DISCOVERY Re: Why is Firefox such a beast??

[Todd Denniston]

Beartooth wrote, On 10/08/2008 12:49 PM:
> On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:03:44 +0000, I Beartooth wrote:
> 
>> I'm running Firefox under F8 and F9 on five different machines, and it's
>> a pain on every one of them, albeit in slightly different ways; but the
>> differences differ, too.
>>
>> 	The first thing they have in common is that it takes forever to
>> launch -- when it does launch. The second is that it mostly doesn't. It
>> will try, and the little blue dots will circle for a while, and the
>> window list on the panel will show a mark for it -- for a while.
>> Sometimes one or another window will flash up and disappear, usually too
>> fast even to identify.
> 	[...]
> 

<SNIP>
> 	There are two things I've long made a practice of moving from 
> machine to machine, either with scp or by sneakermail, whichever seemed 
> easier at the time : FEBE, and my collection of desktop background 
> pictures (aka wallpaper, I believe).
> 
> 	I had noticed a new problem with the pix, but hadn't thought to 
> check for it with FEBE : a lot of files a/o folders would show up in 
> nautilus with a padlock emblem. Lo and behold, the extension folders, and 
> some others, were littered all over with those blasted padlocks.
> 

do the 'padlocks' indicate read only? [I never use those GUI file manglers on 
anything but MS.]

> 	I had also discovered that I could clear away the padlocks by 
> right-clicking a parent folder, choosing Properties, going to the 
> Permissions tab, and making changes. 
> 
> 	(Why should there *be* permissions trouble with a file or folder, 
> belonging to user btth on one machine, burned to CD by that user, 

Assumption, you burned the file to the CD with out putting it into an archive 
file, i.e., you did not use tar or zip.
When you copied the files you (or the GUI file mangler) told it to keep the 
permissions it had on the source media, and a CD is _ALWAYS_ read only if you 
are not using UDF(??), so the files at the destination are read only.

use tar or zip to create an archive of multiple files which then goes on the 
CD|DVD|USBdrive which you move around, it will give you less surprises.
or learn to use `chmod u+w -R my_moved_dir`

> inserted into another machine, then dragged and dropped by the same user 
> into some folder belonging to that user?? Is this yet another betise of 
> SELinux?? It didn't use to happen.)
> 
> 	Anyway, I applied the same method to the padlock-littered firefox 
> folders in my user's .mozilla -- several times, from the firefox folder 
> itself on down -- and the various installs of firefox on F8 and F9 did at 
> least start launching better than before.
> 
<SNIP>


-- 
Todd Denniston
Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC Crane)
Harnessing the Power of Technology for the Warfighter