Does anyone’s Firefox 4 freeze in openSUSE-11.4? Mine freezes randomly, it seems, on opening links in new tabs. I don’t think it’s Flash as it happens on any web site, even without flash (e.g. like this forum). I’ve updated to the latest version from the Mozilla repo but it still freezes. The only option is to kill it and restart it. So I use Chromium at the moment. But I prefer Firefox.
Anyone have the same problem?
PS I don’t have any Firefox 4 problems in WinXP at work. And I think I haven’t yet had a freeze on my Intel laptop or Atom netbook (maybe I haven’t used them long enough), looks like it may be something to do with 64-bits (AMD)? But I may be wrong.
So is it possible you are having a DNS issue? Long pauses in Firefox is not the same thing as a pc freezing up. If you can minimize Firefox when frozen, it may in fact be an issue with getting to the web site. I have recently had a similar issue, though Firefox is not frozen, but stalled, trying to find the web site page. A DNS server is used by us all to convert web page names into an IP address, which is actually used to communicate to a web site. When you have a DNS server problem, your web browser can appear to freeze while trying to get the correct IP address. There are a number of free DNS servers one could use. Here a few to select from:
I am using the first two Level 3 servers and another user here indicated they were using the Google servers. Changing your DNS server could fix your problem or make no difference at all. Let me know if this is something you would like to try.
Oh, I’ll see if it really freezes or just stalls. I wasn’t patient enough to wait to see if it was going to thaw :). I’ll try it from the console as well. I’m using openDNS in the modem/router. But as Chromium never “freezes”, why would that be a DNS problem? And I haven’t had this problem in openSUSE-11.3 with the same router. So this would suggest it’s the Firefox problem, whether DNS or not.
Oh, I’ll see if it really freezes or just stalls. I wasn’t patient enough to wait to see if it was going to thaw :). I’ll try it from the console as well. I’m using openDNS in the modem/router. But as Chromium never “freezes”, why would that be a DNS problem? And I haven’t had this problem in openSUSE-11.3 with the same router. So this would suggest it’s the Firefox problem, whether DNS or not.
So I just use Firefox, but oddly I tried openDNS and had the same problems with the openSUSE forums. Not until I tried the Level 3 servers has the problem went away. I don’t have a lot of answers, only something to try that will not make your situation any worse, particularly since you found out how to insert the openDNS server addresses already.
I would then start YaST / Software / Software Management, select the view button, then repository, then Mozilla and Switch to the Mozilla repository, thus replacing all Mozilla related files in one fell swoop from one single repository. All files should work together and would be the most recent versions. I would restart KDE or GNOME and then see what you get.
I normally start firefox at the command line, with error messages redirected to a file. When I check that file, it is full of similar “error” messages to the one that you quote. However, firefox is not freezing for me.
In short, I am doubting that the error messages are related to your problem.
I do use the “noscript” and “flashblock” extensions. And when I do watch flash, it occasionally crashes the flash applet, though not as often as happened in opensuse 11.3/firefox 3.6 .
Flash is a totally different story. It may crash itself but it doesn’t crash Firefox. I do have some occasional Flash problems, but this one is in Firefox itself and I suspect only on AMD as I haven’t yet had it to freeze on Intel or Atom.
I think I might have fixed it. I think there’s a bug in the Firefox Add-ons functionality. When I installed openSUSE-11.4 I copied my openSUSE-11.3 Firefox profile and Firefox was showing that most add-ons were enabled. So I assumed they were all working. Then I’ve just disabled all add-ons, restarted Firefox, looked at the add-ons and then it was showing most add-ons were incompatible with Firefox-4. So I removed them all, found most of them with newer versions on the Mozilla website, installed, restarted Firefox and… it hasn’t frozen since. Fingers crossed, I think it may be fixed by removing and re-installing the add-ons. The bug might have been it didn’t show the older versions were incompatible so I continued using them and one or some of them might have caused Firefox to freeze.
I’ve restarted Firefox and most of my add-ons are now disabled. What the?.. FlashBlock, for example, says it’s compatible with Firefox-4: (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashblock/): Works with Firefox 2.0 - 4.0.* and allows me to install it. And it works until Firefox is restarted. Then it gets disabled again. So are the rest of add-ons: ForecastFox Weather, Image Zoom etc. They all work in WinXP. So is this a Linux issue?
I’ve deleted my Firefox profile, started from scratch, reinstalled all add-ons, restarted Firefox a few times - so far all add-ons are enabled but it froze once. Well, something’s definitely broken in add-ons.
On 04/15/2011 12:36 AM, leen2011 wrote:
>
> I have seen the freeze in safemode, after creating a new firefox profile
> and even on Firefox’s first run right after creating a new (Linux)
> user.
>
> The freeze seems to concentrate on menu’s: menubar, dropdown-menu in
> the searchbar, local menu after a right-click in a page.
>
> The freeze seems to switch on and off for longer periods, probably
> after a software install or upgrade.
>
> Sadly it came back after the last software update.
>
> It might (repeat: might) have something to do with the video-driver. At
> home I have an ATI-card (radeon kernel module) and no freeze (64-bit).
