[ale] So, which is it? Mint, X, or Firefox

[Sergio Chaves]

Sorry for the long delay in responding...
It turned out that something "funky" was going on with the VBox (4.1)
packaged by the Mint/Ubuntu team.
I asked my wife what was the thing she was doing right before the
system started to behave erratically and she says it was "Windows".
Mmmmmm...
I decided to completely remove the packaged Virtualbox, config files
and all, and install the 4.2.6 version from the VBox site, including
the extension pack.
All symptoms simply vanished - go figure!
I still do not understand why dmesg or any other log file did not hint
about VBox.

Life is good. Happy wife, happy life.

Thanks for everybody who tried to help me.

Sergio

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 6:26 PM, Sergio Chaves <sergio.chaves at gmail.com> wrote:
> Alers,
>
> Need help before wife start asking for my Android Tablet :-)
> Background:
> Old VAIO laptop PCG-K23, 1 Gig RAM - good for downloading recipes, etc.
> Running Fedora - up to 12 - never an issue
> Had Mint 12 running. Everything fine till last upgrade/update.
>
> The problem:
> After the las update, X started to restart on its own.
> Googling it points me to (several) problems with Firefox 17.
> Install Chromium. Problem persists.
>
> Install Mint 14 with MATE. Problem persists.
> Downgrade to Firefox 16 as it cured the issues for most. Not me.
> Install Chromium again, it will not even load, gives me the "sorry" page.
>
> TOP shows - with Firefox 16 running:
> KiB Mem:    961700 total,   854236 used,   107464 free,    48272 buffers
> KiB Swap:   979964 total,      268 used,   979696 free,   434460 cached
>
> Syslog shows:
>  chromium-browse[2797]: segfault at f94a47be ip f94a47be sp bfe0df3c error 4
> Jan  2 17:39:53 laila-PCG-K23-UC kernel: [ 7192.640141]
> chromium-browse[2819]: segfault at f94a47be ip f94a47be sp bfe0df3c error 4
> Jan  2 17:39:56 laila-PCG-K23-UC kernel: [ 7195.537858]
> chromium-browse[2826]: segfault at f94a47be ip f94a47be sp bfe0df3c error 4
> Jan  2 17:39:58 laila-PCG-K23-UC kernel: [ 7197.249233]
> chromium-browse[2834]: segfault at f94a47be ip f94a47be sp bfe0df3c error 4
> Jan  2 17:40:08 laila-PCG-K23-UC kernel: [ 7207.453878]
> chromium-browse[2841]: segfault at f94a47be ip f94a47be sp bfe0df3c error 4
> Jan  2 17:40:21 laila-PCG-K23-UC kernel: [ 7220.015492]
> chromium-browse[2848]: segfault at f94a47be ip f94a47be sp bfe0df3c error 4
> Jan  2 17:57:39 laila-PCG-K23-UC x-session-manager[2483]: WARNING: Detected
> that screensaver has left the bus
> Jan  2 17:57:39 laila-PCG-K23-UC mdm[2453]: WARNING:
> mdm_slave_xioerror_handler: Fatal X error - Restarting :0
> Jan  2 17:57:40 laila-PCG-K23-UC acpid: client 2463[0:0] has disconnected
>
> Is the screensaver crapping out that is  causing me to lose my Tablet?
> She prefers Mint because it is(was ?) a more user friendly distro.
> Also, she misses the auto-complete on search field on FF17. Reinstalling
> FF16 did not solve the problem.
> Adding this rule, browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled - true, in
> about:config did not work.
> Help!
>
> Sergio