The following questions come up often on IRC and in the mailing lists.
If you have any suggestions for this file, such as additional questions or
answers, please mail them to the galeon-devel mailing list at galeon-devel@lists.sourceforge.net.
-
I'm trying to compile Galeon and it needs gtkmozembed.h. Where is
it?
This header is part of Mozilla, and you need to either install the
Mozilla source or find a Mozilla-devel package containing the appropriate
headers. This also applies for nsI*.h. These steps are described
in detail on the website and
in the INSTALL file.
-
Galeon crashes when I go to page X.
First, try updating to a newer version. If the problem persists, try
visiting the same page in Mozilla. If Mozilla crashes as well, your
problem is likely a Mozilla bug. It can be reported at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/. If
the crash only occurs in Galeon, please file a bug report (after checking
for duplicates) at the GNOME bugzilla site (reachable via
Help->Report a bug, or at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/).
-
When starting Galeon, I immediately get an assertion error. What
does this mean?
The assertion usually looks like:
** CRITICAL **: file mozilla.cpp: line 64 (gboolean mozilla_load_prefs ()):
assertion `prefService != nsnull' failed.
If this happens, it usually means there is a problem or incompatibility
with your Mozilla installation. Try manually exporting/setting your
MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME environment variable and then executing
galeon-bin. This is known to work sometimes, but it's also known
to not work for some users (Debian installations in particular).
Another time when this has been known to happen is when the Mozilla has
been updated/changed with old lingering user files that (for some reason)
are causing problems. Removing Mozilla user files (rm -rf
~/.mozilla") and/or removing Galeon's Mozilla profile files (rm
-rf ~/.galeon/mozilla/galeon) may fix this problem. Be sure to back
up any important files in these directories (such as Mozilla bookmarks,
preferences, etc.) if necessary.
-
How can I get my scrollwheel mouse to work with Galeon?
Galeon supports scrollwheel mice natively. If your other applications
work fine with the wheel and Galeon does not, it could be because other
programs (such as Imwheel) are interfering. However, even with Imwheel the
wheel can still be used if the wheel is pushed down while scrolled (I'm not
sure why, and this may only be true for Logitech mice).
If your wheel doesn't work at all for any applications, you probably
need to configure your X server. For XFree86, this can be done by adding
the line ZAxisMapping 4 5 to the Pointer (mouse) section
of XF86Config.
If you still want to use imwheel for the wheelmouse support in other
applications, you can place the following two lines in your
~/.imwheelrc file and restart imwheel to tell it not to interfere
with Galeon:
"^Galeon"
@Exclude
-
Why does Galeon depend on GNOME? There should be a GTK+ only
version!
First of all, from the very start Galeon has always intended to be a
GNOME web browser. If you don't use GNOME, then Galeon probably isn't a
very good choice for the time being.
So why lock Galeon into the GNOME environment? There are many
advantages to using the existing GNOME libraries. Contrary to what some
think, depending on existing libraries to do typical tasks in modern
desktop applications is not bloat. In fact, it's the exact opposite
of bloat. The bottom line is that implementing our own toolbar, our own
configuration mechanism, our own session management, and our own dialogs
would be counter-productive.
Galeon relies on many standard GNOME libraries (GTK+, libgnome,
libglade, libxml, etc.). Given these requirements, how much would we gain
by removing the GNOME dependency? This is not only illogical, but
conflicts with some of Galeon's other goals of integrating nicely with the
GNOME desktop.
However, if you absolutely don't want to use GNOME, there is now a
project known as SkipStone
which implements a GTK+-only web browser.
-
I can't compile Galeon. I get ld errors such as this
(/usr/include/mozilla/nsCOMPtr.h:552: undefined reference to `nsCString
type_info node'). Help!
This is due to the fact that you're trying to compile Galeon and Mozilla
with a different compiler version. Download the right Mozilla package for
your distribution (take a look at http://galeon.sourceforge.net/download.html).
-
I compiled Galeon and Mozilla but I still get ld errors.
