
***** Galeon Frequently Asked Questions *****
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.
**** Index ****



   1. I'm trying to compile Galeon and it needs gtkmozembed.h. Where is it?

   2. Galeon crashes when I go to page X.

   3. When starting Galeon, I immediately get an assertion error. What does
      this mean?

   4. How can I get my scrollwheel mouse to work with Galeon?

   5. Why does Galeon depend on GNOME? There should be a GTK+ only version!

   6. 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!

   7. I compiled Galeon and Mozilla but I still get ld errors.

   8. Galeon is using 80MB+ of memory! What's going on?

   9. Galeon segfaults on startup. What's wrong?

  10. Galeon segfaults when opening the preferences dialog. What's wrong?

  11. Galeon claims that it crashed the last time it was run, but it's
      currently running! Can't I run two copies at once?

  12. Galeon hangs when I try accessing my secure banking/intranet site.
      Doesn't Galeon support https?

  13. These keyboard shortcuts are all wrong!

  14. I want / don't want Galeon to be my default web browser.

  15. How can I fix this syntax error during configure?

  16. When I run Galeon I get a message about gconf not configured properly.
      How can I configure gconf?

  17. 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?

  18. What do I need to use Galeon as my help browser?

  19. How can I change the User Agent string that Galeon uses?

  20. Galeon is running but is not showing any window/unable to load anything.
      What can i do?

  21. I have compiled Galeon with nautilus-view support and it doesn't work!

  22. What's wrong with plugins in Galeon? Can Galeon only handle HTML?

  23. Galeon doesn't display international characters in titles correctly.

  24. How do I get Java working in Galeon?

  25. 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.

  26. Where did toolbar icon and spinner themes go?

  27. How do I set up a mailto handler?

  28. How do I set up a helper app?


**** Questions and Answers ****



   1. 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.

   2. 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/).

   3. 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.

   4. 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

   5. 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.

   6. 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).

   7. 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:



         1. 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

         2. 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.




   8. 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).

   9. 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.

  10. 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

  11. 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).

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. 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".

  15. 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.

  16. 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.

  17. 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.

  18. 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.

  19. 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:



         1. To get the current user agent:
            gconftool -g /apps/galeon/Advanced/Network/user_agent

         2. To set the user agent to XXX:
            gconftool -s /apps/galeon/Advanced/Network/user_agent --type=string
            "XXX"

         3. To restore the default user agent:
            gconftool -s /apps/galeon/Advanced/Network/user_agent --type=string
            default




  20. 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.

  21. 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).

  22. What's wrong with plugins in Galeon? Can Galeon only handle HTML?
      See the plugins section of the User Manual (plugins.html).

  23. 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.

  24. 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.

  25. 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.

  26. Galeon 1.3.x no longer has it's own theme handling for toolbar icons.
      Instead, we respect gtk+ 2.x icon themes. These icon themes can potentially
      change the entire set of stock gtk+ icons, or can only change a subset in
      which case the defaults will be used for the rest. Galeon toolbar icon
      themes can be converted to gtk+ 2.x icon themes fairly easily but no one
      has done so yet to the best of our knowledge. See http://art.gnome.org for
      existing gtk+ 2.x icon themes and forums for discussing them.

      Converting old Galeon spinners to Gnome icon theme spinners is fairly
      simple with ImageMagick . The following assumes you have the 'Galeon'
      spinner and the 'gnome' theme is used as an example.

	1. Go to the directory that holds the files 001.png, 002.png, ...,
	   and rest.png for your spinner.
	2. Make note of the highest numbered file 027.png
	3. Determine the spinner size:

		$ identify 001.png
		001.png PNG 34x34 DirectClass 8-bit 2657b 0.0u 0:01

	4. Convert the spinner animation:

		$ montage +frame +shadow +label -tile 1x27 -geometry 34x34 0*.png gnome-spinner.png

	5. "Convert" the stopped spinner:

		$ mv rest.png gnome-spinner-rest.png

	6. Install the spinner:

		$ mkdir -p $HOME/.icons/galeon/34x34/apps/
		$ cp gnome-spinner.png gnome-spinner-rest.png $HOME/.icons/galeon/34x34/apps/

	7. Create a $HOME/.icons/galeon/index.theme file with the following contents:

		[Icon Theme]
		Name=Galeon
		Comment=The old Galeon spinner
		Inherits=GNOME
		Directories=34x34/apps

		[34x34/apps]
		Size=34
		Context=Applications
		Type=Scalable

	 8. Open the Theme settings from the GNOME control center and change the
	    icons to use the Galeon icon theme.

  27. Open the "File Types and Programs" Control Centre applet.
      Click "Add Service..."
      Description can be anything you want.
      Protocol must be 'mailto'
      Enter your preferred mailto handler as the program to run.

      This method applies for any other url type you might want to handle.

  28. *Caveat Emptor* No shipping version of gnome-control-centre actually
      supports adding helpers properly... But if it did, this is what you
      would do.

      Open the "File Types and Programs" Control Centre applet.
      Click "Add File Type..."
      Fill in the fields as appropriate. Note in frustration that you
      can't really add multiple helpers, control defaults or do 
      anything vaguely useful. Perversely (for the gnome2 is more
      usable crowd), if you reinstall gnomecc 1.4.x, it's file type
      applet actually works...
