[gentoo-user] Firefox and Ephiphany hang at a certain directory

[gentoo-user] Firefox and Ephiphany hang at a certain directory

[Alan E. Davis]

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It has just happened in the last day that whenever I try to navigate to a
certain subdirectory of my home directory, in order to attach a file to an
email in gmail, firefox hangs.  I have tried a few experiments, with no
success.  This is also no ordinary directory---it has been under git control
for several months.

With any file manager this directory is accessible.  With Konqueror, it is
likewise accessible.  Only with Firefox and Epiphany, as far as I can tell,
is this happening.

I have copied the contents of the directory, without the .git control
baggage, and the same happens.

This happened concurrently with an upgrade to a new firefox and xulrunner:
mozilla-firefox-3.5.2-r2.  I down graded by masking this version (and
xulrunner were also downgraded when I did this), and the same problem
persisted.  I had run revdep-rebuild after upgrading to the newer firefox,
by the way.

This reminds me of a situation some months ago, when a specific home
directory was impossible to browse in either nautilus, or firefox.  This was
due to a peculiar file, I cannot remember the name, but bizaare.  When I
finally found this file deep in the subdirectories, the problem went away.

Thinking the same thing was going no here, I have looked at the directory,
but superficially I have seen nothing.  Except a file ".directory" left
there by dolphin.  I have recently installed kde 4.3.0, and started liking
it a bit, and playing around with it.

I don't know what else to look for, or what method to use, to look for
bizaare bits in a tree.

I suppose I will copy all the files over, one at a time.  Suggestions would
be appreciated.


Alan Davis

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world,  but when
you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird...
So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing---that's what counts.

   ----Richard Feynman

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Re: [gentoo-user] Firefox and Ephiphany hang at a certain directory

[Alan McKinnon]

On Thursday 03 September 2009 11:48:40 Alan E. Davis wrote:
> It has just happened in the last day that whenever I try to navigate to a
> certain subdirectory of my home directory, in order to attach a file to an
> email in gmail, firefox hangs.  I have tried a few experiments, with no
> success.  This is also no ordinary directory---it has been under git
>  control for several months.
> 
> With any file manager this directory is accessible.  With Konqueror, it is
> likewise accessible.  Only with Firefox and Epiphany, as far as I can tell,
> is this happening.

Lets eliminate the obvious first - move your existing mozilla profile out of 
the way and try again. Does the problem persist?

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Firefox and Ephiphany hang at a certain directory

[Stroller]

On 3 Sep 2009, at 10:48, Alan E. Davis wrote:
> It has just happened in the last day that whenever I try to navigate  
> to a certain subdirectory of my home directory, in order to attach a  
> file to an email in gmail, firefox hangs.  I have tried a few  
> experiments, with no success.  This is also no ordinary directory--- 
> it has been under git control for several months.
> ...
> I have copied the contents of the directory, without the .git  
> control baggage, and the same happens.
> ...
> Thinking the same thing was going no here, I have looked at the  
> directory, but superficially I have seen nothing.  Except a file  
> ".directory" left there by dolphin.  I have recently installed kde  
> 4.3.0, and started liking it a bit, and playing around with it.
>
> I don't know what else to look for, or what method to use, to look  
> for bizaare bits in a tree.
>
> I suppose I will copy all the files over, one at a time.   
> Suggestions would be appreciated.

Are there any files in that directory with unusual names?

Names with ümlauts or åccents in them? Names with &mpersands or sl\ash/ 
es in them? Spaces on the end?

You say the directory is under SVN - if it's a public project & you  
have no reason to be coy about accessing it, perhaps you can post a  
link to it, so that other  people here can try & reproduce.

Stroller.
  
  

Re: [gentoo-user] Firefox and Ephiphany hang at a certain directory

[Alan E. Davis]

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This is my personal working directory, under git control to carry it around
between computers on a flash drive.  Now stripped of git.  I am reluctant to
send it along, but I could send a tarball to someone who is willing to check
on it.  It's 300M.

I moved ./mozilla out of the way.  The problem persists.

I found one ampersand in a file name, and changed it.  No happiness.

Don't know how to find a filename with a space at the end.  Is there a tool
to find hosed filenames?

Thank
Alan Davis

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world,  but when
you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird...
So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing---that's what counts.

   ----Richard Feynman



On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 1:13 AM, Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>wrote:

>
> On 3 Sep 2009, at 10:48, Alan E. Davis wrote:
>
>> It has just happened in the last day that whenever I try to navigate to a
>> certain subdirectory of my home directory, in order to attach a file to an
>> email in gmail, firefox hangs.  I have tried a few experiments, with no
>> success.  This is also no ordinary directory---it has been under git control
>> for several months.
>>  ...
>> I have copied the contents of the directory, without the .git control
>> baggage, and the same happens.
>> ...
>> Thinking the same thing was going no here, I have looked at the directory,
>> but superficially I have seen nothing.  Except a file ".directory" left
>> there by dolphin.  I have recently installed kde 4.3.0, and started liking
>> it a bit, and playing around with it.
>>
>> I don't know what else to look for, or what method to use, to look for
>> bizaare bits in a tree.
>>
>> I suppose I will copy all the files over, one at a time.  Suggestions
>> would be appreciated.
>>
>
> Are there any files in that directory with unusual names?
>
> Names with ümlauts or åccents in them? Names with &mpersands or sl\ash/es
> in them? Spaces on the end?
>
> You say the directory is under SVN - if it's a public project & you have no
> reason to be coy about accessing it, perhaps you can post a link to it, so
> that other  people here can try & reproduce.
>
> Stroller.
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Firefox and Ephiphany hang at a certain directory

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Donnerstag, 3. September 2009 schrieb Alan E. Davis:

> Don't know how to find a filename with a space at the end.  Is there a tool
> to find hosed filenames?

This will find files with a space at the end:
$ find . |grep \ $

PS.: No HTML and/or top posting for a better future for our children. ;-)
-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
LOL, you said ROFL.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Firefox and Ephiphany hang at a certain directory

[Alan McKinnon]

On Thursday 03 September 2009 23:56:49 Alan E. Davis wrote:
> This is my personal working directory, under git control to carry it around
> between computers on a flash drive.  Now stripped of git.  I am reluctant
>  to send it along, but I could send a tarball to someone who is willing to
>  check on it.  It's 300M.
> 
> I moved ./mozilla out of the way.  The problem persists.
> 
> I found one ampersand in a file name, and changed it.  No happiness.
> 
> Don't know how to find a filename with a space at the end.  Is there a tool
> to find hosed filenames?

Not really, it's a tricky problem - the computer doesn't know what "hosed" 
could mean as it's stupid and doesn't assign significance to things (that's a 
human trait).

ls -al *' '

does the trick

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

[gentoo-user] Re: Firefox and Ephiphany hang at a certain directory

[walt]

On 09/03/2009 02:48 AM, Alan E. Davis wrote:
> It has just happened in the last day that whenever I try to navigate to
> a certain subdirectory of my home directory, in order to attach a file
> to an email in gmail, firefox hangs...

You could try starting firefox from a command prompt like this:

$firefox foo  (where foo is the name of the guilty subdirectory.)  You
might see some error messages on the console, or not.

Perhaps running firefox with strace would give you a hint which file
is causing the hangup.