Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Bahurim · Joined: 07 Sep 2007 Posts: 34

Running frugal Lighthouse beta4 on a usbhd with Firefox updated to 2.0.0.6 and Thunderbird updated to 1.5.0.13.

Last night I had something strange happen. I booted puppy up, started Firefox and it came up saying it was installing updates, etc... It should not say that since I had not installed/updated anything for a while. Now it does that everytime I reboot puppy and start Firefox or Thunderbird for that matter. Anyway, this took some time and I noticed the freememapplet started at 328 and went down to 22. Shocked

Also, the system shutdown took quite a while on the "saving pup_rw to".

This morning I started snooping around and went into folder /initrd/pup_rw/root/.thumbnails/normal. Files just started popping up in here until it got up to over 1000 files, mostly the same one (lhpup default homepage). I left the directory but going back in starts additional files showing up, and memory is down to 14.

I'm not sure if I munged something up or what, anyone have a clue?

Bruce B · Posted: Wed 12 Sep 2007, 10:18 Post subject:

I don't know what you done either.

How about checking how much size the .thumbnails are taking up and deleting them if size is too much?

How about checking size of FF cache and reducing it if needed? Also, delete the cache.

Does Thunderbird have a compress folders option?

How about making sure none of these programs are performing automatic updates?

How about checking size of /tmp directory?

steevieb · Joined: 30 Dec 2006 Posts: 286 Location: Poole, Dorset. UK

My /initrd/pup_rw/root/.thumbnails was empty, not even a 'normal' folder in it.
I have not updated Firefox or used Thunderbird - still use Seamonkey for email.
I also run from live-cd, not frugal.

Just managed to duplicate this behaviour.
Already had /initrd/pup_rw/root/.thumbnails folder open
Clicked on Rox button in MUT for hda - (/initrd/mnt/dev_save) and icons vanished along with conky.
Now going to /initrd/pup_rw/root/.thumbnails there is a /normal folder and files keep adding all the time. Cannot use cancel button, have to close Rox.

HairyWill · Joined: 26 May 2006 Posts: 2949 Location: Southampton, UK

This is hardly surprising
Rox is generating thumbnails recursively
As far as Rox is concerned it stores its thumbnails in /root/.thumbnails/normal it is presumably clever enough to avoid generating thumbnails for the thumbnails stored here.
What Rox can't take account of is the fact that root is also mounted somewhere else in the filesystem.

I think this is a case of
"when I do this it hurts"
"don't do it then"

I can't think of any pressing need to examine the contents of this directory using rox, if you really have to might I recommend
rox - options - filer windows - show thumbnails - unchecked

None of this addresses the firefox / thunderbird updates and initial shortage of RAM.