Make lynx stop trying to open tar.gz files

September 1, 2005 11:05 AM

It used to be the case that when using lynx (from linux) if I browsed to a tar.gz file, it would ask me where I wanted to save the file. In recent versions, lynx seems to have changed its behavior. Now it attempts to open the tar.gz file... which seems really stupid. How can I make it go back to the old behavior?

I'm using Lynx Version 2.8.5rel.1. I read the man page, and I couldn't find anything helpful in there. Hopefully there's an easy way to do this without having to download an older version of lynx. Please help!

posted by pornucopia to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Can't you press D on the file to download it? (As a quickie solution.)
posted by smackfu at 11:22 AM on September 1, 2005

I'm using 2.8.5rel.1 also, and it asks me to download/save the files. If you can find something in the configuration relating to 'file handlers' or something like that, removing the tar/gzip2 entry could do it.
posted by devilsbrigade at 11:32 AM on September 1, 2005

Hey, you CAN press D to download it! BEST ANSWER!
posted by pornucopia at 11:34 AM on September 1, 2005

I had 2.8.4 but I downloaded and built 2.8.5.1 and did not experience the problem - it still prompts me to download gz's and tar's. However, I'm curious: can you fix this by uncommenting the
#GZIP_PATH:
#TAR_PATH:

lines in lynx.cfg? (And making sure there's nothing specified after the colon, of course!)
posted by Wolfdog at 1:54 PM on September 1, 2005

Wolfdog: No go. Still doing the same thing.
posted by pornucopia at 2:21 PM on September 1, 2005

It seems plain that it's something in the config file that comes with my distro (Debian). Bleh!
posted by pornucopia at 2:22 PM on September 1, 2005