Firefox starts slowly

openSUSE 12.2 AMD64 KDE on a Thinkpad i5 with 4Gb and another Thinkpad i7 with 4Gb

Computer connection to wireless connection (100Mb Line), in KDE LiveCD AND Gnome LiveCD mode, Firefox starts in approximately 12 -15 seconds
Disconnect the wireless connection, Firefox starts in under 2 seconds for both KDE and Gnome LiveCD.

Again, computer connection to wireless connection (100Mb Line), with openSUSE 12.2 KDE onto laptop, Firefox starts in approximately 12 -15 seconds.
Again, disconnect the wireless connection, Firefox starts in under 2 seconds for both.

On the same laptop, Firefox starts in under 3 seconds in Debian.
In openSUSE, deleted the Firefox profile and copy the Firefox profile from Debian, the same startup time of 12 -15 seconds encountered.

Is Firefox starting in 12 -15 seconds the norm in openSUSE?
Or am I the only one that encounter this problem?

I have the same problem
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/applications/478064-mozilla-apps-slow-launching.html

I was wondering if anyone knew the strace to run on it to give us the best feedback…

I solved the problem by adding the local hostname to the /etc/hosts file, with the IP 127.0.0.1.
For example:
127.0.0.1 mycomputer.site

Interesting, let me try

No, not for me

Just to confirm, I’m talking…‘Starts Slowly as in launching it’

I don’t have a network issue
Firefox works fine Once it’s up
All other browsers launch normally (2 secs) and work normally.

It solved the problem in my case. Before changing, Firefox needed about 10 seconds to launch after clicking a shortcut. Now it takes around 2. What I did was change my /etc/hosts


#
# hosts         This file describes a number of hostname-to-address
#               mappings for the TCP/IP subsystem.  It is mostly
#               used at boot time, when no name servers are running.
#               On small systems, this file can be used instead of a
#               "named" name server.
# Syntax:
#    
# IP-Address  Full-Qualified-Hostname  Short-Hostname
#

**127.0.0.1      localhost**

# special IPv6 addresses
::1             localhost ipv6-localhost ipv6-loopback

fe00::0         ipv6-localnet

ff00::0         ipv6-mcastprefix
ff02::1         ipv6-allnodes
ff02::2         ipv6-allrouters
ff02::3         ipv6-allhosts

to


127.0.0.1     desk-SuSE

where desk-SuSE is my computer’s hostname.

You need “localhost” there. You can put both names on the one line.

When I assign a hostname to my system, I check the box “Assign hostname to loopback”, and that puts a line


127.0.0.2    myhostname

in the file. This is in Yast network settings (DNS and hostname section).

I followed this advice and it worked
I checked the hosts file and there was slight difference to the earlier edit I made

Thank you both @nrickert and @billypap

Somehow the forum did not send me a notification when there are replies. Luckily I’m desperate enough to check.

Thank you all, this solves the problem.

I’ve been pulling out my hairs for the past years due to this weird problem.

A screenshot (of nrickert’s solution) for future users who come across this thread:

http://i50.tinypic.com/e8akcn.png

On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:16:01 GMT, nrickert
<nrickert@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

>
>You need “localhost” there. You can put both names on the one line.
>
>When I assign a hostname to my system, I check the box “Assign hostname
>to loopback”, and that puts a line
>
>Code:
>--------------------
>
> 127.0.0.2 myhostname
>
>--------------------
>
>in the file. This is in Yast network settings (DNS and hostname
>section).

Interesting. “Assign hostname to loopback” has been standard installation
procedure for me for many years. I always thought it was good policy and
now it seems that it may be necessary for some things.

?-)

For me, on a 11.4 openSuSE, all the applications launched by the panel are slow to launch (firefox takes about 10 to 20 seconds to launch) and sometimes I got the KLauncher message displayed…
I felt the issue since I updated the kernel and installed this ****** ATI Catalyst Control Center…
The problem is that the issue is not reproductive, sometimes the system works “as before” and sometimes it is slow that it takes on my nerves… (30 seconds to display the snapshot application, more than one minute to launch LibreOffice, …)
I checked all my hard disks for errors, the logs, no erros/warnings but this one:

