Mozilla, FTP & other problems

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

  Hello everybody. I am having some anoying problems with mozilla, ftp 
and some other random details of my day to day Linux usage. As for 
mozilla, ever since I started using it it has been completely impossible 
to browse ftp servers with it. Every time I try to access one I receive 
some random error message in response. Sometimes it tells me that the 
specified dirtectory does not exist, some other times it just tells me 
it couldn't connect, it may aslo stay still at "connecting to ..." and 
even some other times it stands still at "connected to ...". And in 
every single one of those attemps I end up with a blank page in front of 
me and with the innability to browse the ftp server graphically.

    Recently, in an attempt to find the culprit of the problem, I 
started using the command line based ftp utility and found out that if 
passive mode was enabled I could sit for hours waiting for a reply to 
even an "ls" command. Turning passive mode off magically fixed the 
problem and ftp worked smothly. Appart from that I have other leads to 
think that my ISP blocks passive ftp for some reason, so apparently that 
is the culprit of the problem. And as I love drawings and graphics, I 
would love to be able to browse ftp servers from my GUI based browser. 
So in order to achive that I have to swith Mozilla to active ftp and 
that's exactly what I don't know how to do. I may be blind, but I've not 
spotted the option to turn passive ftp on/off anywhere. Is this an 
option for Mozilla? If not, how can I overcome my problem?

    Has anyone seen something similar with Mozilla's browsing or could 
it be a problem just limited to my ftp suspytions?

    Another problem I have, this time more on a random basis, is the 
inability to fully download a file over ftp. Even though I don't think 
it has anything to do with the problem I mention above, I though of 
commenting about it since I'm already talking about ftp. What I'm trying 
to say is that sometimes when I try to download a file over ftp it seems 
that client and server don't agree about the file size. Usually the 
server says it's a bit bigger than it actually transfers, since at some 
point practically at the end of the transfer the client will just stay 
there saying it's waiting for data and not receiving anything. Because 
of this it refuses to call the file transfer over and save the file. The 
not so desireable solution is to kill the process and try to save what 
was downloaded of the file, since most of the times it is saved as a 
temporary file until the transfer is over. It is quite unussual but it 
has happened, so I felt like asking if anyone has seen this. I don't 
think it is due to a failing connection that prevents data from flowing 
through, since the times I've encountered this I've been able to use the 
"partially" downloaded file succesfully.

    And last but not least, I'm looking for some info about the key 
mappings of my keyboard. I'm intersted in remapping the multi-button 
mouse emulation to a different set of keys, which I did not so 
successfuly at /etc/sysconfig/mouse. I thought I could take the second 
and third button emulation from the F11 and F 12 keys and remap it to 
the option and control keys, respectively. Even though I managed that 
first step, I didn't get what I wanted. I thougt I could make my system 
emulate the third and second mouse buttons through option-*/_ 
clicking_/* and control-*/_clicking_/* . Instead I just got the third 
and second button menus arising on my screen every time I hit those 
keys, regardless of wether I was clicking or not. And I don't want 
that!! Now I can't change virtual consoles, I can't suspend a job with 
ctrl-z or even stop it with ctrl-c. If I had control and option clicking 
I could still do all the things I mentioned among others and have the 
emulation mapped to those keys. So, does anyone know how I can achieve 
what I just described here?

    And lastly, and this time for real, where is the key mappings 
information stored? Where do I define which keys I use for switching 
virtual consoles and similar functions? If I wanted to define a 
different key combination for switching VTs what would I need to do?

    Thank you all in advance for even taking the time to read these 
newbie questions. Sincerely,...


            Juan.