mozilla won't start for a regular user

[gfannes]

hello,

i searched the forum and found several posts reporting similar problems as i am experiencing, but none of the solutions seem to work. let me explain (otherwise fwd to the last sentence):

i have a gento 1.4rc2 system running an xp1800+. i installed mozilla from the GRP i found on the cd (version 1.0.?) and i wanted to upgrade to a new version. at first i tried:
emerge mozilla
which installed version 1.2. this version did not work for a regular user. next i found out that putting ACCEPT_KEYWORD="~x86" enables the unstable packages, as there are mozilla 1.3. i tried again:
emerge mozilla
now it installed version 1.3r1, but still, i could not start the program (expect being root).
next i tried to download and install the version from http://www.mozilla.org, this gave some errors with stdc++*6.1*.so libs, which i could fix with:
emerge lib-compat
but now there were some unresolved symbols in a file i forgot the name of. so i tried again compiling my own version.

following some suggestions i found on this forum, i emerged blackdown-jdk-1.4.1*, renamed the existing link /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/javaplugin_oji.so to javaplugin_oji.so-old (just for backup, but this saved link behaves quite strange) and rewired the symbolic link from /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/javaplugin_oji.so to /opt/blackdown-jdk-1.4.1*/jre/plugin/i386/mozilla/javaplugin_oji.so. i emerged mozilla once again. but still not usable for a regular user.

i thought: maybe all these versions are too confusing, so i unmerged mozilla and deleted all directories that where called mozilla, including the /usr/local/mozilla from the binary i tried from the mozilla site and /usr/lib/mozilla. i reemerged blackdown, reemerged mozilla, and the funny thing is that the symbolic link i created previously from /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins to /opt/blackdown-jdk-1.4.1* still exists, as is the one i renamed to javaplugin_oji.so-OLD. very strange, because i deleted the whole /usr/lib/mozilla using "rm -rf mozilla" being root.

so, i'm a bit desperate now, does anyone know a failsafe method how to install mozilla 1.3? i have to check my mail and slashdot and don't want to log in as root all the time. when is start mozilla as a regular user, i don't get any messages, but the program does something: it recreates a .mozilla directory in my home dir.

thanx and sorry for the large amount of text.
greets,
geert.

[Hero Lint]

It looks like you got this working, but I thought I'd respond just in case somebody else has this problem.

For some reason, the user and group settings for the user's Mozilla directory (/home/<username>/.mozilla) are set to root:root. You need to change them like this:

chown <username>:users /home/<username>/.mozilla

Replace <username> with your username. The group should be users. And don't forget the . in front of .mozilla.