Note that both applications must be compiled not only with the same
version of compiler, but also with the same compiler flags. For example,
with gcc Mozilla by default adds -fno-rtti and
-fno-exceptions or -fno-handle-exceptions (depends on gcc
version). Galeon now adds -fno-rtti, which should be normally be
sufficient. This can be disabled with the --enable-cpp-rtti flag
to ./autogen.sh.
If you need further flag changes, you have two chances to get things
in sync:
-
Compile Mozilla with this .mozconfig script: (You must place it in your home directory)
# sh
# Build configuration script
#
# See http://www.mozilla.org/build/unix.html for build instructions.
#
# Options for 'configure' (same as command-line options).
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --enable-strip-libs
ac_add_options --enable-crypto
ac_add_options --enable-optimize
-
Configure Mozilla with standard configure script and compile it. Before
configuring Galeon set the proper CXXFLAGS. For example, with
latest version of gcc:
CXXFLAGS='-fno-exceptions'
export CXXFLAGS
For more see configure.in
in the Mozilla source. You can save some space by disabling RTTI.
-
Galeon is using 80MB+ of memory! What's going on?
On Linux systems, threads are essentially visible as separate processes to
many user-space applications. This means that process X, using 10MB of
memory with 5 threads sharing that same 10MB will appear to consume 50MB
(though it is not). Only count one process, not all of them (this is true
for many other applications besides Galeon).
-
Galeon segfaults on startup. What's wrong?
Make sure the MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME environment variable points to
the directory where the Mozilla executables are installed. If Mozilla is
compiled from source, try [mozilla_build_dir]/dist/bin.
-
Galeon segfaults when opening the preferences dialog. What's
wrong?
Run Galeon from an xterm and check if you get this message:
GnomeUI-ERROR **: file gnome-icon-item.c: line 304 (get_default_font):
assertion failed: (default_font != NULL)
If so you need to properly set your language environment. Example:
export LANG=de_DE
-
Galeon claims that it crashed the last time it was run, but it's
currently running! Can't I run two copies at once?
This problem has been observed with out of date versions of Oaf (including
0.6.1). Upgrade to 0.6.5 (availble from Ximian).
This can also be caused by the GNOME_Galeon_Automation.oaf file not being
installed in a place that oaf can look for it.
If you've compiled Galeon from a source tarball, chances are it's
installed it in /usr/local/share/oaf/GNOME_Galeon_Automation.oaf.
However, oaf isn't searching this directory, so when you start another
copy, oaf tells Galeon that it isn't running and it doesn't know to
attach.
To fix this, make a symlink called
/usr/share/oaf/GNOME_Galeon_Automation.oaf which links to
/usr/local/share/oaf/GNOME_Galeon_Automation.oaf, or alternatively
add export OAF_INFO_PATH=/usr/local/share/oaf (for sh scripts) or
setenv OAF_INFO_PATH /usr/local/share/oaf (for csh scripts) to
your shell startup. If the GNOME_Galeon_Automation.oaf file is
being installed into a different directory, you will have to use that
instead. When you start Galeon twice, it should attach and open a new
window/tab in the existing process. You may need to restart your X session
and/or gconfd (gconftool --shutdown) and oafd (killall
oafd) for the changes to take effect.
Another possibility is that the value of the DISPLAY
environment variable differs in the two locations from which Galeon is
being started. Frequently, DISPLAY will be set to :0 in
the window manager, but to :0.0 in terminals. One way to work
around this is to set the variable to :0.0 in your X startup
script (usually ~/.xsession or ~/.xinitrc), by adding the
line export DISPLAY=:0.0 (for sh scripts) or setenv DISPLAY
:0.0 (for csh scripts).
-
Galeon hangs when I try accessing my secure banking/intranet site?
Doesn't Galeon support https?
Yes, Galeon does support https (as long as you have the Mozilla PSM module
configured / installed). Just make sure you installed mozilla-psm
properly.
-
These keyboard shortcuts are all wrong!
If you want to rebind a shortcut, Galeon supports the standard GTK+ way
of changing shortcuts: simply hover over the menu option with the mouse
pointer and press the keyboard shortcut you want to rebind it to.
-
I want / don't want Galeon to be my default web browser.
