How do I install Netscape Linux binary on FreeBSD 4.3?

Ken Seggerman suleyman at panix.com
Thu Jan 1 07:38:13 PST 2004


I am running FreeBSD 4.3 running on an old slow laptop which is running
low on disk space.

I had Mozilla 5.0 0.8.1 and Netscape-communicator 4.76 installed.

Netscape was a package off of the FreeBSD 4.3 CDROM. I may have downloaded
Mozilla and installed it as a package, or built it as a port. I don't
remember.

Up until quite recently Mozilla worked very slowly, took up a lot of space
on the hard drive and 97%  of the CPU. I don't think Netscape
worked once I installed Mozilla, but trying to start Netscape resulted in
the following error messages:

$ /usr/local/bin/netscape
/usr/libexec/ld.so: warning: /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6: minor version -1
older than expected 0, using it anyway
ld.so failed: bad magic number in "/usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6"

I did pkg_delete on Netscape and reinstalled it with pkg_add from the
CDROM.

When I tried to start Netscape, I got the same bad magic number error.

Then when I tried to start Mozilla, the hard drive rattled for about five
minutes, Mozilla started up, got a PID, used up 95% of the CPU, but it
never (I've waited 15 minutes) opened a window. Perhaps my pkg_delete and
pkg_add of Netscape stepped on something in Mozilla.

I pkg_deleted mozilla, netscape-communicator, netscape-wrapper, and
netscpae-remote.

I went to the FreeBSD web site where they said that the FreeBSD version of
Mozilla is huge and slow, and recommended Netscape instead. The latest
version of Netscape for download is Linux version called:

netscape-i686-pc-linux-gnu-sea.tar.gz.

My laptop is set for running Linux executables:
#linux
linux driver already loaded

but I have no idea what to do with this file.

Do I untar and unzip it first and hope that any installation instructions
will work on FreeBSD? Leave it as a tar.gz, and install it with pkg_add,
or rpm?

The FreeBSD Handbook goes into great detail about how to brand elf
binaries, how to install specific software like Mathematica and Oracle,
but doesn't say how to install an ordinary Linux binary or how to install
Netscape.

I would be grateful for any suggestions.

Ken



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