Firefox 3 keeps crashing on startup, Hulu Desktop proven to be the culprit

Hopefully this post will serve to help someone else out there since my normal strategy of Google-the-problem turned up no aid.

Let’s set the stage: Friday morning I try to launch Firefox 3 on my MacBook (rockin’ 10.4 baby). The dock icon does its bouncy-bouncy thing and then I’m presented with a pop-up that asks me if I want to resume my previous session or start a new one. I live in the present, so I start a new one and banish those old tabs to the abyss. I wait a second, then the arrow below my FF3 icon disappears (hmm?) and then I’m presented with the Mozilla crash reporter.

Odd. Ok, I submit the report – my opensource good deed for the day – and relaunch FF3. I go through the same steps and the same crash occurs. That sucks, but I’m no fool. I’ll out-clever the system by choosing to resume the previous session this time. I’m a genius.

Nope. Crash.

Rinse and repeat a few more times before I finally just give in and run my beta version of Safari 4 for the day. It’s a browser I’ve been very impressed with but has just a few minor quirks about it that has been keeping me from using it exclusively. Also, it’s still in public beta and my job involves, in part, me running and testing a number of websites and webapps and if I encounter a bug in something it’s not always clear whether its the site or Safari causing the problem.

To make matters worse, I’ve yet to sync up my browser bookmarks across platforms so I’ve got a bunch of important pages I can’t access for the day. Fun.

Leif tries to fix it: I turn to Google and search “Firefox crashes on startup.” I get the Mozilla wiki page about what could be causing the problems. The most likely issue is a damaged .plist file. I follow the recommendation of moving it to my desktop to generate a new one in the original folder… yadda yadda yadda… no luck. Still crashes away. I look through more “could be’s” and get no where.

Forget this amateur stuff. I turn to Terminal and start up Firefox in safe mode

/applications/firefox.app/contents/macos/firefox -safe-mode

I’m in and disable my plugins before trying to visit a webpage.

Crash.

But this is when I get my first clue. I look over at my Terminal window and see this little tidbit:

dyld: lazy symbol binding failed: Symbol not found: _fputs$UNIX2003
Referenced from: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/huludesktop.webplugin/Contents/MacOS/huludesktop
Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

dyld: Symbol not found: _fputs$UNIX2003
Referenced from: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/huludesktop.webplugin/Contents/MacOS/huludesktop
Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

Hulu Desktop, eh? I did install that the other night and then updated it again just last night… You bastards, Hulu. You bastards.

I turned to my much beloved AppCleaner and kill the Hulu desktop client. Pew pew.

Start up Firefox.

Crash.

Start up Firefox in safemode. Try to visit page.

Crash.

I look over at the Terminal window and see the same text about Hulu. Now it’s on.

I delete the /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib file and then go on to find the huludesktop.webplugin file that I thought AppCleaner would have taken out.

I started up Firefox… and… and..? It’s a go.

Couple notes:

1) You may notice that the libSystem.B.dylib file doesn’t really get deleted. It reappears instantly in /usr/lib/. Hell, it’s probably not even necessary to delete. It could have been a victim of or an accessory to the Hulu crime but I couldn’t care less. I wanted everyone to pay for the crime. Regardless, I’ve seen no ill effects after deleting it.

2) Hulu Desktop actually looks pretty sweet when it’s not wrecking my shit. I’ll hold out a few weeks and see what future updates bring.

3) If you got hit by the same issue then let me know. I’d like to be vindicated by knowing that I’m not alone.

Remove useless files from your Mac so you can fit more of those pirated episodes of Project Runway

My hard drive is a media glutton. Music, TV shows, and movies, it loves them all. The obvious downside here is that I’m often teetering on the brink with just a GB or so of free space on my computer (which promotes a sort of binge and purge strategy – I shall call this bulimia bytosa). And external hard drives are not always the ideal answer.

Well, I at least have some good news for you Mac users out there. There are two apps I highly recommend for trimming the fat from your hard drive:

AppCleaner

AppCleaner is a small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps.

Installing an application distributes many files throughout your System using space of your Hard Drive unnecessarily. AppCleaner finds all these small files and safely deletes them.

Simply drop an application onto the AppCleaner window. It will find for the related files and you can delete them by clicking the delete button.

Monolingual

Monolingual is a program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X, in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space. It requires at least Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) and also works on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

I don’t know about you, but I use my computer in only one (human) language — English. And I’m willing to bet that you do too, albeit perhaps not English. So why do you have a bunch of localization files for the Mac OS X operating system filling up your hard drive? Enter Monolingual — a handy utility for reclaiming your space for more useful things… like international mp3 files, email or whatever you like.

Bonus: For all the Tweeple out there, you can cut out the useless or inactive people you follow by utilizing the power of MyCleanr. Simple and effective.