Second Life won't spawn external browser

Okay, have a crazy problem here. The solution is probably insanely simple, but it's eluding me right now. I just recently did a clean install of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty. Since having done so, my SL viewer will not launch Firefox. Clicking "Open in external browser" from within SL's internal browser does absolutely nothing.

In my logs, I get something like this:
2009-04-29T00:20:41Z INFO: spawnWebBrowser: spawn_web_browser: http://secondlife.com/registration/
2009-04-29T00:20:41Z INFO: spawnWebBrowser: spawn_web_browser returning.
and that's it, as far as trying to open a web browser is concerned.

I have Firefox set as the default browser from within Gnome, and as verified in gconf-settings. The following shell commands work to launch Firefox from within a terminal: firefox, firefox-3.0, abrowser.

Thinking it may have been a viewer setting issue, I removed ~/.secondlife and relaunched the viewer. No change.

Anyone have any idea what is going on here?

Not sure how much Debian that ubuntu kept around, but you might want to try sudo update-alternatives -config x-www-browser and sudo update-alternatives -config gnome-www-browser to make sure the default browser is something sensible on your system.

When spawning an external browser, SL uses the script 'launch_url.sh' (which is in the same directory as the 'secondlife' script you use to start SL).
From the comments at the beginning of this file:
Because I didn't have the KDE setting (I mostly use GNOME) nor the debian one (I'm on gentoo), and because I have opera installed for testing and fall-back, it used to start opera for me. As I prefer firefox, I've set the $BROWSER shell variable in the .profile script in my home-dir:
You can safely create this file, if it doesn't exist yet. If it does, just append this line at the end. In any case, change the path to the output of `which firefox`.

You can test your setup by running the laund_url.sh manually, from a shell:, which should start your browser with the given website (or open a new tab).

Thank you, guys, for your suggestions.

Ubuntu still keeps pretty well to its Debian roots, so upd ate-alternatives works (with --config rather than -config):I'll look into the latter setting, see if it's applicable here.

Meanwhile, I also tested launch_url.sh, and it worked like a charm externally: Issuing ~/SecondLife/launch_url.sh http://www.google.com opened Google on my Firefox instantly. I didn't even need to set a shell variable.

Yet, somehow, SL still refuses to spawn an external browser window. It's as if the viewer is not even using launch_url.sh whatsoever.

Edit: Had to break up each instance of the word "update" to avoid the Forbidden bug.

Did anyone get a solution to this?

It's kinda got me to a full stop on work I need to complete - like yesterday

Any ideas?

For lazy people like me that never remember the right command in console mode, there's a graphical application called galternatives to configure easily the altrenatives on debian relatives sytems

Same issue here.

launch_url.sh works like a charm directly from the terminal, but from within SL, all I get on the terminal is



and no actual opening of my web browser.

I've futzed around with declaring PATH variables and with editing the launch_url.sh script itself to no avail. It seems as if the script isn't actually getting run by SL?

EDIT: This is on 1.23.2 RC by the way. (Second Life 1.23.2 (120719) May 18 2009 12:02:26 (Developer))

(I intentionally put a space in the URL above so that ye olde forum wouldn't wrap visible url tags around it.)

Of course, if you can't remember the right command, what are the odds you can remember the right command, *and* the dozen or so additional analog actions required to perform the same task you could have accomplished in three words?

Give yourself a little more credit at the command line if you can pull off the latter easily. ;o) Give yourself more extra credit if you can run something like AutoCAD for more than 20 minutes without turning off the ribbon and toolbars (working exclusively from workspace picks and the program's command line) to get a workspace larger than a Triscuit on a 21" monitor...

Tell me again why we have an X-server?

Purists.

All kidding aside, this browser issue is really starting to get annoying. The funny thing is, it only happened after I did a clean upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04; yet, I cannot think of a single way that could have anything to do with spawning a browser from within SL. I mean, the script works; it just seems that the viewer flat-out cannot see the script to use it, even though there's been no change to the viewer installation itself.

