[conspire] Re: Distro help

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ryman (rymanle at gmail.com):

> 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.

When you say "on your Desktop", that's a view of your file tree inside a
file-browser program provided with the GNOME desktop suite.  I believe
you're referring to the one called "Nautilus".  You can verify this
inside the "top" utility:  Start up "top", and then type "M" (no Return
key needed) to re-sort top's output in order of memory usage, as before.

See if something containing "nautilus" as part of its name is included
in the listing of running processes.  (I suggested re-sorting to put
memory-hogging processes at the top because Nautilus is certainly one of
those.)  If you like, you can double-confirm by typing "k".  You'll see
top ask you "PID to kill?"  Type the number from the PID (process ID)
column corresponding to the Nautilus process, and hit Return.  If my
suspicion is correct, you'll see the file-browser window pop out of
existence (suddenly close).

Obviously, you would do the above only at a time when having your
file-browser window go "poof" isn't a problem for you.

When you say "All the icons", it's still not very clear what you're
talking about.  Again, we're figuratively from Missouri:  We can't see
what you're seeing unless and until you show us.  

"All the icons" might mean "all the icons showing for the downloaded
anime files that had until this point been on display in my file browser
window".  You didn't specify, so we can only guess what you mean.  

You _may_ simply need to become better acquainted with how Nautilus
works (if that's what you're using to provide the "icons" you speak of).
Not being a GNOME user, I cannot easily replicate your exact situation.
_However_, the people on Ubuntuforums can:  http://ubuntuforums.org/ You
might want to ask there for GNOME-specific help.

> I opened a term and did the command that Rick showed me.  I see the
> files there.

...which is why I suspect you and Nautilus just have to get to know each
other better.  Sorry I can't give you more-specific immediate help with
that thing -- but at least you know that your files _are_ still there.

> My firefox crashed when :

Just a remindeer, and not intending to be critical:  The problem with
the word "crashed" is that it means everything and nothing.  People use
it to mean (variously):  became unresponsive, ceased to show screen
output, vanished from the process table.  In the case of hardware, they
sometimes (also) mean "rebooted" or "powered down".  

So, technicians try to be patient with the word "crashed", but need to
immediately move beyond it to something more specific and meaningful.

Also, it's your _interpretation_.  Once again, it is in your interest to
provide Missouri-leaning technicians with _raw observed data_ (in order
to "show them", and not your interpretations of those data.   You might
mean: "I was browsing [URL cited] using Firefox.   When I tried to
follow [link URL cited], all Firefox windows suddenly vanished from my
display.  When I checked using "top", the mozilla-firefox processes that
were present until then were suddenly no longer listed."  I suspect
that's exactly what you meant, except you didn't provide the URLs.

And, assuming this is a Firefox instance you started from a shell prompt
by typing "mozilla-firefox &", it would be useful to say, at this point,
what if any error messages were shown on your command prompt, at the
time the process died.  That was the whole point of my suggesting you
start Firefox from the command prompt rather than a GNOME program
launcher:  to gather error-message output.

> - 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.

That's _close_ to Missouri (aside from the "crashed" bit).  But, you see,
if you had included the _URL_ of the page you were on, and the
highlighted URL of the hyperlink that tends to blow up Firefox
processes, we would be able to check for ourselves.  But you didn't
provide that URL, so we have to guess.

OK, Xanga is obviously the "Web community" at http://www.xanga.com/ .
That leaves the question of where "your friend's Xanga" is.  And there,
I'm absolutely stumped -- because you didn't give us a clue.

Maybe you should tell us what hyperlink on what specific page causes
your copy of Firefox to blow up.  To get the URL of a link without
visiting it, highlight the link with your mouse, right-click it, and
select "Copy Link Location".  That puts the URL on your clipboard, from
which you can paste it into your e-mail, e.g., back to this mailing
list.


> - 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.

Again, what page URL and what link was this?  If you tell us, we can
check for ourselves, and then try to figure out why.

> I did  'mozilla-firefox &'  and here is the result: [1] 3521

Well, yes, that's the _initial_ result.  If memory serves, those are the
job number and process ID.  But the point is to then visit the pages
that cause the Mozilla Firefox process to terminate, and collect any
error-message output.


> 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.

Well, that's pretty normal for Firefox.  The point was to _keep_ that
copy of top running, any time you might want to spot possible runaway
trends in memory usage or other aberrant process behaviour.