[ale] Please help Drew fix his browser problem

[Dow Hurst]

James brought up a good point about his using Debian Unstable.  I don't 
think the stable version has very updated packages, correct?  My 
impression is that most people using Debian are using the "unstable" 
repositories.  Which are you using, Drew?

I would say that for a good working browser environment you would need 
the latest Flash, Acrobat 7, java2-jre-1.4.2, and the latest version of 
your browser.  I have found that I require Mozilla 1.4.x to interact 
properly with Lotus Notes, which is the email calendaring system at 
UNCG.  I am a Mozilla fan still, but have used Firefox some and like it 
okay.  It just has some defaults I don't like and didn't see a quick way 
to switch around.  I still keep alot of mail in Mozilla so the single 
program for both mail and browsing is fine with me.  I am impressed with 
the latest Acrobat 7 for Linux.  By the way, I love SUSE and will 
probably stick with it since it has so many programs precompiled, ready 
to install, and most all of it just works now.  Either Yast2 or Apt is 
how I update machines unless I feel like using checkinstall instead.  
The huge number of security problems with browsers that are cropping up 
left and right are a real pain since I can't keep up with updating all 
the boxes and warning users of possible changes.

The experience I've had with Redhat RHEL3 on the Dell's has not been 
great.  If I run the update routines, invariably something is broken I 
can't find out how to fix.  Since I configured apt and use Dag's 
repository and the kde-redhat repository, I have had good success and no 
major foulups.  I did load SUSE 9.3 on the last Dell Precision we 
purchased and it is sweet.
Sincerely,
Dow

ChangingLINKS.com wrote:

>Thank you, Dow for taking the time to post the reply entitled 
>"Debian issues from Drew" 
>
>I delayed responding because I anticipated Geoffrey repairing the system. 
>He bailed on the challenge. Nonetheless, I assume he would have requested your 
>help anyway - so I look forward to it.
>
>
>
>
>Getting started  . . .
>
>Without further ado, I will attempt to repair the system again, hopefully with 
>ALE help. I have given the problems to several people and trying fixing the 
>issues myself and failed. I have tried hiring people and they have failed.
>
>I will approach the list of problems in order, one issue at a time.
>
>The first problem I named "Unstable Browser":
>There are 3 browser related problems in this file:
>
>
>STABILITY 
>PROBLEM:*************************************************************************************************************************
>I am using Firefox 0.9.1. The problem is that the browser crashes often. For 
>example, when I go to http://www.kitco.com/market and then try going to 
>another site, the browser crashes. It also crashes when I browse around 
>fark.com. These are not the only two sites that have a problem. It seems like 
>any site that has flash, java, lots of content, or has bad code will crash 
>it. Based on the error message (shown below) someone told me to upgrade the X 
>server. Here, you can see the original error, me updating X, and then a new 
>error.
>
>Even after running apt-get install xserver-xfree86 kde (to update ALL of the X 
>server and KDE) I get the second "gecko" error below
>
>root at not a tty[/]# firefox
>selected locale: en-US
>The program 'firefox-bin' received an X Window System error.
>This probably reflects a bug in the program.
>The error was 'BadShmSeg (invalid shared segment parameter)'.
>  (Details: serial 37 error_code 171 request_code 147 minor_code 2)
>  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
>   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
>   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
>   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
>   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)
>root at not a tty[/]# Mutex destroy failure: Device or resource busy
>ICE default IO error handler doing an exit(), pid = 4016, errno = 0
>ICE default IO error handler doing an exit(), pid = 3790, errno = 0
>
>]# apt-get install xserver-XFree86
>. . .
>Preparing to replace xserver-common 4.3.0.dfsg.1-1 
>(using .../xserver-common_4.3.0.dfsg.1-10_i386.deb) ...
>Unpacking replacement xserver-common ...
>Preparing to replace xserver-xfree86 4.3.0.dfsg.1-1 
>(using .../xserver-xfree86_4.3.0.dfsg.1-10_i386.deb) ...
>Unpacking replacement xserver-xfree86 ...
>Setting up xserver-common (4.3.0.dfsg.1-10) ...
>
>Setting up xserver-xfree86 (4.3.0.dfsg.1-10) ...
>
>]# firefox
>selected locale: en-US
>The program 'Gecko' received an X Window System error.
>This probably reflects a bug in the program.
>The error was 'BadShmSeg (invalid shared segment parameter)'.
>  (Details: serial 37 error_code 171 request_code 147 minor_code 2)
>  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
>   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
>   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
>   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
>   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)
>
>*******************************************************************************************************************
>CUT AND PASTE PROBLEM: IF you update the browser, please make sure that "cut 
>and paste" still works the same way it does now. Right now, I can highlight 
>the text, and then use the center wheel button to paste the highlighted text 
>into a form field in the browser. One time, when I updated to Firefox 1.0, 
>this cut and paste feature no longer worked.
>
>*******************************************************************************************************************
>AUTOMATIC WEBSITE LOADING PROBLEM: Sometimes I highlight some text TRY TO use 
>the wheel to paste it in a browser form but, I MISS THE FORM. When that 
>happens, Firefox automatically loads the new web page as though I wanted to 
>surf to the URL that I was pasting. Please disable that feature. I never want 
>to browse to another page by pasting a URL into an existing web page.
>
>
>I have tried upgrading xfree86, KDE and firefox (and combinations of those 
>solutions). The only "Debian" system that I could observe (Debian systems 
>SEEM hard to come by) has a STABLE setup. It is Knoppix.
>
>My latest idea is to try to examine Knoppix and then try to install the same 
>versions of each package on my Debian system in hopes of duplicating the 
>stability that Knoppix has. My guess is that is not the best solution.
>
>
>Let's get started . . .
>Questions?
>Suggestions please?
>  
>