Firefox not opening external applications

[Bruce Marshall]

On Monday 16 November 2009, Paul Lemmons wrote:
> Paul Lemmons wrote:
> > Ok, I have given up on waiting for the mozilla-acroread plugin to
> > surface and I need to be able to open PDFs with FireFox. So I went
> > into FF preferences->applications PDF's and changed the program to
> > Okular. Now I see the download box appear and the file get downloaded
> > but the application never starts. I have tried a number of different
> > programs for PDFs and the result is the same: it downloads but app
> > does not start. I tried a number of other file types that open in
> > external programs and they have the same issue.
> >
> > Any ideas?
> 
> I did not know who to reply to so I am replying to myself to include
> everybody...
> 
> I tried firefox-3.5-kde.... no joy
> I tried okular from command line... work like it should
> I tried okular from firefox ... no joy
> I tried firefox --safe-mode ... no joy
> 
> Any other thoughts?
> 

I am running  Karmic  and Firefox  3.5.5

Under Preferences/Applications , I checked the PDF files and it says to use 
Okular (the default)

Works just fine.