Nautilus acting up

[Liam Proven]

On 9 December 2016 at 06:02, rikona <rikona at sonic.net> wrote:

> Let's remember the sequence of events. Originally I was having a
> problem with Nautilus and wanted to see if it could be fixed. At that
> point in time I had never even heard of Nemo, and was not thinking of
> replacing Nautilus, so I would never have used the above search line.

Conceded. :-)

OK, then, an alternative search command for someone having untraceable
problems with Nautilus:

"replacement file manager for unity"

I just tried that and it worked rather nicely. Nemo is link #5, for
instance -- one of the pages I already suggested.

The first 2 links have 5 then 4 alternatives -- and I think the 4 are
a subset of the 5. Worth a look.

> Nautilus was "disappearing" when minimized, which is what I mentioned
> in my original email.

Yes, I recall. This sounds like a serious problem, incidentally.

I'm wondering if it is something not directly related since you go on
to say that Nemo is having problems too.

E.g. filesystem corrupton -- if you have not already, I would boot a
live DVD or USB and do an ``fsck -f'' on all your Linux partitions.

You can get any Linux to do this on the root partition by creating a
magic file then rebooting.

The file is called ``forcefsck'' and it goes in the root directory.

So do this:

``sudo touch /forcefsck''

This creates an empty file called ``forcefsck'' in the root directory.

Then reboot -- e.g. type ``sudo shutdown -r now'' immediately after
the prior command.

That does a clean shutdown, reboots, checks the / partition and
repairs it if necessary, then comes back up as normal.

Other potential problems -- "illegal" filenames that Linux can't
handle or display. Strikes me as very unlikely but it's possible.

> And, as mentioned again below, cut/paste does NOT work in Nautilus.

Can you copy a filename and paste it into some other app, e.g. Gedit?

Can you select a filename then alt-tab to Gedit and middle-click to
paste directly?

> Let's again consider the sequence of learning. When I first found out
> about Nemo, cinnamon was a tasty brown powder that I sometimes
> sprinkle on oatmeal. Initially, I did not know there was a cinnamon
> desktop. That was part of the learning sequence, and would definitely
> not have been the first search phrase that I would've used. I think
> you underestimate how much your extensive knowledge and experience
> influences your choice of search terms. Your first search lines seem
> to be very much influenced by knowledge that noncomputer people may
> not have initially. They may learn that after minutes to hours of
> searching and study, and that may be what is necessary to find the
> correct solution.

It's how you get the knowledge, though.

E.g. I started Googling

"what is the name of the gnome file manager" and Google suggested a
more complete question for which the first hit explained about
Nautilus/files.

You don't need the foreknowledge, although yes, it certainly helps.
You just need to formulate the right questions.

> If it was it was well hidden. It did not show up in launcher or any
> search for runnable programs, did not run from the CLI, and was not
> listed as installed in "software", which also offered to install it,
> which I eventually did in 3 above.

I can't see how else it could happen than removing a pinned
(icon-locked-to-launcher) app then reinstalling it.

> If it was not installed, which I believe is the case, and the
> installation in 3 above was the first installation, would that
> normally produce a locked icon, which is what I observed?

No.

But of course the Nautilus/Files icon _is_ normally pinned to the Launcher.

> K3B is great. I still use optical disks to bring photos to the local
> store for printing, and as an off-site archive of important files.
> Much too small for any more backups though...

Fai enough.

> OK - sounds like the 'why' is rather vague... :-)

Yes, well, I am not all that confident in the decision-making process
of the GNOME steering committee. See my most recent tech blog post.

(How to find that is left as an exercise for the reader, as the saying goes.)

> VERY NICE overview - thanks! Your depth of knowledge is impressive...

You're welcome, and thank you.

I would say "that's why they pay me the big bucks", but they don't.

> I know, I know. I've also used this seemingly forever. Any idea why
> it's NOT working? One thought I had - is it possible that the copied
> information is stored in different places/ways by different
> programs/desktops and are not compatible with the subsequent paste?

No. The X.11 clipboard is global, as far as I know.

So is the select/middle-click one but separate.

> That may be good advice at the current time. My last experience was
> with 12.04. I installed LOTS of programs, KDE and otherwise, did a
> fair amount of customizing, and everything ran together amazingly
> well. My expectation was that 16.04 would be even better in this
> respect, but it is, unfortunately, turning out to be significantly
> worse.

Hmm. That's not good. I'd have hoped it'd improve too, but
increasingly, the different desktop environments are going their own
ways.

> I am really, really, REALLY appreciative of the FOSS software I also
> use every day. I don't have anywhere near the knowledge and experience
> of most of the list members, and this severely limits my ability to
> help others and pay back to the community, which I'd like to do. I do
> contribute a bit of money, and have worked with a few authors
> regarding ideas to improve the capability of some programs, some of
> which have been adopted by the author.

Good stuff.

> And again, many thanks for your help.

You're entirely welcome.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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