The _khAttAm_ blog

Posts Tagged ‘firefox’

I am using Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat and used to have been using the following programs for downloading stuff from the internet:

Firefox Default Download Manager for HTTP/FTP Downloads and Deluge for Torrents.

It was not much convenient because Firefox resume does not always work in case of crashes or in case of power cuts. Also it does not support multi-threaded downloads. So, I decided to try out Fatrat along with Flashgot firefox add-on. Fatrat and Flashgot both can be installed from Ubuntu Software Center. If you are using beta or development version of Firefox, then you need to get it from Firefox Addons Website or Flashgot website.

Fatrat, like Free Download Manager (which is currently only available for Windows), can be used as a torrent client, HTTP/FTP Download Manager, Rapidshare download (it waits for appropriate time automatically and downloads), Youtube Download (at the time of writing this, Youtube download seems not to be working) and much more.

It supports remote control via jabber and web interface.

Since Flashgot does not support Fatrat by default, you will need to add support for Fatrat. When it asks for path, enter /usr/bin/fatrat. After that, you can select and right click a link and Flashgot it. You can also select Flashgot>Fatrat when the download box comes up.

When you click OK, Fatrat should show the add link dialog.

Have fun downloading.

I am using Firefox 3.6.6 on my Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat Alpha and wanted to experiment with it.

Firefox uses the profile directory to read and write settings, bookmarks, saved passwords, extension preferences etc. When Firefox is launched, it reads those from profile directory and constantly accesses and writes information to the directory. I thought keeping this in RAM could make Firefox faster. To do so, I wrote a small script that copies the profile to RAMDISK and launches Firefox with that profile directory.

First of all, you will need to increase the RAMDISK size so that it can hold the profile directory. The profile directory can grow with cached files so you may want to limit caching appropriately by setting lower the values of browser.cache.disk.capacity and browser.cache.offline.capacity in about:config. You can set the RAMDISK size by editing /etc/default/grub and appending ramdisk_size=SIZE_IN_BYTES to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT. To edit, you will need to open it as root (gksu gedit /etc/default/grub). The line should look like the following after the edit if you want the RAMDISK size to be approximately 256Mb:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash ramdisk_size=256000"

After saving the file, you need to run the following command from the terminal to update grub

sudo update-grub

Now, restart your computer for changes to take effect.

When this is done, save the following file as /usr/local/bin/firefox-ram. Uncomment (remove hash from) the line containing PROFILE_PATH and change the path to your Firefox profile directory.

#!/bin/bash
 
# firefox_ram v0.1 by _khAttAm_
# www.khattam.info
# July 09, 2010
# Needs RAM_DEVICE larger than the size of profile directory
# Needs zenity installed
# Copyright (C) 2010  _khAttAm_
 
# will not run as intended and may cause data loss if profile directory
# is full or ramdisk is smaller than profile directory size
 
#    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
#    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
#    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
#    (at your option) any later version.
 
#    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#    GNU General Public License for more details.
 
#    See .
 
# Change the following
 
PROFILE_PATH=/home/pravin/.mozilla/firefox/e2k9jth5.default/
 
if [ ! -n "$PROFILE_PATH" ];
then
	zenity --info --text="Profile path not set. Please edit the script \

	to set firefox profile path."
	exit
fi
 
USER_NAME=$USERNAME
TMP_PROFILE_DIR=/home/$USERNAME/.mozilla/firefox/ramdisk/
 
RAM_DEVICE=/dev/ram0
 
if [ -f /tmp/firefox-ram-lock ]
 
then
	zenity --info --text="Only one instance is allowed. If no instances\
	 are open, it may be performing post save operations. Please wait a\
	 few moments and try again. If this persists and you are sure \
	 nothing is going on, just remove /tmp/firefox-ram-lock and run \

	 again."
	exit
fi
 
touch /tmp/firefox-ram-lock
 
echo "
 
umount $RAM_DEVICE
mkdir -p $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
umount $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
mount -t ext2 $RAM_DEVICE $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
">/tmp/firefox-ram-pre-pre.sh
 
