Recently Filezilla crashes on drag and drop, I believe its an Ubuntu 11.10 problem as I don’t remember this occurring before. It’s pretty drastic so I’m sure I would have noticed!

Whenever I try to drag and drop a folder Filezilla disappears (exits or crashes – however you want to explain it!). It wasn’t too painful to fix…. luckily. 

The Fix

This is something to do with python-wx*. Updating these packages fixed the problem, the releases in the standard software repositories are a few releases behind so we need to get the latest ones.

First, we need to add a to our trusted keys (or you will get error messages)

curl http://apt.wxwidgets.org/key.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Now we need to add the software source to our lists of sources. Lets open up the file to add them:

gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Usually you would add the source relevant for your Ubuntu distribution, in this case there isn’t a source for Oneiric Ocelot (Ubuntu 11.10). So we are going to use the source for Natty Narwhal (Ubuntu 11.04). Scroll to the bottom of the file and add these lines….

# wxWidgets/wxPython repository at apt.wxwidgets.org
deb http://apt.wxwidgets.org/ natty-wx main
deb-src http://apt.wxwidgets.org/ natty-wx main

Let’s update our package list (as usual whenever you add a new source):

sudo apt-get update

Finally we can add the packages that needed updating:

sudo apt-get install python-wxgtk2.8 python-wxtools wx2.8-i18n

Now open up Filezilla and all should be well again!

(close Filezilla and open if you had it open through these steps!)

For more information about fixing this in previous distributions, you can find the distribution names here.

UPDATE: I haven’t experience any Filezilla drag and drop crash in Ubuntu 12.04. I personally found Ubuntu 11.10 a bit laggy compared to 12.04 so my best advice would be to just upgrade!