Installed the mozilla Firefox debuginfo package thinking it would either come with documentation or spit out useful information by popup or writing to “messages” log, but I’m not seeing anything.
Found an article on the Internet describing debugging with gdb, but I don’t think that really uses this package (shouldn’t the package make debugging easier?)
Problem:
Firefox freezes about a second or less after clicking anwhere in the FF window. FF seems to be the only thing that is affected, I can move the window around and do other things without an issue. Early on, I observed a problem (100% CPU utilization for about 10 seconds) with tracker-miner, but that is uninstalled now.
Current status:
I have done a complete uninstall and re-install of FF twice now. Doing a complete removal, I not only removed everything in %USER%].mozilla, I also cleaned out everything in /usr/share/mozilla (which also contained substantial data related to FF extensions) and /usr/lib/mozilla (The mozilla libraries).
Have checked syslog (messages) but I don’t see any relevant errors.
Unfortunately FF is still SOL.
> Looking for recommended way to debug Firefox.
>
> Installed the mozilla Firefox debuginfo package thinking it would either
> come with documentation or spit out useful information by popup or
> writing to “messages” log, but I’m not seeing anything.
>
> Found an article on the Internet describing debugging with gdb, but I
> don’t think that really uses this package (shouldn’t the package make
> debugging easier?)
It does, but probably not in the way you expect. The -debug packages
typically add symbolic debugging information so you get function names
rather than just addresses when using gdb.
It’s an advanced diagnosis tool.
> Problem:
> Firefox freezes about a second or less after clicking anwhere in the FF
> window. FF seems to be the only thing that is affected, I can move the
> window around and do other things without an issue. Early on, I
> observed a problem (100% CPU utilization for about 10 seconds) with
> tracker-miner, but that is uninstalled now.
Try using strace (you might need to install it) to attach to the running
process. It probably still won’t tell you much unless you’re a
developer, but you should be able to see that it’s doing something.
I’d recommend backing up the .mozilla directory and try starting it with
a clean profile to see if the problem can be duplicated. Usually when ff
locks up, it’s something in the profile that’s been corrupted, and
clearing the profile is the best way to resolve it.
Thx guys,
Jim, I already suspected a profile problem might be an issue so was already taking steps in that direction, so here is a minor update…
I renamed my %USER%/.kde4/ folder and let my kde profile be re-built…
The early result is
May have solved the FF problem (In fact I’m using it for this post)
Of course this means all my profile settings are lost. This leads me to wonder if the profile should be automatically backed up somehow <before> there is a problem if there is sufficient disk space… But it can be substantial. Just checked my old profile and it’s over 2.6GB. Still it could be that valuable that it should be backed up so it can be restored before there is an issue. I wonder if KDE has a recommendation somewhere for backing up only parts of that folder?
At the moment, anything that accesses the file system is dog slow. Not sure yet whether it’s simply a matter of file indexing needing to be re-built. I’ve already done a forced fsck to verify there isn’t a low level problem.
Thx for the suggestions,
Feel I’m on the right track…
Maybe I’ll have to accelerate my plans for building my new, from-scratch 12.2…
> Of course this means all my profile settings are lost. This leads me to
> wonder if the profile should be automatically backed up somehow <before>
> there is a problem if there is sufficient disk space.
Myself, I use the sync feature of FF (and of Chrome) to back up the
important stuff. That doesn’t help resolve the issue you’re having now,
since it’s not enabled, but might be something to look at for the future.
Recovering bookmarks isn’t difficult, and in theory passwords shouldn’t
be either.