Unable to Upgrade Firefox on OS X

Today I tried to upgrade Firefox 5.0.1 on my iMac to version Firefox 6, but it failed with some 'weird' error;

The operation can't be completed because the item libsmime3.dylib" is in use.

Weird because I didn't have FireFox running at the time. Removing Firefox didn't work either, since I couldn't remove it from the Trash (same error).

Turned out that I had the Cisco AnyConnect VPN installed on my system (process name: vpnagentd). To 'unload' this process enter the following in Terminal:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.cisco.anyconnect.vpnagentd.plist

Install Firefox, and enable the vpnagent again by entering the following in Terminal:

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.cisco.anyconnect.vpnagentd.plist

And all should be well.

Comments

[Alan Carwile]

Thanks! I just hit this issue upgrading to Firefox 11. The Linux "lsof" command can help identify the culprit. Do "sudo bash" first. I saw that vpnagentd had the file open so I ran the unload step. I then tried dragging the Firefox app from the installer/dmg to the Applications directory. It failed one more time, saying PkgInfo was in use. I tried dragging Firefox to Applications again, and this time it worked great. So I then ran the load command after verifying Firefox 11was fine.

Thanks!

$ lsof |grep libnspr4
vpnagentd 92 root txt REG 14,2 489736 9230786 /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/libnspr4.dylib
^C

[Jonny]

I just linked to here from mozilla bugzilla bug closed by others as works for me
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674317
as this issue is still around. Got me again this evening... Thanks for your post.