[PLUG] Ubuntu-64, Chroot, PSU and NoCat

[John Jordan]

I hope there's someone here familiar with Odin 
login issues because I have a real stumper. 
Except this time at least I know the cause of 
the problem. I just don't know the cure.

I have been using Ubuntu-64 on my laptop since 
last summer, and upgraded from Hoary to Breezy 
when Breezy came out. In all that time I had 
been trying to get a few things working that 
simply refused to run or install in 64-bit 
Linux, e.g., RealPlayer, Adobe Reader 7.0 and 
Flash. So last week I finally decided it was 
time to bite the bullet and learn how to do 
chroot. Amazingly, I actually managed to do it 
from instructions on an Ubuntu wiki. Not only 
did I get chroot working fine, I managed to 
install Adobe Reader 7.0 and RealPlayer using 
Synaptic32. Both ran fine as standalone apps, 
but I couldn't get them "plugged into" Firefox. 
So, after struggling with that issue for a while 
I decided "to hell with it, I'll just install 32-
bit Firefox in chroot also." 

Having done so I actually got Flash and 
RealPlayer working now in 32-bit Firefox. (Still 
haven't got a PDF viewer working in 32-bit 
Firefox, but I'll work on that later.) I also 
imported all my bookmarks from the old version 
of Firefox. This worked so well that I went into 
the Gnome Applications menu and changed the 
Properties for the Firefox launch item from 
"firefox %u" to "dchroot -d firefox %u." See, 
I've actually learned how to do some command 
line things in Linux!

So yesterday I went to PSU with my computer for 
the first time since doing this. I booted it up, 
launched Firefox, and clicked to go to my PSU 
webmail account, expecting NoCat to pop up and 
ask for me to log in. But NoCat would not 
appear. OK, that happens sometimes. Poor NoCat 
must be a really busy dude, 'cause sometimes I 
have to knock repeatedly to get him to notice 
me. But after 15 minutes of trying I decided 
something must be wrong. I was just upstairs in 
Smith, so I decided to go to the basement and 
talk with the nice computer people. We tried 
over and over, but absolutely could not get 
NoCat to pop up. The Help person did verify that 
the wifi was working, I had the right IP 
numbers, the wifi light on the corner of the 
computer was lit up, and everything should be 
working. After 15 minutes of trying everything 
she could think of we decided to do the Windows 
ultimate trick -- reboot.

So I shut down and restarted. I have Ubuntu set 
to give me a verbose list of what it's doing 
during the boot. As I was watching it suddenly 
the new lines about chroot scrolled by. And then 
it hit me. The only thing that was different was 
that I was using a new 32-bit version of 
Firefox. 

So after it finished booting and I was logged 
in, and verified that Firefox still wouldn't 
work, I opened a terminal and typed just 
"firefox" in order to bring up the old version 
of Firefox (luckily I didn't uninstall it). And 
when it came up I tried my webmail account and 
sure enough! NoCat popped right up and I was in.

So I know the problem is in the 32-bit Firefox. 
The 32-bit Firefox has no problem going out to 
the net at home through my ethernet to the 
router and cable modem. It's just NoCat that it 
isn't talking nice to. Except I haven't tried 
the wifi anyplace else, so there might be a 
problem with 32-bit Firefox and the wifi in 
general.

OK, that's the problem. Any PSUers out there 
have any idea what is wrong?