When Galeon is first used, it asks you if you want to make it the default
web browser in GNOME. This setting is stored in the GNOME Control Center
under Document Handlers / URL Handlers. To stop Galeon from being
the default web browser, delete the association with HTTP, HTTPS and
whichever other protocols you set it up for. To make Galeon the default
Web Browser, add a binding from these protocols to galeon "%s".
-
How can I fix this syntax error during configure?
./configure: line 538: syntax error near unexpected token `AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(galeon,'
Make sure you have xml-i18n-tools installed and try again.
-
When I run Galeon I get a message about GConf not being configured
properly. How can I configure GConf?
First and foremost, be sure you have a new GConf (1.0.7 is the latest at
this writing) rather than an old one. In particular, 1.0.4 is too old and
causes problems.
If you do ps jaxwww | grep gconf and see two gconfd-1
processes, that's what's wrong; just kill them both and restart Galeon.
This problem has not been reported with GConf 1.0.7, only older
versions.
If you have trouble with 1.0.7, most likely it's because your home
directory is NFS-mounted and either your operating system doesn't support
locks in NFS directories or you have stuck locks due to a hard system
crash. Try rm -r ~/.gconf*/*lock if you are sure you have
no gconfd processes (for your login name) running on any machine using your
NFS home directory. If you nuke the lock when gconfd is running and bad
stuff happens, it's your own fault. ;-)
If you want to use GConf while logged in from two different machines,
sharing the same home directory, you must enable TCP/IP for ORBit by adding
the line ORBIIOPIPv4=1 to /etc/orbitrc and restart
gconfd. You will need to do this on both machines; one machine will
contact the gconfd running on the other. This setup is poorly tested but
should work.
It's possible schema installation failed when you installed Galeon, so
you can try reinstalling them as follows:
GCONF_CONFIG_SOURCE=`gconftool-1 --get-default-source` \
gconftool-1 --makefile-install-rule /etc/gconf/schemas/galeon.schemas
Be sure your GConf config file is set up correctly by editing the
path file in the directory $sysconfdir/gconf/1. A basic
configuration for the default backend would look like:
xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory
include "$(HOME)/.gconf.path"
xml:readwrite:$(HOME)/.gconf
xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults
You can also take a look at $sysconfdir/gconf/1/path.example
and in most cases you can simply move it to
$sysconfdir/gconf/1/path. Be sure that the path file can be read
by all users.
Ensure you have a $sysconfdir/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults dir set
up with the right permissions. In most cases you can run chmod -R 755
$sysconfdir/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults.
WARNING: The GConf deamon makes heavy use of a cache so when
changing your setup you will probably need to restart it.
Be sure you have no applications depending on gconf running and then
run:
gconftool --shutdown
GConf will then restart when it is required.
If none of the above works, enable user syslogging and see if gconf is
logging any error messages. On Linux, to do this try adding this line to
/etc/syslog.conf:
user.* /var/log/user
then run service syslog restart, reproduce your gconf problem, and
look in /var/log/user for messages. If gconf is failing to get a
lock then the issue is probably the NFS thing mentioned earlier. Otherwise
maybe there are other informative error messages.
If you still can't figure it out, try mailing gconf-list@gnome.org, describing
what happened when you tried all of the above and what version of gconf you
have, what exact error messages you get, etc.
-
After the migration to gconf i occasionally lose all/part of my
prefs, they get back to defaults. Why? What can i do about it?
We still don't know why. Any insight on this will be highly appreciated.
We believe its a gconf glitch.
When the Galeon with apparently messed-up prefs starts, and you are sure
you did set all your prefs right the previous session, go to a terminal
window and run killall gconfd-1. After restarting Galeon, your
prefs should be back to normal.
-
What do I need to use Galeon as my help browser?
Galeon uses external conversion programs to render all info and man
content as HTML. Thus, these programs have to present if info and man pages
are to be viewed. We use gnome-man2html2 and
gnome-info2html2 which are part of the Nautilus package. So, if
you don't have Nautilus installed, you won't have these programs. We know
that there will be plenty of people who haven't got Nautilus installed, so
we're going to put together a separate package for the conversion programs,
hopefully pretty soon. :-)
The new style of SGML help documents (gnome-help:, so far only supported
by nautilus itself) require gnome-db2html2 from Nautilus.
