Firefox fails to start on Ubuntu 14.04

Question

I am unable to start Firefox. Whenever I click on the icon the mouse pointer just changed the state to indicate its busy and the after 2 seconds it would change back to a pointer.

I ran the 'firefox' command in the Terminal and here's the output.

vostro-1320:~$ firefox

(process:19047): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed

(firefox:19047): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::sm-connect after class was initialised

(firefox:19047): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::show-crash-dialog after class was initialised

(firefox:19047): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::display after class was initialised

(firefox:19047): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: Attempt to add property GnomeProgram::default-icon after class was initialised

Could not create gnome accelerators directory `/home/bharath/.gnome2/accels': Permission denied

Any pointers on what could be wrong?

Solution 1

Looks like the log-in account bharath have some permission issue. Change the owner as bharath by using

sudo chown -R bharath:bharath/home/bharath` 

and try to open Firefox.

Solution 2

Try the following command in your terminal(Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo chown -R "$USER:$USER" "$HOME"

This does the same thing as the last answer but does not require editing to make it work on your computer and should be typo free.

Comments

[Bharath]

That works. Fixed the permissions and now all works fine. Thanks!

[Adaephon]

But it assumes that the user that is fixing the problem is the same one that has the problem. And it further assumes that $HOME is actually set to the user's home directory, which is far from guaranteed. Even if all that is the case, the user still might not want to change the permissions - especially group ownership - on every single file in his home directory, so it at least should be restricted to "${HOME}/.gnome/accels.

[Nav]

Simply creating the accels folder also might work: stackoverflow.com/a/29856330/453673