chmod +x /tmp/firefox-ram-pre-pre.sh
gksu sh /tmp/firefox-ram-pre-pre.sh
 
# the following needs to be run as root
 
# this could be done by using gksu followed by command for each,
# but gksu has problem with commandline option -R
# hence the commands that need to be run as root are written to
# a temporary file and then executed using gksu
echo "
umount $RAM_DEVICE
mke2fs $RAM_DEVICE
 
mkdir -p $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
umount $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
mount $RAM_DEVICE $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
">/tmp/firefox-ram-pre1.sh
chmod +x /tmp/firefox-ram-pre1.sh
gksu sh /tmp/firefox-ram-pre1.sh
 
PROFILE_DIR_SIZE=`du -s $PROFILE_PATH | cut -f1`
 
#echo $PROFILE_DIR_SIZE
 
RAM_DISK_SIZE=`df -k| grep $RAM_DEVICE|cut -d' ' -f16`
 
#echo $RAM_DISK_SIZE
 
if [ "$RAM_DISK_SIZE" \< "$PROFILE_DIR_SIZE" ];
then
	zenity --info --text="The size of RAMDISK ($RAM_DISK_SIZE bytes) is\

	 not large enough to hold the profile directory \
	 ($PROFILE_DIR_SIZE bytes). This program can't continue. Either \
	 increase the size of RAMDISK or clear history and cache to reduce \
	 the size of profile directory."
	rm /tmp/firefox-ram-lock
	exit
 
fi
 
echo "
cp -u -R $PROFILE_PATH* $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
chown -R $USER_NAME $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
chmod -R 744 $TMP_PROFILE_DIR*
 
">/tmp/firefox-ram-pre2.sh
chmod +x /tmp/firefox-ram-pre2.sh
gksu sh /tmp/firefox-ram-pre2.sh
 
echo `date +%s` > $TMP_PROFILE_DIR/firefox_ram.chk
 
#run firefox with profile directory as the one in ramdisk
 
firefox -profile $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
 
#copy profile back to HDD
cp -u -R $TMP_PROFILE_DIR* $PROFILE_PATH
 
rm /tmp/firefox-ram-lock

Now, Alt+F2 and firefox-ram to run Firefox with profile from RAM. You should enter your password when asked as this is required to create and work with RAMDISK. The first launch can be a little slow, but subsequent launches should be quicker. You can also create a launcher in your dock or your Desktop for easy access.

Please note that when using this script, you should not switch between the other Firefox as that may cause data loss (loss of bookmarks, settings changes etc.). Also, you are advised to backup your profile directory regularly while using this script as it may cause data loss.

Please suggest improvements and changes in the script.

I had posted about flash plugin controls not working in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala 64 bit here. I had moved to Ubuntu 32 bit for quite sometime and recently made a move back to Ubuntu 64 bit. I found the same problem with flash plugin controls in Ubuntu 64 bit. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I haven’t found any specific patterns to when it does and when it doesn’t. If someone has, please do share.

In my previous post regarding the issue, I had suggested the installation of Adobe flash player 64 bit version from Adobe Labs website. The solution worked fine for me and it seems for most of the others, but the plugin was experimental and when someone needed to update, it was not available via repositories. It has been provided in a launchpad ppa repository currently which can be added by adding ppa:sevenmachines/ppa to Repositories in Synaptic, but it seems it is not updated as of now and the latest version available in the ppa is 10.0.45.2 while Adobe has already released version 10.1rc4. But since the latest version is not recognized by youtube, I think we should stay with the version in the repository.

Simply open up synaptic and navigate to Settings>Repositories>Other Software and click on Add. In the apt-line, enter ppa:sevenmachines/flash and close it. Then Click on the Reload button. Now, search for flashplugin64-installer, mark it for installation and click on apply.

When done, restart firefox and flash should run fine.

Please share your flash player 10 experience in Linux.

I’ve been lately addicted to a facebook game called Cricket Master Blaster. It is a nice game.

