Firefox 3.6.13 Tools/Downloads

[#1]

@Jeremy,
Not had time to do much, what with Committee meetings and now preparations for a couple of weeks off (cruise Barcelona, Rome, Naples to list the major ones)
I have not yet succeeded in getting a recent back-up of /home on to the thumbs, the lack of permissions still prevent it, possibly a result of the log-in problem. If all else fails the Simple Backup of late December will have to do.
I do not see how mention of a use of collin as a ownership name has arisen, I think that I have consistently spelt it correctly.
My nice new 10.04.2 Live disk has arrived but I have not had time to play with it as yet. I do note that it is actually labelled as 10.04.1 but it was ordered and invoiced as 10.04.2 . It will not be much of a problem to upgrade to to .2 if the labelling turns out to be correct.
Now to get the suitcases out!!!!
C.

[#2]

Any numbers after 10.4 are just upgrades and will save you some downloads.

[#3]

Yes I was aware that this was the case but thanks for the comment.
The Live CD turned out to be 10.04.2 despite the label. Have not done anything significant with it but did notice that it correctly came up with the panel offering the options of Live CD or Install, which is some comfort. However I did select Live CD and it promptly came up with the log-in panel which is a bit odd and also what its downloaded predecessor did. I am beginning to wonder if there is some credibility in the advice that there may be conflict with the video driver that the laptop has. I have not pursued this so far because 8.04 and 9.10 did not object at all and their display was entirely normal (as it is with the Failsafe Gnome session that I am using now). If I can find the forum that the advice came from I will ask.

[#4]

If you had video driver compatibility problems it wouldn't display anything or it would fall back to some low resolution awfulness.
See the website http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download (about halfway down, where it says "show me how")
Did you select English and click on the Try Ubuntu box?
The idea of the live CD is that it does not look at any hard disks - indeed a hard disk is purely optional.
Is your log-in panel a graphical screen or a command entry screen?

[#5]

No awful displays thank goodness. The log-in panel is graphical, it can either quote my log-in name or the version of ubuntu as a  title.
Yes English selected as well as Try Ubuntu. I did not go to the install option this time as I did not have enough time to let it get on with it.
I know that when installing I have to insert my log-in name and password but with Try Ubuntu it will not know them and, therefore should not ask for them in my view. You will remember that part of my earlier problem was being asked for the log-in details but, when they were correctly given and apparently accepted, the log-in panel re-appeard later and would repeat it, if log-in were reinserted. In the case of my original Live CD, no Try Ubuntu option was offered, only a log-in panel appeared. I cannot believe that this is due to the CDs but must be some oddity in my laptop and the suggestion that a video driver glitch could explain everything but I did not find this to be likely.
I am interested to know what the Failsafe Gnome session is supposed to do. i know what the similar Windows option was but this one seems to allow me to use 10.02.2 completely normally. I have not found any reference to this facility, can it be that it has not been noticed by those able to run things normally?

[#6]

Looks like it is a know fault in Ubuntu

Quote

Troubles with a LiveCD Logging in Sometimes a LiveCD might ask you for a user-name or password. Just leave these blank and press enter (or allow it to time-out).

From <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD">here</a>
Never seen it on Mint 

[#7]

I'd never heard of "failsafe Gnome" until recently - and I've certainly never run it.

[#8]

@ HB  Thanks, I did not try the blank inputs because they did not help with 10.04.2 itself and I was only going to look at Live mode briefly. More time will undoubtedly prove you right.
@ Jeremy,
Well, as I have said above, with 10.14.2 actually installed (from upgrade option in Update Manager but not going to Desktop after putting in Username and Password inherited from 9.10)), At the bottom of the display there is a bar with "Language", "Keyboard" and "Sessions" listed, I have not explored the first two because they have already been set. The latter has an option menu button which has three items "Failsafe Gnome, Gnome and xterm. If I select Gnome I get into the loop of repeated log-in panels and no further. Failsafe Gnome causes the system to fully load in and work normally. xterm does not seem to do anything. Of course I have no idea that this display is normal with 10.04.2. I have tried no use-names/passwords and correct ones with spelling mistakes but they all come up with "Authorisation failure" error messages so it is evident that the process actually has the proper ones in it somewhere but there is a hurdle stopping it. Using Failsafe does seem to accept the proper log-in/password inputs without complaint. Certainly things requiring my password all work.  Google and Ubuntu Documentation do not know anything about Failsafe so you are not alone !
I have not yet researched the forum where the video driver was mentioned as THE reason why I cannot log-in normally. Knowing that Windows Safe actually isolates most of the drivers, there seemed to be some similarity with what goes on here. We will have to see if I can get more details about this "cure".
In passing and not urgent.  When I first used 8.04 I encountered a known problem with closing down because my BIOS is pre-2000. There is a published workaround using and additional line in fstab saying something like:- " acpi=force " (from memory) which seemed to work OK but with quite a raft of messages scroll down before the final shut-down. I find that 10.04.2 looks like doing the same thing, presumably editing fstab again will put on the rails. Right now a touch of the power button clears the horrid purple porridge on the screen and all disk operation stops. Once I get things up and running I will look to see if there is a similar cure. Have you heard of this?

