Nico --

> Is your home directory NFS mounted, or is it on your local system? And
> did you perchance set "/tmp" to be a separate partition, or one of
> those "virtual" filesystems?

No NFS.  Everything’s on a single disk of my desktop system,
with /tmp part of the root partition: /dev/mapper/vg_deth-lv_root.

> Start by updating to SL 6.4, which includes significant firefox updates.

I’ve hoped to delay going to a later version, but perhaps I’ll have to
consider it.  In any case, wouldn’t it be likely that the firefox and
evince problems have the same source, pointing to a problem that 
underlies the particular applications?  (I have a vague memory that some
months ago a third program had a similar problem, but I don’t remember
which program it was.)

Steve
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen L. Talbott                               BiologyWorthyofLife.org
Senior Researcher, The Nature Institute:             natureinstitute.org
Mailing address: 20 May Hill Road, Ghent NY 12075      Tel: 518-672-5049

> On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 6:48 PM, Steve Talbott
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > Greetings, all —
> >
> >    SL6.2; kernel 2.6.32-358.23.2.el6.i686
> >    Gnome: 2.28.2
> >    Firefox: 17.0.10
> >    Evince: 2.28.2
> >
> > Trying to save a webpage from firefox or a pdf file from evince results in
> > error messages (given below) saying I don’t have permission to create the
> > files.  This happens whether it is evince trying to create temporary files
> > in /tmp or firefox trying to create files in my personal file system.
> > There are no problems with the permissions on /tmp ("drwxrwxrwt") or my
> > own file system, and the messages always apply only to creation of files
> > within subdirectories that the application creates.  Firefox creates a
> > subdirectory, owned by my uid/gid, with "drw-r--r--" permissions.  Evince
> > creates a subdirectory owned by my uid/gid with "drw-------" permissions.
> > For what it’s worth, my umask is 0002.
> >
> > So these applications are creating directories without execute permission,
> > and then complaining about the lack of permission.  The Adobe pdf reader
> > (acroread) saves files with no problem, and I have no difficulty creating
> > directories with mkdir or files with vi — no problems with permissions in
> > general.
> >
> > Error messages:
> >
> > From firefox (when saving to the /home/stevet/Download directory):
> >
> >    /home/stevet/Download/search_files/rsAltRSTNEofta[etc].js
> >    could not be saved, because you cannot change the contents of that
> >    folder.  Change the folder properties and try again, or try saving in a
> >    different location.  [message generally repeated many times, once for
> >    each file in the <pagename>_files subdirectory of my Download
> >    directory.]
> >
> > From evince (when saving to /home/stevet):
> >
> >    Failed to create file "/tmp/evince-9460/saveacopy-3.U5SL8W": Permission
> >    denied
> >
> > The problem with firefox has gone on for the better part of a year; evince
> > started having the same problem only very recently.  My efforts to search
> > out a solution, whether from online information or through my own
> > experimentation, have yielded nothing.  Would appreciate any suggestions.
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Steve
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Stephen L. Talbott                               BiologyWorthyofLife.org
> > Senior Researcher, The Nature Institute:             natureinstitute.org
> > Mailing address: 20 May Hill Road, Ghent NY 12075      Tel: 518-672-5049