#1 2026-01-23 01:28:19

dbickin

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 82

mc config problems

I tried googling, but couldn't find anything that helped.

Some background, I have been using mc for well over 20 years now. And I am adverse to change, so I have been using a long past its end of life version of Debian/Bunsenlab. But Firefox is starting to freeze and crash frequently, so I figure I got to upgrade, and I am NOT having a good time.

But so far, the biggest deal breaker has been that mc changed from version 3 to version 4. I've got most of my settings translated, but I can't get it to work with *.cbr files. (CBR file is a rar encoded comic book file.)

Before I put an try in the extension file, mc just ignored the file. But once I put in the correct(?) shell=.cbr / open=mcomix %f pair of lines, instead of opening mcomix, a gui file archiver pops up asking if I want to extract the images.

If I run mcomix at the shell prompt it works.

At first I thought that mc was recognizing that the underlying file is an RAR archive, but mc has its own archive manager, and if I change the extension to .rar, the internal archiver does open as expected.

Any idea what I can try next?

Thanks,
David

greenjeans

Member

Registered: 2025-01-18

Posts: 312

Website

Re: mc config problems

Well this might not be helpful if you've already done the upgrade, but FYI I have gotten a system that was way old to last a couple years longer, it was based on Jessie and I used it up until the fall of 2023, at the beginning of 2022 I started having the same browser issues as my version from the jessie repo was too old. So I downloaded an appimage of the current FF ESR and by golly it worked like a charm, the appimage apparently contained whatever newer libraries it needed to run. It actually still works.

Last edited by greenjeans (2026-01-23 15:40:19)

dbickin

Member

Registered: 2015-09-30

Posts: 82

Re: mc config problems

Helium is still my daily driver. And will be unl4ss I can get this issue fixed.

It looks like mc is just plain ignoring any changes I make to the extension file and I have no idea why. Nor can I figure out why it is calling the external file roller(?) application instead of its internal archive viewer.

If I rename the file with an rar extension, mc is using its internal archive viewer. If I make up a nonsense extension, mc is treating it as an unknown file type. But if I give it a cbr extension, it is calling an external program, and I have no idea why.

Pulling in a newer Firefox is probably what I am going to end up doing. I updated it a year or so ago. I just need to figure out how I did it...

Too many programs have changed in ways I don't like in the last 7 years(?).

Heck, I revisited a program I thought might fix a issue I have, only to find that they had a upgrade in version this month, and it looks like all the features I was interested it have been removed. I'm getting too old for this s***.

Still, I had been looking forward to maybe being able to once again apt install new programs when the need arises. But I am not going to do it at the cost of my old processing breaking down.

David