[#9]

Don't bother about loads of error messages on shutdown - certainly don't edit your fstab file unless you know EXACTLY what you are doing.
Pressing the power button causes an immediate shutdown - you must expect lots of warnings & errors.
I seem to remember to you did a reinstall previously with /home in the fourth partition????
Since you can't run Ubuntu from disk, would you try booting from your CD and running gparted:-
Please list your partitions (with amount used).
You could try http://www.hoverpchacks.com/2011/03/how-to-recover-lost-password-in-ubuntu.html
Please forget video drivers until you have evidence to the contrary - your live CD works doesn't it?

[#10]

Quote from: colintivy

[...]Failsafe Gnome causes the system to fully load in and work normally. xterm does not seem to do anything[...].

If GDM  (GNOME Display Manager) accepts your user name & password, xterm should give you a terminal command line prompt. If you then type

gnome-session > session.txt

you should get some verbose text output (saved to session.txt in your home directory) as Ubuntu tries to load GNOME; hopefully the output will give some indication of why GNOME is failing to load normally.
If you think the video driver may be the cause I'd suggest you delete (or rename) the existing log files:
/var/log/Xorg.0.log
~/.xsession-errors
and reboot before logging-in to the xterm session; /var/log/Xorg.0.log and ~/.xsession-errors should be recreated and give indications of problems with the X server.

Quote

Google and Ubuntu Documentation do not know anything about Failsafe so you are not alone !

The screenshot has a brief description, which is as much as I know; I've never had a need to use it (touch wood).

[#11]

I'm betting that the problem lies in having multiple /home directories (in this case). 

[#12]

@ HB
That all looks interesting, must have look as you suggest when I have time.
@Jeremy
I did not get a sda4 partition but I believe that there is still the /home on sda1 that was inserted on the download upgrade. You may be right about that.
                                                              Size          Used    Flag
Mine are:-        /dev/sda1      ext3    /      11.18GB    4.87GB  Boot   
                      /dev/sda2      swap          517.72Mb 
                      /dev/sda3      ext3  /home  8.72GB    1.026GB
                      unallocated                        7.54GB         
I have tried my new Live CD 10.02.2. It comes up with the Options panel with Try Ubuntu and Install buttons. I selected the Try button and up came the request for a user-name & password which seemed to be inappropriate. I tried to log-in with blanks as HB and the Ubuntu document suggested, but it only said "Authentication failure". Because there has been no opportunity to insert the correct data and it will not accept blanks I cannot proceed. I am not intending to try the Install option just yet because I have not had time to save the old /home.

[#13]

Argh....
Does a "used" of 1GByte for your /home seem right to you - if so, this is where your /home is - in sda3.
Try

ls /home

Does it have a directory called collin in it?
It is not possible for / to contain another home directory - unless it's called something different from home!!!
If you do a

cat /etc/fstab

you should see something like:-

Quote

# <file system> <mount point>  <type>  <options>      <dump>  <pass> proc            /proc          proc    defaults        0      0 # / was on /dev/sda1 during installation UUID=f611b1c5-b05c-4cc9-b651-a9664c3c38e2 /              ext3    relatime,errors=remount-ro 0      1 # /home was on /dev/sda3 during installation UUID=0648d2d1-9a41-4257-8b79-dfc7bc227e82 /home          ext3    relatime         0      2 # swap was on /dev/sda2 during installation UUID=6dfcb67c-bd8c-4b39-ae64-0e6cfdeb881a none            swap    sw 0      0

Ignore any cosmetic differences between my fstab and yours.
When you booted from the CD, did you try just pressing enter, the first time it loaded, no spaces typed etc.

[#14]

ls /home  came up with directory called colin. The size is what I would expect for my old /home. What I cannot be sure of is that although the name is right is it the installed /home on sda1 which has no data in it, only empty folders?
cat /etc/fstab  came up with basically yours but no mention of sda3. Gparted shows sda3 loud and clear. Must be the format ext3 that prevents it from appearing in fstab???
Yes I did use Enter with blank user-name and password when asked but will try again. No spaces were typed into the boxes.

[#15]

OK Lets make this easier on us all.
DO you have ANOTHER PC? If so BOOT it from the CD and tell us IF IT ASKS FOR A PASSWORD.
OR if no PC then REMOVE THE HDD from this one and boot from CD & as above.
TO check WHICH /home is mounted issue a df in a terminal
Like this

df
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3              28G  8.3G   18G  32% /
none                  1.5G  316K  1.5G   1% /dev
none                  1.5G  4.5M  1.5G   1% /dev/shm
none                  1.5G  376K  1.5G   1% /var/run
none                  1.5G     0  1.5G   0% /var/lock
/dev/sda5             430G  353G   56G  87% /home

As you can see from the above my sda5 contains my /home folder.