>
>
> Here at work I have an NVidia card (nvidia kernel module from
> nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-desktop-260.19.44_k2.6.37.1_1.2-23.1.x86_64
> installed).
I’ve been fighting it here. I’m running 11.4 with an nVidia 5200 card,
and nvidia driver.
I disabled the openSUSE extensions to Firefox and that may have helped.
No issues since (day before yesterday). I also turned off desktop
effects which also may have helped.
When my system goes braindead, the mouse still works. I’ve found that
if I click on the close X in the corner to shut down an app, then do a
ctrl-alt-fN then come back to ctrl-alt-F7 that the app will be closed.
It’s a pain, but it seems that what’s happening is things aren’t really
frozen, but just running really really slowly. Changing to a
non-graphical shell then back lets the window manager do that single task.
Not really a workaround, but it is a way to safely close everything…
> On 04/15/2011 12:36 AM, leen2011 wrote:
>>
>> I have seen the freeze in safemode, after creating a new firefox profile
>> and even on Firefox’s first run right after creating a new (Linux)
>> user.
>>
>> The freeze seems to concentrate on menu’s: menubar, dropdown-menu in
>> the searchbar, local menu after a right-click in a page.
>>
>> The freeze seems to switch on and off for longer periods, probably
>> after a software install or upgrade.
>>
>> Sadly it came back after the last software update.
>>
>> It might (repeat: might) have something to do with the video-driver. At
>> home I have an ATI-card (radeon kernel module) and no freeze (64-bit).
>>
>>
>> Here at work I have an NVidia card (nvidia kernel module from
>> nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-desktop-260.19.44_k2.6.37.1_1.2-23.1.x86_64
>> installed).
>
> I’ve been fighting it here. I’m running 11.4 with an nVidia 5200 card,
> and nvidia driver.
>
> I disabled the openSUSE extensions to Firefox and that may have helped.
> No issues since (day before yesterday). I also turned off desktop
> effects which also may have helped.
>
> When my system goes braindead, the mouse still works. I’ve found that
> if I click on the close X in the corner to shut down an app, then do a
> ctrl-alt-fN then come back to ctrl-alt-F7 that the app will be closed.
>
> It’s a pain, but it seems that what’s happening is things aren’t really
> frozen, but just running really really slowly. Changing to a
> non-graphical shell then back lets the window manager do that single task.
>
> Not really a workaround, but it is a way to safely close everything…
You may be on to something a little bigger than you think. I’ve had
sporadic problems with all sorts of apps where they just stop and go
unresponsive until I do something like you describe. If I saw that with an
app I was writing I would be looking at the message queue handling - looks
like a notification is being dropped somewhere in the hierarchy. Stealing
the i/o from one console then restoring the original console is going to
cause a global refresh which would probably resend to that stuck piece
waking it up. Password popups and such seem to be the most sensitive - KRDC
was really bad for a while but the latest updates have cured most of the
problem with that particular program.
I haven’t had a freeze for a day, I thought disabling all add-ons cured it… but on Sun it froze again, with all ad-ons disabled. So it doesn’t seem to be add-on related. And as I don’t have this problem on Intel laptops, you may be right suggesting it may be nVidia related - I do have an nVidia video card on my desktop which freezes Firefox. But fortunately, only Firefox freezes. All other applications work fine.
But I found another problem with Firefox on my laptops which I don’t have on my desktop - Firefox simply won’t show up. It starts but the window doesn’t show up. It runs in processes and even after killing it, it doesn’t start until a reinstall. Is that a Firefox bug or (judging by the error that it can’t find a vlc-firefox.so or something like that) it may be the vlc-firefox plugin bug? I think it mostly happens after suspend. Reinstalling the vlc-firefox plugin also helps… until the next time.
On 04/17/2011 05:36 PM, linuxoidoz wrote:
>
> I haven’t had a freeze for a day, I thought disabling all add-ons cured
> it… but on Sun it froze again, with all ad-ons disabled. So it doesn’t
> seem to be add-on related. And as I don’t have this problem on Intel
> laptops, you may be right suggesting it may be nVidia related - I do
> have an nVidia video card on my desktop which freezes Firefox. But
> fortunately, only Firefox freezes. All other applications work fine.
>
> But I found another problem with Firefox on my laptops which I don’t
> have on my desktop - Firefox simply won’t show up. It starts but the
> window doesn’t show up. It runs in processes and even after killing it,
> it doesn’t start until a reinstall. Is that a Firefox bug or (judging by
> the error that it can’t find a vlc-firefox.so or something like that) it
> may be the vlc-firefox plugin bug? I think it mostly happens after
> suspend. Reinstalling the vlc-firefox plugin also helps… until the
> next time.
Not sure where to point the finger, but it’s only happened to me when
running Mozilla apps - either Firefox, or Thunderbird. It may be that
t-bird shares some libraries with Firefox so that may be the link there.
But it’s only frozen on me when I was running either or both of those
apps. I am using an nVidia card and driver.
What seems to have cured it for me is turning off desktop affects. So
it may be a KDE/nVidia issue. But I haven’t yet turned the plug-ins
back on so I can’t say with 100% certainty…
