Running Fedora-8 x86_64, with firefox.i386 (firefox-2.0.0.12-1.fc8.src.rpm). In cleaning up what appeared to be unused packages, I removed nss-mdns.i386, via either RPM or yum. The package was removed without dependency errors. Later firefox.i386 stopped working. The application would load, but it would not resolve host addresses. Through some trial and error, I reinstalled nss-mdns, and firefox started working again. It appears that the firefox packages is missing a dependency on nss-mdns.
nss-mdns is not installed by default, i don't have this package and firefox works fine.
Hmmm. For me, without it, Firefox does not work. The app loads, but can't resolve any addresses. Remove the package, Firefox stops working. Reinstall it, it works again. Some how, my installation of Firefox (straight from Fedora repos) does not work without the package. Is your configuration x86_64, with FF i386?
> The app loads, but can't resolve any addresses. Are you really sure it's a problem in firefox? What about any other apps? Can you ever resolve any dns name w/o this package?
OK, I found the root problem. Something, I assume nss-mdns, changed /etc/nsswitch.conf. I don't know why it only affected firefox; everything else was working fine: Konqueror, ktorrent, mail... I mostly use Konqueror, it was just when I needed FF for one of those sites that Konq doesn't work with, that I saw the problem. So it appears to not be a FF problem. Sorry for the false alarm.