(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:17:0) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:18:0) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:18:1) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:18:2) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:19:0) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:19:1) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:19:2) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:0) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:1) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:3) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:4) found
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:5) found

in kdm.log, but that’s all. I really don’t know if I have to kill the kde or update it, kill dolphin (the champion of the slowness: more than 4 minutes sometimes to launch, fortunately not at each boot of Linux) and update it…
My KDE version is 4.6.
But I always used it and before the updates (I can’t remember all the features updated but kernel was updated and I was forced to install catalyst to work with 1920x1080 resolution).
This slowness is seriously starting to take on my nerves… it is impossible to work with Linux with these slownesses… (the only one solution was to boot on runlevel 3 but there is no IDE working in text mode ^^)

This thread was working on a new issue, well, new like in the last month. And so far it had only affected 12.1 and 12.2 and only Mozilla apps
The solution was: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/applications/478160-firefox-starts-slowly.html#post2485666

On Thu, 20 Sep 2012 22:36:02 GMT, soundlord
<soundlord@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

>
>For me, on a 11.4 openSuSE, all the applications launched by the panel
>are slow to launch (firefox takes about 10 to 20 seconds to launch) and
>sometimes I got the KLauncher message displayed…
>I felt the issue since I updated the kernel and installed this ******
>ATI Catalyst Control Center…
>The problem is that the issue is not reproductive, sometimes the system
>works “as before” and sometimes it is slow that it takes on my nerves…
>(30 seconds to display the snapshot application, more than one minute to
>launch LibreOffice, …)
>I checked all my hard disks for errors, the logs, no erros/warnings but
>this one:
>
>
>Code:
>--------------------
> (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:17:0) found
> (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:18:0) found
> (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:18:1) found
> (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:18:2) found
> (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:19:0) found
> (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:19:1) found
> (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:19:2) found
> (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:0) found
> (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:1) found
> (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:3) found
> (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:4) found
> (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:5) found
>--------------------
>
>
>in kdm.log, but that’s all. I really don’t know if I have to kill the
>kde or update it, kill dolphin (the champion of the slowness: more than
>4 minutes sometimes to launch, fortunately not at each boot of Linux)
>and update it…
>My KDE version is 4.6.
>But I always used it and before the updates (I can’t remember all the
>features updated but kernel was updated and I was forced to install
>catalyst to work with 1920x1080 resolution).
>This slowness is seriously starting to take on my nerves… it is
>impossible to work with Linux with these slownesses… (the only one
>solution was to boot on runlevel 3 but there is no IDE working in text
>mode ^^)

Two things:

This shows up posted to michalng’s thread. Not good, you should start
your own thread as your symptoms seem different.

Is seems to that your ATI driver installation is messed up. Do you have
radeon or other display card drivers also installed? Also try running top
or htop in a console session to see what is using the processor. I think
that 11.4 uses udev exclusively, but look for problems with udev and hald
as it appears that your display card is getting enumerated repeatedly. Do
you have all your updates for these subsystems installed?

?-)

At about the same time I noticed this thread, I also noticed FF recently seemed to take an incredibly long time to load (up to 25s or so in new KDE session). I already had the /etc/hosts loopback entry present, so nothing new to add from the advice in this thread. (In fact, I was surprised that others didn’t already have this set.)

Using openSUSE 12.2, KDE 4.8.5, Mozilla 15.0 (Mozlla repo)

I have these Add-ons:

openSUSE Firefox Extentions
User Agant Switcher
Download Helper
X-marks

Maybe the result of a recent update?

Anyone have the about:startup extension installed?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/about-startup/?src=api

My Firefox starts up this quick. Haven’t made any changes to /etc/hosts.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/15.0.1

Averages in milliseconds

main: 99.22
startupCrashDetectionBegin: 495.44
firstPaint: 2405.78
session:Restored: 2945.22
createTopLevelWindow: 889.44
firstLoadURI: 2673.11
startupCrashDetectionEnd 32391.50

Firefox takes a long time to start up | Firefox Help

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does reducing the number of enabled languages reduce the start-up time?

I just wonder why does Firefox needs to access /etc/hosts?.. thats really weird.

It is probably using gethostbyname(), which indirectly accesses “/etc/hosts” as part of hostname lookup.

If the “noscript” addon is in use, that attempts to find all possible local names, so that it can block sneaky attempts of scripting to loop back to the local system.

It worked for me!!!
also i had the same issue with vmware 9.0 which started slowly and now it work like a charm!!!
Thanks a lot!

Wow!

Assigning Hostname to Loopback IP significantly reduced startup time for Firefox.

Dropped from about 30 seconds to < 2 seconds.
Thanks for the tip!

opensuse 12.3 x86_64