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Download fails if I use option "ask you where to save files".

  • 5 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by Gannet

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Having difficulty downloading .pdf's from web sites. If I allow the system to use my normal download directory it works fine but I want to use the "ask you where to save files" feature. When I select this in Preferences the downloads are just ignored. Download arrow doesn't change colour, no dialogue appears. Nothing in Download History. Tried resetting

Details - Firefox 55.0.2 (64-bit) + Linux Mint 1.0. Operating system - Linux Mint 18.1 Serena, base

Having difficulty downloading .pdf's from web sites. If I allow the system to use my normal download directory it works fine but I want to use the "ask you where to save files" feature. When I select this in Preferences the downloads are just ignored. Download arrow doesn't change colour, no dialogue appears. Nothing in Download History. Tried resetting Details - Firefox 55.0.2 (64-bit) + Linux Mint 1.0. Operating system - Linux Mint 18.1 Serena, base

Chosen solution

Still can be a permission problem, happens often enough as Firefox was not installed in the same group permission as your other programs. You can run it in root to see if that makes a difference.

You can refresh by going into your "about:support" and clicking "refresh firefox"

After that make sure your "Compositing" is set to "OpenGL" in your "about:support" screen. If it's set on basic, then goto your "about:config" and find the key layers.acceleration.force-enabled and set it to true and restart. Usually Compositing is set to Basic on Linux, which makes FF run like ass.

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Check the permissions on the directory you are trying to download/write the files to. More then likely Firefox does not have the correct permissions to write to that directory.

So you will have to look at a Chmod guide for your Linux distro to give Firefox read & write access to that location.

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I don't get as far as being offered a directory to save to. If I select to use the standard download directory, it downloads it. If I go back to "ask you where to save files" clicking the same link does nothing.

The directories I am trying to use I use are on a local server. They include my standard Download directory which works fine. I use them to regularly to edit files regularly using other software .. text editor, LibreOffice, Thunderbird etc. and have no problems with permiossions.

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Is there some obscure file somewhere which could contain an error message being generated?

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Chosen Solution

Still can be a permission problem, happens often enough as Firefox was not installed in the same group permission as your other programs. You can run it in root to see if that makes a difference.

You can refresh by going into your "about:support" and clicking "refresh firefox"

After that make sure your "Compositing" is set to "OpenGL" in your "about:support" screen. If it's set on basic, then goto your "about:config" and find the key layers.acceleration.force-enabled and set it to true and restart. Usually Compositing is set to Basic on Linux, which makes FF run like ass.

Modified by BeerBaroN23

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It Worked. The problem was somewhere in my profile but the "Refresh" button fixed it.

Thank you for the tip about "about:support". I've not seen it before. When I first clicked the "Refresh" button I was put off by the warnings about losing my set up and information that I had built up over the years. This is what I did:

  • Moved my profile so that Firefox would create a clean one.
  • Restarted Firefox, download now worked.
  • Ran the "Refresh" routine, download still worked.
  • Closed FF, replaced the clean profile with my original and restarted. download stopped working again.
  • Ran the refresh" routine with my old profile still present. Download now worked again. I still had all my bookmarks, saved passwords and other stuff I wouldn't have wanted to lose. It lost some of my settings and the Add-Ons but it only took ten minutes to put that right. My Add-Ons are being reviewed anyway because of the impending changes in FF.

I had to delete a very long standing profile in LibreOffice so I was impressed that the "refresh" button was able to fix it without requiring me to recreate it.

I would love to know what in the profile was causing the problem but I'd already used about:config to reset the download settings and remove file entries with invalid paths. After that I was stuck until I got your suggestion.

Modified by Gannet