Firefox freezes during disk operations

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1

Whenever I write large files, like DVD-iso files, I observe Firefox to freeze entirely.

While all other (KDE?) programs continue to work normal during heavy file movement, Firefox comes completely stuck. Every minutes or so it executes all the key presses and mouse actions quickly, just to freeze again. Once the heavy hard disk operation is over, it resumes as normal.

I am using OpenSuse 11.1, KDE 4.1, with the standard update repositories enabled, including Kernel updates. The harddisk has 5 partitions, but only the two EXT3 paritions for root and home are used under Linux.

> df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6              20G  9.6G  9.2G  52% /
udev                  2.0G  176K  2.0G   1% /dev
/dev/sda7             155G  123G   25G  84% /home
/dev/sda1             134M  7.9M  126M   6% /windows/C
/dev/sda2             2.0G  894M  1.2G  44% /windows/D
/dev/sda3              30G   27G  3.2G  90% /windows/E

The system is dual-core, with 4GB RAM, so I don’t think swapping is an issue here, since I can reproduce it by just running Firefox and DeVeDe. Everything is fine up until DeVeDe enters the last stage of writing the iso file, then Firefox freezes temporarily, while apps like Dolphin or Kate continue normally. Why?

2

Is there no one here who has any remote idea about this? :’(

3

> Is there no one here who has any remote idea about this? :’(

All I can say is I feel your pain. Firefox has been on a downward spiral as
of late. All the claims of newer faster and the Linux version gets slower
and slower. Try disabling ALL of the add-ons and see if your problem goes
away. If it does, then add them back in 1 at a time and see if you can
pinpoint which the problem.

4

Thanks, GofBorg, I never thought about the addons. I have plenty of those, and deactivated almost all now. I will report back if this sorts this out indeed!