[SOLVED] Unable to view folders (using Places menu item)

[ZenBeam]

I'm unable to open and view folders graphically. I click Places -> Home Folder (or any of the other folders, including Computer), and the cursor turns to the spinning "wait" dial, but the folder won't appear. A tab appears in the bottom panel, with the title "opening ZenBeam" (or "opening Desktop" or "Starting Computer", depending on which folder I tried to open) for a few seconds, but then goes away. Left- or Right-clicking on these tabs doesn't give me any options.

This used to work normally, but stopped suddenly a few days ago, following a reboot. I'm guessing it's become corrupted, but I don't know what "it" is. I can navigate in a command line window normally.

I have rebooted, and I have run System -> Administration -> Software Update, but that didn't fix the problem.

I was going to add the information in System -> About This Computer, but that seems to be having the same problem.

What can I do to fix this? What application is failing to run?

Apologies if this has come up recently, but I don't even know what to search for.

[ZenBeam]

No one here has any idea?

What code normally runs when I try to open a folder? What code might be failing? Does System -> About This Computer failing in the same way give any clues? Is there anything I could try re-installing? If so, do I need to uninstall it first?

I meant to include this in my OP, but I'm using Fedora 13. It's on a four-month-old Dell laptop, if that matters.

[marriedto51]

Can you try opening a terminal window, and type

gnome-open ~

That should open up a file browser window showing the contents of your home directory; if it fails, there might be useful output in the stream of stuff printed to the terminal.

You could also sift through the file .xsession-errors in your home directory to see whether anything is printing error messages when you click on the Places menu items.

Are you able to run a live CD successfully? (If that fails too, then I guess there is some hardware failure underlying this.)

Hope that gets you somewhere with this.

[ZenBeam]

marriedto51 thank you, that helps. Using gnome-open I get the error

nautilus: /home/ZenBeam/Compilers/gf90/build/lib64/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.11' not found (required by /usr/lib64/libexempi.so.3)

Looking through .xsession-errors, I see the same error.

In the last Fedora session where the folder viewer worked, I had to change the environment variables to get an old code to work (it needed to use an older compiler, which is located in /home/ZenBeam/Compilers/...)

I modified .bashrc, including adding the lines
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/ZenBeam/Compilers/gf90/build/lib64
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

I'm going to try removing those lines and rebooting.

---------- Post added at 10:57 AM GMT ---------- Previous post was at 10:51 AM GMT ----------

... annnnd that worked.

I've added aliases for the two lines I removed, and can change the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable in that command window, and the folde rviewer still works.

Thanks again.

[marriedto51]

Great. I would never have guessed at that cause!

[adkins]

I am having the same problem.Ie when I click on Places,no folder apart from Home,Desktop,Computer,50GB Hard Disk is shown.
But when I click on any of the folders shown when opened by clicking on any of the links, I can see them all.
But there is another tab showing Bookmarks which when clicked on shows all the bookmarked folders like Downloads,Documents etc which I needed to be opened.

nautilus: /home/ZenBeam/Compilers/gf90/build/lib64/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.11' not found (required by /usr/lib64/libexempi.so.3)

Looking through .xsession-errors, I see the same error.

In the last Fedora session where the folder viewer worked, I had to change the environment variables to get an old code to work (it needed to use an older compiler, which is located in /home/ZenBeam/Compilers/...)

I modified .bashrc, including adding the lines
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/ZenBeam/Compilers/gf90/build/lib64
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

I'm going to try removing those lines and rebooting.

I am not understanding a Goddamn thing what you are saying. Can you make it clear for the newbies who hit this thread when trying to solve a problem
Thanks
It;d be of great help if you answer some problems and marked as solved making sure that Linux newbies or intermediate people also understand what you mean so that we dont have to spend countless hours trying to fix the same problem.
Thanks

[ZenBeam]

Nice attitude... Really makes me want to help you.

By the way, the thread is marked as solved.

[DBelton]

yea, ZenBeam... That poster had a really great attitude...

Plus, his issue is totally different from yours, so even if he could follow your explanation, his issue still would not be fixed..

Your issue was caused by a setting that you had changed when compiling a program, a setting that just about any "newbie" (as adkins put it) would NOT have made. So it only stands to reason that the solution to your problem would be one that a "newbie" wouldn't understand. (I thought your explanation was pretty clear, myself)

I am thinking (from what little he posted) that adkins "issue" is actually the way that nautilus is designed and it's more just not understanding how nautilus works instead of a problem.