Firefox continually crashing with Ubuntu 10.04

**livetobefree** · June 12th, 2011

hi

Yes I run all those commands in terminal. But Icouldn't even access the synaptic package manager AT ALL, so I opened the other software option just above it thru System/Administrative/Other Software and deleted the Karmic repositories from there. But I'm getting into worse trouble it seems, now I get a blank box when I try Synaptic and a BLANK BOX WHEN I try to OPEN TERMINAL !!! oh no!

Things got worse maybe I shouldnt have deleted the karmic files under other software? Perhaps somehow my system was co dependent on both? If possible?

Firefox still crashes alot, and I cant open any synaptic related thing. Not even the Terminal as I mentioned before, its becoming sort of a crisis! yikes!

**livetobefree** · June 13th, 2011

I tried to go to the Synaptic Package Manager and..............I couldnt even access it!

this is what I got back.....

E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

is there any way to remove the old repositories from terminal?

**mgmiller** · June 13th, 2011

I believe you have some really incorrect settings in your sources.list. You should never have 2 different releases listed for the main OS sources.

Could you go to /etc/apt with the file browser and right click the file sources.list and then open it with gedit.

Copy & paste the contents here.

Once I am happy with the contents, there are some commands I will have you run to do a dist-upgrade that hopefully will get you back up and running.

**NetworkEngineer** · June 13th, 2011

I had the same problem, but I am running on 11.04 Natty. It started when a recent update upgraded from FF 4.0.1 to 5.0. I would launch FF and within about 10 seconds it would crash. Tried launching in safe mode, same thing. Disabled all add-ons and tried running in safe mode, same problem. Had to check /var/cache/apt/archives/ to see which packages were recently upgraded, then used Synaptic Package Manager to downgrade (and for one of them, remove) those packages.

The following were the culprit packages (for me) listed in that directory:
(downgraded to 4.0.1) firefox_5.0~b5+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.11.04.1_amd64.deb
(downgraded to 4.0.1) firefox-branding_5.0~b5+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.11.04.1_amd64.deb
(downgraded to 4.0.1) firefox-globalmenu_5.0~b5+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.11.04.1_amd64.deb
(downgraded to 4.0.1) firefox-gnome-support_5.0~b5+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.11.04.1_amd64.deb
(removed) firefox-locale-en_5.0~b5+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.11.04.1_all.deb

To back out the updates, I did a search for "firefox" in Synaptic Package Manager. I went down the results, and for each one above that needed to be down graded, I clicked on the item, and selected Force Version... from the Package menu, then selected the previous 4.0.1 equivalent in the resulting dialog box. Since the "firefox-locale-en_5.0~..." didn't have a 4.0.1 equivalent to downgrade to, I chose to remove it.

After doing so I was able to launch and use FF again, and after re-enabling everything under Extensions, Appearance and Plug-Ins, I was fully back in business.