Fonts become blocks for firefox, thunderbird, libreoffice

English Applications
1

Recently (in the last week or so) firefox, thunderbird and libreoffice fonts all turn to blocks (black rectangles) after a minute or two.
I have completely reinstalled the OS with only the default repositories (not even packman) in case I had some oddball problem there - but the problem remains.

Here is an example of what it looks like…
http://www.greenbikers.net/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=public:compute:font

when I first run thunderbird or firefox they look fine, then for no reason I can discover, as I move the mouse over the fonts they turn to blocks.

Applications affected…
firefox, thunderbird, libreoffice, ksnapshot, gnucash

Applications not affected…
xemacs, konsole, kde desktop, konqueror, dolphin

System details:
opensuse 13.1
kde desktop

>name -a
Linux monster 3.11.10-17-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Jun 16 15:28:13 UTC 2014 (fba7c1f) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

nvidia drivers

> rpm -qa | grep -i nvidi
nvidia-computeG02-304.121-32.1.i586
x11-video-nvidiaG02-304.121-32.1.i586
nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-desktop-304.121_k3.11.6_4-31.1.i586

Other machines I have are fine (32 bit laptop, 64bit laptop)

Help desperately sought! Thanks in advance

2

I had a similar problem on a computer with Intell G33 graphics. It happened only on some gtk applications, but never on native KDE applications.

I never had a problem on my system with nVidia graphics.

I suggest you experiment, in firefox, with the settings for graphics acceleration. And also try experiment with the options for xrender. For the latter, you will need to browse to about:config and then search for xrender.

3

Well, the trouble is this affects more than just firefox - thunderbird, libreoffice, gnucash (at least).
So I don’t believe it will be helpful tweaking firefox specific configs.

It seemed to go away for a few days, then bingo, today it has happened again for no reason I can fathom.
Surely this must be a well know problem - anyone else out there know what’s going on?

Thanks…

4

There is a definate correlation with this problem and using nvidia drivers (G02), version 304.121.

Anyone else had and fixed this problem?

5

I general when you have problems with browsers crashing set them NOT to use hardware graphics.

6

Except it’s not just the browser. It is thunderbird, libreoffice, gnucash, and even the window titles on the kde desktop. Any other thoughts? Thanks…

7

Check memory

8

OK - so I think this was the issue: the graphics card (its memory I presume). The problem got progressively worse and started happening with the nouvea driver also and start causing panics. Swapped the card and all is fine - including with nvidia driver.