Query about parasitic firefox file

[Bret Busby]

On 09/03/2018, Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9 March 2018 at 05:33, Ralf Mardorf <silver.bullet at zoho.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 8 Mar 2018 20:39:49 +0000, Colin Law wrote:
>>>On 8 March 2018 at 20:13, Bret Busby <bret.busby at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> then I suppose that I will have to assume that firefox v58 has
>>>> corrupted the system to the extent that the system needs to be
>>>> rebuilt.
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> no, Firefox cannot corrupt the system to this extent.
>>
>>>No it won't have corrupted the system. It probably means something has
>>>the file open.  Try a reboot.
>>
>> The path contains "firefox" [1], so don't reboot, instead run
>>
>>   killall -9 firefox && lsof|head -n1;lsof|grep firefox
>
> Easier to reboot, don't run a command unless you understand it and for
> most it would be quicker to reboot than work out exactly what that
> command does to ensure it will work and that there is no danger of
> unexpected side effects.
>
>>
>> to check if something has got the file opened.
>
> and if something does still have the file open there is yet more to
> do. As I said, it is probably easier just to reboot.
>
> Colin
>

I shutdown firefox (using the File -> Quit option), and after its
usual crash during the shutting down of firefox, the free space that
was not free, was freed.

Now, for the present time, I am instead running Seamonkey 2.29 (on
that computer), which appears to be much more stable than firefox 57
and 58.

And, the free space is still free.

-- 

Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia

..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
 Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
 "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
 A Trilogy In Four Parts",
 written by Douglas Adams,
 published by Pan Books, 1992

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