The normal GNOME help documents, which are regular HTML files (and
accessed through the ghelp: protocol), do not require an external
converter.
The toc: pages (toc:, toc:man, toc:info, toc:ghelp, toc:gnome-help) also
don't require anything special.
-
How can I change the User Agent string that Galeon uses?
This feature is already implemented. It is not in the UI because there
was a Mozilla bug that made Galeon crash at startup with some
strings.
You can set the user agent from the command line using GConf:
To get the current user agent:
gconftool -g /apps/galeon/Advanced/Network/user_agent
To set the user agent to XXX:
gconftool -s /apps/galeon/Advanced/Network/user_agent --type=string "XXX"
To restore the default user agent:
gconftool -s /apps/galeon/Advanced/Network/user_agent --type=string default
-
Galeon is running but is not showing any window/unable to load
anything. What can i do?
Galeon needs to run once as the user that owns the Mozilla distribution
directory, because Mozilla wants to write some files there.
-
I have compiled Galeon with nautilus-view support and it doesn't
work!
Make sure that the file GNOME_Galeon_NautilusView.oaf is
correctly installed (it shuld be in /usr/share/oaf in most setups)
and restart oaf. Also, you'll have to setup Nautilus to use Galeon to
render HTML, once Galeon has been installed (to do so, you have to select
the View as other... option in the Nautilus view selection
optionmenu).
-
What's wrong with plugins in Galeon? Can Galeon only handle
HTML?
See the plugins section of the User Manual (plugins.html).
-
Galeon doesn't display international characters in titles
correctly.
The common cause for this is an incorrectly set LC_CTYPE
environment variable. You can see this by typing the command
locale in a terminal window.
The LC_CTYPE variable controls what character set applications
should use for their output. If LC_CTYPE is unset or set to
"C", this essentially means that applications are expected to use
ASCII for their output. The problem is that ASCII doesn't include any
international characters, and hence international characters won't get
displayed correctly, if at all.
You can easily correct this by making sure the LC_CTYPE
variable is set to your locale, like LC_CTYPE=de_DE if you are in
Germany. This will make sure that applications can correctly display your
native characters. Please note that it will not change the language of the
applications, it only changes the character set used.
-
How do I get Java working in Galeon?
To use Java in Galeon, you'll need to install a plugin for Mozilla.
You can download the Linux x86 version of Sun's Java Runtime Environment
(JRE) from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/jre/download-linux.html.
Once you've installed it, you'll need to create a symbolic link in your
Mozilla plugin directory to the plugin file. The plugin file is at
[JRE directory]/plugin/i386/libjavaplugin_oji.so.
If you prefer, you can instead install Sun's Java SDK, or the SDK
offerred at http://www.blackdown.org/. If you're
on a different platform, you may need to use a different vendor's Java
environment. As long as they provide a Mozilla-compatible plugin, though,
things should still work.
Once you've installed the plugin, it should be visible on the
about:plugins page, and if you have the Allow Java
preference enabled, Galeon should be able to run Java applets.
-
I've configured MIME type X to be handled with application Y, but it's
being handled by Z instead, or multiple instances of the helper application
are being started.
A likely cause for this is an errant Mozilla preference. Exit Galeon
and open ~/.galeon/mozilla/galeon/prefs.js in your favorite text
editor, and look for a line that tells Mozilla how to handle the
problematic MIME type. If you find such a line, delete it and save the
file. After doing this, the MIME type should be handled correctly in
Galeon.
It is also possible that the MIME type has been registered by the
Plugger plugin. Plugger is a wrapper plugin that passes unsupported files
from the browser to external programs. To check which files are being
handled by Plugger, examine the /etc/pluggerrc file. You can
either edit the file so that Plugger will use different programs, or delete
the offending lines altogether so that Galeon will handle the file types
instead. For file types that are often embedded in documents (like WAV
sound files or MIDI music files), it may make more sense to use Plugger, as
Galeon is unable to launch helper applications for inline content. Please see the Plugger documentation
for more information.