Typing in text form in Firefox becomes very slow in Gutsy

[jeroenl]

Binary package hint: firefox

After updating to Gutsy from Feisty (2 days ago) typing in a multi-line form field (like those on Wikipedia) becomes very slow, especially when there is a lot of text. In other words: it takes a while until the text I am typing appears in the form.

Firefox version: 2.0.0.6+2-0ubuntu2

lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8378 [KM400/A] Chipset Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI Bridge
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ISA Bridge
00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 74)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8378 [S3 UniChrome] Integrated Video (rev 01)

[jeroenl (jeroenl)]

Any updates!?

[Heitzso (heitzso)]

Evolution and firefox are both slow on my system re keyboard input. In took about a minute for the summary line to show up (maybe 1 second per character). In this comment area I'm typing 10 words ahead of what is being displayed. Ditto evolution when trying to type in a new email.

Keyboard entry is fast in geany (IDE) and gnome-terminal -- both X apps. So it isn't all X apps have slow keyboard entry pick up.

My system is an ATI 1500 laptop with fglrx for the display controller into X.

This as an extremely nasty bug that will make any user quite unhappy. (I had to wait 15 seconds or more for the graphic display to catch up to the end of this sentence just before the parenthesis).

CPU pegs out at 100% during the graphic display time of the slow keyboard display.

[Heitzso (heitzso)]

On the same system Opera is fine, i.e. I can enter text on the search line for google and it shows up as fast as I can type it. Versus Firefox taking a minute or two to catch up on this simple comment.

[jeroenl (jeroenl)]

Confirmed by someone else.

[Heitzso (heitzso)]

I tracked this down to the xgl server and my fglrx.
I don't know if it occurs on non-fglrx systems or on all fglrx systems.
A temporary fix until Ubuntu corrects this problem (PLEASE!!) is to:

  (as root, however you get there ...)
  cd /etc/X11/Xsession.d
  mkdir SAVE
  mv ??xserver-xgl_start-server SAVE

then log out and log back in, which, I believe, restarts your xserver. I ususally
ctl-alt-f1 and login as root on that that terminal
(I've given root a password so I can log in as root), and
  /etc/init.d/gdm restart

The clue was noting gutsy had set DISPLAY to :1.0 which was the flag
that the xservers were layered (? not certain I'm saying this right). And that
I needed to STOP the layering.

FWIW ... in another month or two rumors are that AMD/ATI will finally have
fglrx able to handle the eye candy w/o the layered xserver kludge.

[jeroenl (jeroenl)]

I don't think my on board VIA Unichrome has support for XGL, because it is a shared memory 2D-card.

Anyhow thank you for your workaround. Maybe that setting is also affecting other things, or XGL is trying to start on a non-XGL-supported card (like mine) and fails in that.

Hopefully the developers can take a looks asap!?

[jeroenl (jeroenl)]

I updated to gutsy again today and it is still a problem. Please threat this as critical!

[jeroenl (jeroenl)]

@Heitzso :

I only have these in /etc/X11/Xsession.d:
20x11-common_process-args 40guidance-displayconfig_restore 80ubuntu-xmodmap 90x11-common_ssh-agent
30x11-common_xresources 50x11-common_determine-startup 90gpg-agent 99x11-common_start

So I don't have xgl-related stuff in there.

[jeroenl (jeroenl)]

I tried firefox -g, but I could not find any errors. It only shows when it starts and exits a new thread.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2007 at 11:58:31PM -0000, jeroenvrp wrote:
> I tried firefox -g, but I could not find any errors. It only shows when
> it starts and exits a new thread.
>

There have been improvements on the xgl/compiz and fglrx driver front
since you last confirmed this bug in gutsy. Can you please upgrade to
latest and see if this issue is gone?

 - Alexander

[Heitzso (heitzso)]

I spent a couple hours this morning thrashing this and was not able to setup a working flgrx restricted compiz environment on my gutsy (current as of last night) system.

What I did to test:
  dropped fglrx from the restricted list in /etc/default/linux-res*
  rebooted (to insure picking up linux-restr* version of fglrx and confirmed that version in /var/log/X*log
  moved the two *glx* files back into /etc/X11/Xsession.d
  modified my xorg.conf as per what I ran across on the web:

Section "Device"
 Identifier "X1600"
 Driver "fglrx"
 Option "VideoOverlay" "off"
 Option "OpenGLOverlay" "on"
 BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection
Section "DRI"
 Mode 0666
EndSection
Section "Extensions"
        Option "Composite" "enable"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
 Option "AIGLX" "off"
EndSection

and restarted /etc/X11/gdm

result was glxgears ran, through jerky, and fglrx_glxgears did not run at all due to missing DRI on DISPLAY :1.0
Firefox was ungodly slow w/ text input and some of the gnome applets were consuming lots of CPU

I reverted ...
 I'm now running ati's fglrx binary in a gnome non-compiz env by moving the two glx files out of the way in /etc/X11/Xsession.d
and blocking the gutsy fglrx module in /etc/default/linux-res* and restarting gdm.
With those changes firefox is fast, movies work (mplayer -fs -vo gl2 *.mp*), and I don't have compix

I may have an odd env. having upgraded from feisty w/ my custom xorg.conf
but I don't know what I could be doing wrong.

My plan is to wait for the upcoming ati binary flgrx that supports compiz directly.

[jeroenl (jeroenl)]

Right now it is still a problem in my installation.

[michal przadka (przadka)]

confirmed.

[jeroenl (jeroenl)]

This isn't a problem anymore in Firefox 3 (beta 4).

[jeroenl (jeroenl)]

Works in Fx 3 on Gutsy and Hardy