[gentoo-amd64] Re: firefox-bin "Save Link As..." does not work

[Duncan]

"Daiajo Tibdixious" <daiajo@×××××.com> posted
a4a9bfcb0606182302x36118a18sf09bb9a2c19e2a04@××××××××××.com, excerpted
below, on  Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:02:57 +1000:

> # grep hda6 /etc/fstab
> /dev/hda6               /               ext3            noatime
>          0 1
> I'm also puxxled why hda6 is never fsck'd during boot, I though having
> that last 1 would check it every time.

That's because it's root, and because it's ext3 -- the journalling changes
the way things work a bit and full fscks aren't needed as often.  (I run
reiserfs, not ext3, so don't know the exact details, but IIRC, ext3 has a
counter that will run the fsck every X number of boots, with X tweakable
using I believe tunefs.)

I'd suggest you read up on ext3 if interested.  As it happens, Gentoo's
own founder Daniel Robbins has one of the better known series comparing
the various filesystem types.  He wrote it for IBM DeveloperWorks back
when 2.4 was new.  (Reiserfs at least is much improved since then, with
the data=writeback/ordered/journalled choices of ext3, defaulting to
ordered.  The others will have changed some as well, but probably not as
dramatically.)  In any case, he explains journalled filesystems quite
well, as well as the writeback/ordered/journalled distinction and the
series still serves as a very good intro to the various filesystems so
it's still well worth reading.  I believe Gentoo still links to it in
their "Other papers of interest by Gentoo devs" or whatever they call it
section, so that's where I'd look.

> After the fsck the system works normally, I emerged system & world with
> no problems.
>
> firefox-bin still refuses to save links, but no longer crashes, but
> after some time idling, it eats all CPU and has to be kill -9'd.

You may want to verify that you've remerged the 32-bit compatibility
libraries that firefox-bin depends on.

As for why this might be happening, I'd say there's a fair chance your
disk is getting ready to die.  I'd DEFINITELY recommend getting backups
ASAP, if you don't have them, and don't want to lose whatever.  Also start
thinking about a new disk, altho as long as you are keeping good backups,
the disk you have might be fine for awhile, even if it's starting to go. 
You'll likely just gradually have more and more problems with it.

Of course, a failing power supply or overheated CPU or memory (you aren't
overclocking are you?) could also do it, but aren't generally as
catastrophic to lose in terms of data loss as losing a hard drive without
backups can be.  Depending on the problem, it can still cause crosslinking
and the like, so you /can/ lose files, but it's far more likely a file
here and a file there than whole sections of the disk as it can be if the
disk is the problem (and that's assuming the entire disk doesn't simply
die, all at once).

No matter /what/ it ends up being, I'd be verifying your backups, if you
don't want to lose your data.  That's for SURE.

I had a disk overheat last year due to an AC going out -- summers here in
Phoenix can be brutal 45C in the ventilated shade, so the AC goes out and
the computer room could easily hit 55C, the computer ambient 70C, and the
drives...  WAYYY too high!!!  Now I'm running 4x300 gig Seagate SATAs in
RAID, a bit slower, but the best warrantee (5 yr.) and I've got the
critical stuff on RAID-6, so can lose two of the four drives without data
loss.  Oh, new AC as well!  

Anyway, I know a bit about drives going out, unfortunately.  Fortunately,
mine didn't go out all at once and I had the critical stuff backed up, tho
the backups weren't as upto date as they should have been, but I got what
I had to and most of what I wanted off.  Actually, the drive still mostly
works, but for the couple partitions that got killed in the heat.  I
expect if I take it apart there will be head-crash rings where the heads
were when it was hot.  As long as I kept it cool after that, however, the
damage didn't seem to spread, but I still got the RAID set up as quickly
as I could.



-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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