[conspire] Re: Distro help
Ryman
rymanle at gmail.com
Mon May 16 10:50:19 PDT 2005
Hi guys, here is what I did when I try to download the file via firefox :
I right click on the link to download then click - save link as - OK -
The file by default is saved in Desktop ( the folder inside my /home
dir ). I downloaded some animes that is about 60Mb each. I downloaded
5,6 files then it started to happen. All the icons on my Desktop are
disappeared. I opened a term and did the command that Rick showed me.
I see the files there.
My firefox crashed when :
- I visit my friends xanga ( it's a free online journal similiar to
LiveJournal or Blogspot ). The site allows people who signed in to
leave comment. If they signed in, there will be the link to their
xangas in the comment. My firefox get crashed when I click on those
links to go to other peopel xanga.
- I tried to save a picture. I right click on the picture - Save Image
As. It crashed right before the window that let me choose to where to
save pop up.
I did 'mozilla-firefox &' and here is the result: [1] 3521
I also open the 2nd term and do the 'top'. I watched firefox-bin for
15 mins and the SHR goes from 19m to 20m.
Thanks for spending your times to help me. I really appreciate it.
On 5/16/05, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> Quoting Ryman (rymanle at gmail.com):
>
> > Hi guys, I'm sorry about the unclear question.
>
> No problem at all. Welcome to "conspire", CABAL's discussion list.
>
> > Here is my computer spec:
> > Pent4 2.G
> > GigaByte Motherboard. I'm not sure what model it is.
> > 512MB of RAM
> > 80G HD on hda1
> > 60G HD on hdb1
> > Audizy 2zs sound card
> > NVIDA 5700 Ultra
> > I'm running Ubuntu Hoary only.
>
> Sweet little machine. Nice.
>
> > Here are the problems:
> >
> > 1/ Some times when I downloaded something via Firefox and I saved them
> > on desktop but when I check my desktop. They aren't there. They
> > disappeared. I can only see them after I restarted my computer.
>
> You're getting closer to what folks from Missouri would want. ;->
> (Remember, I was saying techies are figuratively from Missouri in the
> sense that their motto is "Show me.") Ideally, you want to describe
> symptoms by saying exactly what you observed, without trying to
> interpret what you saw, in exact chronological order: I did this, the
> computer displayed this, I did this, etc.
>
> When you say "saved them on desktop", I figure you mean within the GNOME
> system that is the default for Ubuntu Linux users, and which I personally
> don't use. I _believe_ that this "desktop" is a directory (folder)
> called "Desktop" (note capital letter) inside your home directory.
> You'll want to confirm my recollection on that point, however.
>
> I'm going to show you on my own machine in front of me what I'd like you
> to do. On this machine, I've created a "Desktop" directory and put a
> dummy simulated-download file in it, just so it'll look sort of the way
> yours does. My comments are marked with "#" comment characters.
>
> Open a terminal window, e.g., using gnome-terminal. Then do this sort
> of thing:
>
> rick at kenny:~$ pwd #stands for "print (to screen) working directory
> #and basically means "where am I"?
> /home/rick #Here, the machine tells me I'm in the home
> #directory of user "rick".
> rick at kenny:~$ cd Desktop #Go down a level to subdirectory "Desktop".
> rick at kenny:~/Desktop$ pwd #Where am I?
> /home/rick/Desktop #Oh, OK, that's where I am.
> rick at kenny:~/Desktop$ ls -al #List files, all files, long-format style.
> total 8
> drwxr-xr-x 2 rick rick 4096 May 15 15:59 .
> drwxr-xr-x 6 rick rick 4096 May 15 15:59 ..
> -rw-r--r-- 1 rick rick 0 May 15 15:59 some-file-I-downloaded.tar.gz
> #That last item's the simulated download file.
> #At this point, _please_ copy-and-paste
> #the entire command session into an e-mail
> #or other place for safe-keeping. The
> #whole point of this is to collect
> #information that you can "show us".
> rick at kenny:~/Desktop$ exit #At that point, your terminal window will close.
>
> The point of the above is that you'll be able to see objectively what's
> in your "Desktop" directory (folder) -- and be able to make us see, too
> -- using simple, predictable tools that we all know and have faith in.
> Later, if you're very sure that your files "disappeared", you can
> do the same commands and, again, show us.
>
> You may find that the files are actually still where Firefox put them;
> I really can't say for sure.
