Cannot type in Firefox fullscreen - DSL 4.0
Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Cannot type in Firefox fullscreen - DSL 4.0
started by: kimangroo
Posted by kimangroo on Nov. 28 2007,10:00
Hi there,First of all big thanks to everyone working on this great little distro and extra special thanks to Robert for getting me registered on the forum.
The reason why I just couldn't wait, urgently had to get on this forum asap, now, now, now was as follows:
;)
I'm trying to get my father's old 64MB 500Mhz laptop up and running as a simple internet kiosk for my sister who only really needs to access gmail and browse.
I've installed DSL 4.0 to the harddrive and configured the wireless card and everything but have run into this strange problem.
When I press F11 and run FF in fullscreen, the cursor prompt disappears and I am no longer able to type. In fact the keyboard stops being recognised completely and so I can't even press F11 to exit fullscreen again.
The keyboard works fine normally and is correctly mapped.
Also, when I was trying to get firefox loaded at startup I realised if you launch firefox from the beginning of .xinitrc, firefox loads without any window or even a file menu bar, equivalent to true fullscreen. However in this situation as well, I cannot use the keyboard.
The screen for this laptop is small and I really want to use every inch of it as well as hide the desktop from my sister who will panic at the sign of anything non-windowsey.
The md5 sums for the iso I downloaded are correct and I ran DSL on my Toshiba laptop and experienced the same problem.
So I guess my questions are:
1. Can anyone duplicate this problem?
2. Can anyone help me solve it?!
3. ... well I have many more questions but I guess those can wait
Thanks a lot for your help,
K.
Posted by john.martzouco on Nov. 28 2007,11:42
Hi kimangroo,Maybe it's just the cursor disappearing? I had this happen to me in something (adding account in < meebo chat >) just a few days ago and I thought the app had died too. Turned out that the program was responsive but the cursor was no longer visible.
John
Posted by kimangroo on Nov. 28 2007,12:49
Hi John,Yeah I thought it was just the cursor disappearing at first but I can't use the keyboard shortcuts (ie F11 to close full screen) either. It seems that the whole keyboard input is being switched off.
I guess that you're not getting this problem with FF then?
I just downloaded DSL-N and ran that on my other laptop and Seamonkey (that's a kind of FF no?) is fine fullscreen.
I'm going to download an older DSL version and see if I have the same problem.
K.
Posted by kimangroo on Nov. 28 2007,13:35
OK with DSL 3.4.1 FF didn't go into proper full screen, and remains in a window. The cursor and keyboard work though.I know next to nothing about this stuff, but could this be a windows manager rather than FF problem? Is it the windows manager that controls/allows an application to go full screen rather than the application itself?
I've also just noticed that when DSL 4.0 is loading, I get the following message just before X (is it?) starts up:
Cloop: initializing cloop v.2.01 (or something like that)
Entering runlevel 5
Loading usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/uk.kmap.gz
Operation failed
As I said the keyboard works fine and is mapped correctly normally but just doesn't work when FF is in full screen. Could the above have anything to do with it? I've tried changing permissions a+r and a+x to the uk.kmap.gz file but that hasn't worked.
hmm...
K.
Edit ** oh and I just realised you can switch windows managers, unfortunately the problem is the same with JWM, Fluxbox and SWM.
Posted by john.martzouco on Nov. 28 2007,14:17
My problem is in Firefox 2.10 running on Windows XP.You might want to try DSL 4.1RC3, it's the latest version. At least it would help to compare problems between versions of the OS.
Oh... try this... from an Aterm console... execute the following and then watch and see if Firefox error messages mean anything pertinent in that console:
| Code Sample |
dsl@box: firefox |
You may get more interactive results if you run it in the background like this (the & is important):
| Code Sample |
dsl@box: firefox & |
I've always used the default US keyboard... maybe that has some impact a well?
Posted by kimangroo on Nov. 28 2007,23:54
Thanks for the suggestions John.I ran firefox from the console as you said, unfortunately the only error I got was it not being able to run the flash plugin that I had tried to install earlier.