I'm gonna be bald, small, and unbaked by the time I get this figured out...

Don't worry, I also use the console, but not for everything (all my upgrade in debian: I don't trust synaptic enough when used with Sid... and to start SL also LOL)

But more seriously, I also have this bug and can't find what make it happen too. In my case, it try to launch epiphany, maybe because it's the only gnome web browser appearing in alternatives, but strangely, it can't start epiphany while it works very fine when launched manually... I precise I run SL on ubuntu jaunty. I Just don't know if it happened after the upgrade or after installing epiphany because I use the internal browser most of the time

EDIT: I just realized I have the same no result when using firefox as x-www-browser, the difference when replacing it with epiphany is it display an error message saying it couldn't be started, but no more sadly...

Wow, really ballsy running sid in the first place... you must have some time on your hands. For me, it's stable. I need it to work.

I forget which alternative it is, but since x-www-browser isn't doing it, it must be gnome-www-browser or sensible-browser.

I have no time for my Sid and lot for my Ubuntu because I only use Sid on my old laptop that is a lot less powerfull than my main, and Sid is really faster on it. I use this computer only from time to time, but happily, Sid works like a charm without doing anything on it, thank you lol
Don't ask me why Debian is fatser than Ubuntu, I don't know, I'm not a geek, only used enough with Debian to take the risk to install Sid on a secondary machine

I verified since i posted the last message and discovered SL use x-www-browser. Changing the other do nothing while changing this one to epiphany makes me have a message saying it couldn't start, but not why...

To enter commands in xterm?? *laughs*

Anyway have you tried maybe making sure the url launcher is executable?

Personally, I keep my non-distribution issued packs in /usr/local to retain integrity with distribution upgrades and have to manually set all file and dir permissions after I have unpacked the RC viewer.. i have a short shell script to do this now...

*facepalms*One of the first things I checked, I'm afraid. It even has 755 permissions.

It's interesting that this whole thing broke with the upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04, and it all worked well on 8.10 - BUT, all the signs point to it being the viewer simply not trying to access the script. I have now tried this on the official viewer, CoolSL Viewer, GreenLife viewer, different user profiles and home directories. It would sure be nice if there was a way to see when do-not-directly-run-second-life.bin makes calls to external files (I miss "snoopdos" on the Amiga), because I simply can't figure this one out!I update and change out viewers so often that it's easier for me to just keep it in my home directory.

strace might be for you.

Well, that was... enlightening! So, I launched my viewer just long enough for the login screen to come up, and then I clicked on a web link in the bottom right corner three times, and then quit the viewer. About 30 seconds, tops. The resulting strace output created a 65MB text file!

I've spent the better part of several hours combing through it, pulling apart all the child processes that appeared to have anything to do with identifying my browser of choice and launching it with the clicked URL as argument. I noticed three identical processes in the dump, each one correlating to each time I clicked on the web link. Each one ended with these last few lines:I can't quite figure out what it is trying to do that's evoking the EBADF; but I do know that typing:
/etc/alternatives/x-www-browser
as well as
/usr/bin/x-www-browser
and simply
x-www-browser
each spawns a new instance of Firefox, so I really don't know what gives here. If anyone wants a copy of my entire strace dump, PM me your e-mail address and I'll try to zip it to you. I would attach it here (it's only 2.9MB compressed), but I don't see the option to attach files here.

Is this with viewer 1.23RC4?

strace -o <filename> <program> will give you debugging output in <filename> of <program>, this is in Debian package "strace," it may be different in ubuntu.

No, I at least have this problem with 1.22.11.113941.

As far as I can see the viewer doesn't seem to call the launch_url.sh file...


UPDATE:
I just tried with SecondLife-i686-1.23.4.123523, spawning an external browser does seem to work there...

I had just installed 1.23.4.123908, and am happy to state that browser-spawning works again!

Cool, thanks for checking.