>
> (In the above, the "rick at kenny:~$" stuff is just the command prompt:
> You won't type that bit! And your will look somewhat different,
> reflecting your username not being "rick", and your machine's name not
> being "kenny". The "~" symbol is shortcut for "home directory of the
> current user", and "$" is the default prompt prefix for any non-root
> user, when using the bash shell -- which you'll also be using.)
>
> > 2/ Firefox keeps crashing for no reason.
>
> Here, you're pretty far from Missouri. It gives us almost nothing to
> work with. But we can fix that.
>
> You're almost certainly using the GNOME menu launcher to start Firefox.
> That's very convenient, but has the advantage that error message output,
> if any, gets suppressed. We can fix that by starting Firefox from a
> terminal window. So (with Firefox shut down), open gnome-terminal (or some
> other form of terminal window) again. Then do this:
>
> rick at kenny:~$ mozilla-firefox &
>
> Firefox will now open up. The "mozilla-firefox" is the name of the
> actual executable, and "&" means "start this as a forked-off process so
> that I get my command prompt back".
>
> Why should you do this? Because, if/when Firefox subsequently takes a
> tumble in some way, you will almost certainly get some diagnostic error
> output echoed to the open terminal window in which you launched the
> Firefox process. (Don't close that terminal window!) You can then see
> what information is provided, there, and maybe copy-and-paste it back to
> this mailing list.
>
> Something else you might want to do, at the same time: Open a second
> terminal window, and type "top" in it (and, of course, the Return key).
> That will start a program that lists the condition of all currently
> running processes, and updates their status every 1 second. While that
> window is highlighted, type "M" (capital-M, no Return key) to re-sort
> the listing of processes in order of memory usage, biggest memory hogs
> on top.
>
> Why should you do this? Because it's not unknown for Web browsers to
> have "memory leaks", whereby they start consuming more and more RAM over
> time until they quit with (e.g.) a "segmentation fault" error message.
> You would be able to see that trend in "top" by watching the row
> labelled "firefox-bin" (or similar) start to have its "SHR" column get
> bigger and bigger, until it blows up.
>
> I said "far from Missouri" because your wording "for no reason" was an
> interpretation, rather than a symptom. (Also, "crashing" doesn't really
> tell us much -- but you didn't know how to report anything more useful,
> which is part of what I'm trying to help fix.) Ideally, you would have
> described chronologically what you did, and what the computer did,
> leading up to (and through one or two such "crashes". Otherwise, we
> have nothing to work with, and can only sit and guess what you're
> talking about.
>
> Again, when you say "keeps crashing", is this when something in
> particular is going on, at that time? Is this while you're visiting
> certain particular Web sites, perhaps?
>
> > 3/ My computer didn't freeze during the day. It freeze when I leave
> > the computer overnight to download something. The download was still
> > working but I couldn't move my cursor or anything.
>
> Well, you see, this suggests perhaps a problem with software suspend.
> In any event, the fact that it happens (so far) only during the night
> when you're not at the terminal is very significant.
>
> You may want to see what happens if you boot while passing the booting
> kernel the "acpi=off" parameter. I believe you'll be using GRUB as your
> bootloader in Ubuntu, so what you do is wait until you see the GRUB
> listing of bootable kernel images, move the lightbar down to the line
> with the name of the kernel file (usually the second line), then hit "e"
> for edit. Then, you go to the end of the line and type "acpi=off", then
> press Return. Then "b" to boot the modified kernel-image line.
>
> Here's someone else explaining how to do that:
> http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-21403.html
>
> If that turns out to fix the problem, then you can make that change
> permanent (for subsequent boots) by modifying the "kernel" line in
> text file /boot/grub/menu.lst , exactly the same way.
>
> > I pressed Ctrl + Alt + Backspace and it took me to text mode log in.
>
> What that suggests to me is that the X server process isn't dealing with
> software suspend (sleep mode) properly.
>
> > I think something is wrong with my HD because my HD is making weird
> > sound. The computer's temperature is at 95 degree.
>
> Well, that could be -- and it might be a completely unrelated problem.
>
> I'm a bit worn out; maybe someone else can tell you about how to use the
> smartmontools on Ubuntu, to check on IDE hard drives. Failing that,
> I'll try to get back to that.
>
> > I'm sorry about my bad engish.
>
> Your English is fine. Again, welcome.
>
> --
> Cheers, "Heedless of grammar, they all cried 'It's him!'"
> Rick Moen -- R.H. Barham, _Misadventure at Margate_
> rick at linuxmafia.com
>
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