My downloads in Firefox are failing.

[Trenix25]

I found this line in the file:

dxhum:x:1000:1000xHum,,,:/home/dxhum:/bin/bash

Sorry, just an old DOS guy learning Linux.

(I cut and pasted the line from the file. Not sure why the smilie showed up)

Ok, this means that /home/dxhum is your home directory so Firefox should be downloading to /home/dxhum/Downloads/

Make sure to use:

$ cd

Use pwd to see if it says /home/dxhum first.

$ ls -al

Then see if your directory uses permission 0700 as it should. Then look at Downloads to make sure it uses 0700 as well. 0700 for a directory looks like drwx------.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

 

[DxHum]

Ok, this means that /home/dxhum is your home directory so Firefox should be downloading to /home/dxhum/Downloads/

Make sure to use:

$ cd

Use pwd to see if it says /home/dxhum first.

$ ls -al

Then see if your directory uses permission 0700 as it should. Then look at Downloads to make sure it uses 0700 as well. 0700 for a directory looks like drwx------.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

Thank you. I'm just learning Ubuntu and appreciate your patience.

I followed your instructions; this is my Download directory:

drwxrwxr-- 2 dxhum dxhum 4096 Nov 5 19:37 Downloads

 

[DxHum]

Ok, this means that /home/dxhum is your home directory so Firefox should be downloading to /home/dxhum/Downloads/

Make sure to use:

$ cd

Use pwd to see if it says /home/dxhum first.

$ ls -al

Then see if your directory uses permission 0700 as it should. Then look at Downloads to make sure it uses 0700 as well. 0700 for a directory looks like drwx------.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

Update:

I did find the permissions button for Firefox on the list of installed software and turned on both the personal files and system files access (their switches were off). I rebooted with no effect. But after a cold reboot, the problem appears solved.

drwxrwxr-- 2 dxhum dxhum 4096 Nov 5 19:37 Downloads

The "drwxrwxr"... are these called switches? When I think of switches, I think of command line entries in terminal.

Also, can you provide a link to a document that explains this? I'm confused; can "700" and "drwx" be used interchangeably? Are they referring to two different things?

 

[Trenix25]

$ chmod 0700 Downloads

Now tell Firefox to put downloads in /home/dxhum/Downloads

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

 

[Trenix25]

Update:

I did find the permissions button for Firefox on the list of installed software and turned on both the personal files and system files access (their switches were off). I rebooted with no effect. But after a cold reboot, the problem appears solved.

drwxrwxr-- 2 dxhum dxhum 4096 Nov 5 19:37 Downloads

The "drwxrwxr"... are these called switches? When I think of switches, I think of command line entries in terminal.

Also, can you provide a link to a document that explains this? I'm confused; can "700" and "drwx" be used interchangeably? Are they referring to two different things?

Those are called permissions. The d means the entry is a directory. - means file. s means socket. p means pipe. b means block device, like a hard drive. c means character device, like a terminal. rwx means read write execute. For a directory x means search access.

The numbers are in octal.

00 is 0 or ---
01 is 1 or --x
02 is 2 or --w-
03 is 3 or --wx
04 is 4 or r--
05 is 5 or r-x
06 is 6 or rw-
07 is 7 or rwx

0700 is -rwx------
0755 would be -rwxr-xr-x

unless it's a directory then the leading hyphen will be a d instead.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

 

[Trenix25]

$ man 1 chmod

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

 

[TechnoJunky]

Your Downloads directory really doesn't require group access. Nothing in your home directory tree should have world access.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell

You're right, it doesn't require it. However it is the default for desktop installations.

 

[Trenix25]

You're right, it doesn't require it. However it is the default for desktop installations.

It doesn't have to be. I set my umask to 0077 to use as my default.

Signed,

Matthew Campbell