I've downloaded the latest DSL 4.1 RC3 as well but it's the same, still no cursor in full screen FF. In fact it's even a little worse; I can't even select text with the mouse.
?I was wondering, can you replicate the problem with DSL (not DSL-N which seems to work)?
Posted by john.martzouco on Nov. 29 2007,00:19
I have to leave that to one of the other guys for now Kim... I've had to temporarily move onto another OS because my laptop isn't responding to ACPI yet and it keeps shutting down when I hit critical temperature. I hope to fix that on Saturday and get back to DSL.Do you have a Windows machine where you could run the LiveCD under virtualization? Microsoft is giving < Virtual PC 2007 > away for free and DSL runs very nicely in it. I'd recommend using the QEMU embedded version offered at ibiblio, but on my machine, Norton AV 2002 notices the disk activity and scans every byte that passes through the QEMU/DSL setup... you can imagine that my CPU gets killed when that happens.
Posted by andrewb on Nov. 29 2007,02:33
As you guessed earlier it seems to be a window manager problem Changing the window manager to Fluxbox gives no problems (running DSL 4.1rc3 on VirtualBox).Another quirk is that if you attempt to change to a different desktop using Alt+<num> when FF is in fullscreen mode under JWM & then click the FF window restore button with the mouse FF has moved to the desktop selected by Alt+<num> while FF was in full screen mode (i.e. on a standard installation of DSL 4.1rc3: open FF, press F11, Press Alt+2, click FF window restore button - FF is now on desktop 2, rather than desktop 1! - check the pager bottom left)
Posted by jpeters on Nov. 29 2007,06:10
| Quote (andrewb @ Nov. 28 2007,21:33) |
| As you guessed earlier it seems to be a window manager problem Changing the window manager to Fluxbox gives no problems (running DSL 4.1rc3 on VirtualBox). |
My hunch is it's a ram problem. 64M is a bit light for FF. Try running 'base norestore' (minimal apps, etc).
Posted by andrewb on Nov. 29 2007,12:27
The virtual environment is providing 128Mb of RAM so I don't think that is the problem (I can try more!)
Posted by kimangroo on Nov. 29 2007,12:53
Thanks for all the replies guys.I've been messing about with a number of DSL versions and different computers now so I'm a little confused but AFAIK:
With DSL 3.4.1, 4.0, 4.1RC3 and JWM, I cannot use the keyboard in fullscreen FF.
DSL 4.0, 4.1RC3 and Fluxbox, I can use the keyboard (didn't seem to work first time though?!) and FF seems to open in a kind of fullscreen automatically which is just what I want for a kiosk.
Don't know what the problem is with JWM, it can't be RAM though because I got the same problem on my Toshiba laptop which has 768MB ram.
I'm not fussed by what window manager I use, so I'm just going to go with fluxbox for now.
...
I've been sitting on this post for half an hour now and I've realised what I'd really like to do is start Firefox from Xvesa without any window manager at all. I've added a few lines to .xinitrc and commented out everything else other than references to the keyboard.
Now firefox starts fine, but you guessed it, keyboard is not working again!
Anyone (with kiosk building experience?) know how to enable keyboard support with Firefox started from Xvesa without a window manager?!
Really appreciating the help!
Posted by jpeters on Nov. 29 2007,16:38
What's confusing is why it also happens with your Toshiba. I have no problem with fullscreen using JWM with a Dell latitude, 260MB. (I'm typing from it right now.)
Posted by john.martzouco on Nov. 29 2007,17:55
I can confirm that F11-full screen Firefox on DSL 4.0 with JWM behaves problematically as described by kimgaloo.F11 on 3.4.4 Fluxbox behaves fine.
Testing done under virtualization using MS VirtualPC 2007. First test was to type into address field before going full screen... 2nd test was to type in same field after F11.
