darren () darren_nospam@dazdaz.org on mailto:darren_nospam@dazdaz.org

    Does anyone have an OpenBSD 3.2 package for Mozilla? Jolan seems to of removed it from the webpage.

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