I think I would try the following approach using your OLD/Documents idea.
First via terminal, move all /Documents to that old folder (or a /Documents/BAD folder.
Then, *copy* files from the BAD folder back into the /Documents - but in segments. Say all the docs starting with a~g.
Test thunar / Dolphin in /Documents.
If it is ok, then copy h~l and retest.
If it is NOT ok (or .. WHEN its not ok. Look back into the segment you copied in and delete segments using just one letter until they work. Example, if you just copied in h~l and it stopped working, then delete all the l* files and retest. If thunar still locks, then delete all the k* files
Continue this process until you find what segment is stopping you. Then once you have the segment, look AT that segment and doing the same thing ( delete ha* or hg* etc.. until you find that file that is causing this.
Going to be a process, but you can / should be able to find out what the heck is causing this.
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Another thought.. most all of these programs your mentioning have thumbnail previews... what if you turned off thumbnails in Thunar, logged out and then back in and tested? Possibly a corrupt thumbnail cache?
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Full Memtest ran on each machine with no errors or either machine.
Tried turning off Thumbnail previews, not sure if I did this correctly, but made no difference.
On my XFCE laptop, I deleted the original Documents and Downloads folders and recreated new empty file sin their place. Then I copied the files from the OLD copies back to the new folders in groups of one letter at a time via the CLI but with Thunar open at the same time.
Not forgetting those files starting with numbers. I repeated the same exercise for the OLD/Downloads to /home/ceejayemm/Downloads too.
Only one file caused a problem and I deleted that file for the time being. I can now access files in the Documents and Downloads folders via Thunar generally. The exception is if I search for file, eg *.txt, in the Downloads folder via the Thunar search bar. As soon as I type ANY text into the Thunar search bar, then Thunar closes with no error message. If I try to access (double click) any file from the list of files in the Download folder then I can open that file without any error - which is a step forward from my original experience. I am beginning to wonder if this is a problem with Thunar rather than a problem with the storage of the files ?
I have not as yet done the same exercise on my desktop KDE system.
In your previous post you mentioned you had tried more FM's, so I am not convinced it is a Thunar issue - however, you have have more than one issue here. Since it sounds like you can now navigate, I would clear all application caches again (mx cleanup) , reboot and see if that thunar search issue is gone. (I know I have run into cache issues there before.)
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Browsing the internet for Thunar and Segmentation Fault raises a lot of hits (many old) . One of them suggested trying 'sudo thunar' which I realise could be dangerous. I tried it purely as an experiment and hey presto searches works and no segmentation faults. I won't be doing it again though unless somebody with more experience that me says its ok. Does it give a further clue to this issue ?
yeah, thats not ok as it moves you into an root instance. I would suspect the fact that it works there is because your in a different profile when you do this.
So.. cache, or some other underlying issue is at play in *your* profile.
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Michael O'Toole MX Linux facebook group moderator
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Interesting. On my KDE desktop the default version of Dolphin is 22.12.3, after installing the FlatPak version this is shown as 23.08.4. The FlatPak version, so far, shows no problems with the Documents or Downloads folder where the default version does.
I have had some spare time over the last few days and took the opportunity to rebuild my desktop KDE Plasma system using the latest MX Linux 23.2 ISO as well switching the system disk to an SSD (was an NVME drive) and file system to btrfs (was EXT4). I applied all the suggested Package Manager updates and before doing anything else, other than restoring my data in the HOME folders, I opened Dolphin (the default version from the new installation) to look at the newly restored Downloads folder - and behold I was back to where I started this issue. Opening the Downloads folder in Doiphin immediately closed the file manager. So no progress there.
On my XFCE laptop, which as I have noted previously has the same issues as the KDE / Plasma / Dolphin machine, I am able to use SpaceFM to look at the Downloads folder on there BUT I cannot open the Downloads folder with Thunar.
It turns out that i have, over time, inadvertently duplicated a folder (and there may be others) on both machines. This folder was independently created on each machine, so no copies of data between the two computers for this folder structure. So I have (viewed from a terminal session):
$ ls -lrt ~/Downloads/webspace
total 8
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 92 Mar 27 10:47 index.shtml
drwxr-xr-x 5 ceejayemm ceejayemm 4096 Mar 27 10:47 Geoff
ceejayemm@cmlaptop1:~/Downloads/webspace
$ ls -lrt ~/Downloads/webspace/Geoff
total 436
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 185 Mar 27 10:47 tree.json
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 44 Mar 27 10:47 robots.txt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 2403 Mar 27 10:47 manifest.jmf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 13254 Mar 27 10:47 lifeboat.zip
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 7816 Mar 27 10:47 index.html
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 6955 Mar 27 10:47 index7.html
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 8250 Mar 27 10:47 index6.html
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 8253 Mar 27 10:47 index5.html
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 8250 Mar 27 10:47 index4.html
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 8250 Mar 27 10:47 index3.html
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 8249 Mar 27 10:47 index2.html
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 481 Mar 27 10:47 humans.txt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 47362 Mar 27 10:47 folderthumb.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 134327 Mar 27 10:47 folderimage.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 58269 Mar 27 10:47 data1.json
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ceejayemm ceejayemm 77238 Mar 27 10:47 album.rss
drwxr-xr-x 3 ceejayemm ceejayemm 4096 Mar 27 10:47 res
drwxr-xr-x 2 ceejayemm ceejayemm 4096 Mar 27 10:47 slides
drwxr-xr-x 2 ceejayemm ceejayemm 4096 Mar 27 10:47 thumbs
If I use Thunar / Dolphin to open ~/Downloads/webspace this succeeds BUT if I then use Thunar / Dolphin to look at ~/Downloads/webspace/Geoff (or any of its subfolders) the file manager closes with the 'Segmentation Fault' error. On the laptop if I use SpaceFM this can successfully show any/all of these folders/subfolders.
It would appear that Thunar / Dolphin has some sort of problem with the number of folder/files in the folder tree. Too many and they fail. I haven't as yet spent any time trying to determine what might constitute 'too many'. This has only started happening recently as I have been using Thunar/Dolphin successfully for a number of months with no hint of this kind of problem. Has an upgraded Thunar / Dolphin been released recently via the MX Updater facility as I do tend to apply these regularly ? Also, as noted above, the FlatPak version (v23.08.4) of Dolphin on my KDE/Plasma system doesn't seem to have these problems and there now appears to be an even later version in Package Manager FlatPaks (24.03.1) but I haven't tried this one yet. Is it OK to run the FlatPak version of Dolphin on my XFCE laptop ?
I would really like to get to the bottom of this issue. I just don't know where to go next.