Using mozilla-firefox-0.8-r2, when attempting to add more search engines to the search bar nothing happens. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Go to http://mycroft.mozdev.org/quick/dictionary.com.html 2. Click on the first link (Dictionary). This should popup a dialogue to accept adding this to the search engine bar. 3. Click ok. Actual Results: The dictionary search engine was not added to the search engine bar. Expected Results: The dictionary search engine should have been added to the search engine bar. Portage 2.0.50-r6 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.3.2, glibc-2.3.2-r9, 2.4.21-ck1) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.21-ck1 i686 Intel(R) Celeron(TM) CPU 1200MHz Gentoo Base System version 1.4.3.13 distcc 2.12.1 i686-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port 3632) [disabled] Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.58-r1 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O3 -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O3 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://mirrors.tds.net/gentoo http://gentoo.ccccom.com http://mirror.tucdemonic.org/gentoo/ " MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.ca.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X acpi arts avi berkdb cdr crypt cups dvd encode foomaticdb gdbm ggi gif gnome gpm gtk gtk2 guile imlib java jpeg libg++ libwww mad mikmod mmx motif mozilla mpeg ncurses nls oggvorbis opengl oss pam pda pdflib perl png python qt quicktime readline sdl slang spell sse ssl svga tcltk tcpd truetype x86 xml2 xmms xv zlib"
open up the permissions on /usr/lib/MozillaFirefox/searchplugins so the user can you are logged in as can write to the directory
David, it's your choice if you want to do what Aristotle Allen suggested in comment #1. Otherwise this isn't going to be fixed in Gentoo because it's a security issue. It's a weakness in firefox to require search plugins be written to that directory, or perhaps a weakness of the plugin that it doesn't know how to do a profile-based installation.
How about reporting it upstream as a bug then? It's part of the base firebird build, so it should theoretically work.
Please feel free to report it upstream at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ Personally I believe that the firefox developers are already aware of the ways in which firefox attempts to write to the system-wide directories, but it doesn't hurt to bug them about it.