It assumes that /opt exists with reasonable permissions or that it doesn't exist and can be created (which is pretty safe), that the download succeeds (which is not particularly safe), and that the archive successfully unpacks (which is somewhat safe, if the download succeeded).
The script above doesn't check to see whether or not commands completed successfully before proceeding.
Ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefoxĪs explained above, you should not do this at all! (This technique is useful for other purposes, which is the main reason I'm posting about it.) Sudo apt-get purge firefox # removes firefox comment out if definitely uninstalled Unless you can get one of the above techniques to work, the easiest way would probably be to make your script download the upstream Firefox 7.0.1 binary distribution, unpack it, and install it as root: || sudo mkdir -m 755 /opt (This is why Firefox 8 is in Lucid now.) Continuing to run Firefox 7.0.1 means you are running a version that has known security vulnerabilities that are not and never will be patched-it puts you (and your customers/clients, if applicable) at risk. You should not do this, because versions of Firefox past the 3.6-series do not remain supported, even with security updates, when new versions come out.
