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In Kubuntu 20.04, I use autokey to create hotkeys that launch websites.

Prior to Firefox 94, these hot keys had no difficulty launching pages, but now each time I try to launch a page I get this error:

Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To use Firefox, you must first close the existing Firefox process, restart your device, or use a different profile.

enter image description here

In autokey, the python3 script that gets triggered, upon these hotkeys, is just two lines:

import os
os.system("firejail firefox https://askubuntu.com/ &")

Notice that I'm using firejail to launch firefox, which does require installation:

sudo apt install firejail

Previously, if Firefox was already running, this would achieve launching the web page into a new tab. Now, even if I include the -new-tab argument (described in Firefox's man page), I still cannot launch the page. Now, it only works if Firefox is completely closed at the time I hit the hot keys.

So, something changed upon upgrading to Firefox 94, and I'm hoping someone here can advise a workaround.

Lonnie Best
  • 2,244

1 Answers1

3

Firefox changed the way it attempts to open new tabs in existing windows, from using X11 in version 93 to using dbus in version 94. The firejail profile in 0.9.62, which is the version currently in the Ubuntu Focal 20.04 repositories, block this. This seems to have been fixed in Firejail version 0.9.64. To upgrade Firejail, add the 'deki' PPA, which currently contains version 0.9.66.:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:deki/firejail
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y firejail firejail-profiles
RolKau
  • 196