Sorry, I've never ever had success switching WMs while in virtualization so I cannot offer opposite effects. I end up with a black screen when I try this. Also, I've never ever had success exiting to console by using Ctrl+Alt+Backspace combo... this seems to be common combo on most Linux OS, am I just getting confused and it's different on DSL?
Posted by roberts on Nov. 29 2007,22:31
More likely it is the interaction and support provided by or not, by virtualization software. I have never used the MS virtualization product nor do I intend too. I rarely have any interaction with any Windows product or OS. Cannot judge a Linux OS on how virtualization supports it, be it MS, Qemu, or Vmware, or ... Too many software layers.
Posted by kimangroo on Nov. 29 2007,23:40
Just out of curiosity I tried out DSL 4.1RC3 on an Acer 512MB desktop as well and JWM had the same problem, then I tried my brother's Macbook pro, but unfortunately haven't got DSL to work on that yet. I'm running out of computers to test it on now!Could the JWM problem be related to the fact that I can't use the keyboard when FF is started directly from the xserver, without using a window manager?
Posted by john.martzouco on Nov. 30 2007,00:06
Hi Robert,Please don't let my comments about virtualization let us get off track here. I'm happy to know how you feel about virtualization. I was just bringing observations to the table.
Kimangroo reported the Firefox-F11-JWM issue based on an installation to hard-drive on a 500MHz laptop with 64MB of RAM.
My apologies for getting off track,
John
Posted by roberts on Nov. 30 2007,00:30
Looking through the DSL < relatives > i see KioskCD
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Nov. 30 2007,01:29
There has been several DSL+kiosk combinations, but I don't recall keyboard issues off the top of my head.Do you actually have an "UK" keyboard?
iirc there were kiosk extensions for firefox as well.
OT:
| Quote |
| Sorry, I've never ever had success switching WMs while in virtualization so I cannot offer opposite effects. I end up with a black screen when I try this. Also, I've never ever had success exiting to console by using Ctrl+Alt+Backspace combo... this seems to be common combo on most Linux OS, am I just getting confused and it's different on DSL? |
Posted by kimangroo on Nov. 30 2007,11:29
Thanks for bearing with me on this one!I did try KioskCD but thought it would be easier to configure my wireless card using DSL. As it happens KioskCD doesn't seem to boot fullscreen, and even when F11 is pressed a windows bar is still present. I tried BoothCD as well but haven't be able to get that to boot yet.
If I really can't work out what is going wrong, I can just use fluxbox and have firefox start after the desktop is loaded in xinitrc. That seems to be working. It's just that that seems to cut the whole "make an internet kiosk" project short and the fact that it should work but doesn't will just bug me endlessly!
As far as keyboards are concerned the original laptop I'm working on with the hard drive install is an Advent 7250 with a uk keyboard, the Toshiba has a Japanese keyboard, and the Acer desktop another UK keyboard. AFAICR they all show the same error when booting:
Cloop initializing cloop v2.1
Entering runlevel 5
Loading usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/uk.kmap.gz
Operation failed
Is that not relevant at all? (no matter what keyboard lang I chose it fails to load) I hate to see any kind of "operation failed" message on boot!
Posted by john.martzouco on Nov. 30 2007,12:57
| Quote (kimangroo @ Nov. 30 2007,06:29) |
| AFAICR they all show the same error when booting: Loading usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/uk.kmap.gz Operation failed (no matter what keyboard lang I chose it fails to load) |
Is this true if you accept the default english + US options that show up at the very beginning of a first run?
Maybe the support for all of the languages except the default has suffered a hit somehow?
Posted by curaga on Nov. 30 2007,16:41
Most keymaps are included.. But could the uk one be missing?
Posted by kimangroo on Dec. 01 2007,12:50
Well the thing about the keymaps is that I've looked at the path and they all seem to be there, I've tried uk & us but got the same error and the error also happens when I run the dsl live cd with default settings.EDIT: Sorry, I just checked, the operation failed error is only for the hard drive install on the Advent... I'm getting really confused now! I'm going to try and reinstall and see what happens.