There is a feature which allows players to send challanges to their friends. If someone sends you such a challange, you may want to win the challange by retrying again and again, but that is not allowed. You are allowed to accept only once and you have to make it the first time. However, the following hack will help you.
Read the rest of this entry »

I am using Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala on my Desktop with Firefox 3.5 as my primary browser. Recently I was facing problems playing online media (streaming mp3s, non-flash) including FM from my own page on Firefox. Read the rest of this entry »

I use Firefox 3.5.3 for my day to day browsing on my Ubuntu Karmic Koala Alpha (with KDE 4.3) and recently I experienced tremendous slowdowns making it less fit for use. I use a lot of addons including Firebug and Greasemonkey and it is no surprise that Firefox is slower than one without any extensions. I cannot move to Google Chrome or Epiphany because of the dependency on various add-ons such as Adblock Plus, Lastpass, Greasemonkey, Firebug and others and so I had to look what I can do. Read the rest of this entry »

Please find the latest post here.

UPDATE Nov 2, 2009: If you want to make flash work normal in 64-bit Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, the following commands shall help. So start your terminal and get going:

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sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-installer flashplugin-nonfree swdec-mozilla mozilla-plugin-gnash
cd /tmp
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.32.18.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
tar xf libflashplayer-10.0.32.18.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
sudo mv libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

and restart firefox. If this does not work or you want to keep track of what has happened here, read on.

UPDATE Nov 2, 2009: The problem persisted for me even after I upgraded to the latest version. Using 64-bit flash plugin from Adobe Labs helps for me now. For this you will need to download the latest plugin from http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html and extract it to /home/YOUR_USER_NAME/.mozilla/plugins or /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins. If you intend to extract it to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins then you will need root privileges. One way of getting root privileges is launching nautilus as “gksu nautilus /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins” in the Run Application dialog (Alt+F2). Then copy the extracted libflashplayer.so in that directory and restart Firefox.

UPDATE: I had problems with swfdec-gnome also. When I used to close any tabs with active flash content, firefox would simply crash. I removed it and installed flashplugin via flashplug-installer (in synaptic) and now it is working fine. I disabled some plugins and maybe thats what worked. Not sure. Anyone came up with whats actually happening?

ORIGINAL POST 10 Aug, 2009: I recently installed Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10) alpha 4 amd64 version and have been facing problem with flashplugin for Firefox 3.5. The flashplugin is a large download (as it depends on 32 bit libraries.. they have 32 bit version of the plugin now in amd64 too) and does not work well with YouTube videos, the flash applications do not respond user clicks. I have removed flashplugin via Synaptic Package Manager and installed swfdec-mozilla instead (firefox restart required after you do). This one has worked fine for me till now.

Hope this was helpful. Hope this is solved in the stable release.

Thanks to “Fatal Toenail Infection”.

I have Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope 64bit and wanted to give Google Chrome Browser a try to see what it feels like to be running Google Chrome OS (which will be based on Linux and run Google  Chrome Browser).

UPDATE Nov 21: Just adding the repository:
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable main
will let you install Google Chrome right from Synaptic.

UPDATE: Now I have Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10) alpha 4 and same works for Karmic too. Read the rest of this entry »

Firefox 3.5 is out for other OSes however the final version is not available for Linux. This is how you install it on your Jaunty Jackalope installation. We will use the terminal for this. It is just a copy and paste from here to your terminal so it should be fine. Read the rest of this entry »

You just found a solution to your problem in google, but cannot view it because the site that requires you to be a registered user.

How do you bypass compulsory registrations to such sites?

Well, I used bugmenot most of the times. But bugmenot does not contain login for all sites (unless of course somebody posts it there) and some sites ban users whose login information is posted in bugmenot.

Solution:
Use Google Cache.
Most sites allow google bots to view and cache the page contents so that they get their content indexed in Google. You can view the page the by simply clicking Cached.

Image (Click to Enlarge): h4cky0u blocks Guests but welcomes Googlebot

Read the rest of this entry »