Firefox: all tabs loose page display and internet access but new tabs work normally

[Michael F Winthrop]

Significant problems with KUBUNTU 16.04.3 WiFi.

I had been an early adopter of KUBUNTU 16.04, before the warnings about on-line upgrade from KUBUNTU 14.04 came out. To solve those problems, I re-installed KUBUNTU 16.04.3 from disk over the system partition of my PC while retaining my user partition, applications, and downloads partitions (also WIN10) KUBUNTU 16.04 WiFi was bad before and remained bad after. KUBUNTU 14.04 had some problems, but that eventually was resolved.

Most recent complaint is Firefox will loose all displayed tabbed web pages and those web pages cannot be refreshed. Opening a new web tab works perfectly. Pasting a broken web page URL into a new tab works perfectly.

For some time I have had WiFi failures on boot.The ifconfig initially said there was no WiFi device. IMPORTANT NOTE: Ethernet has always worked and I have had to string a cat5 cable across my house several times to get network access for repairs. I installed network-manager (it was missing ??) and WiFi showed up via ifconfig.

After installing network-manager (again) ifconfig showed WiFi with a new ID: wlp12s0. Next I manually inserted this new ID into /etc/network/interfaces because wlan0 is apparently OBE:

#--- wlp12s0 ---wlan------
auto wlp12s0

iface wlp12s0 inet static
  address 192.168.99.12
  netmask 255.255.255.0
  gateway 192.168.99.1
  wpa-ssid Disco
  wpa-psk pre-shared-key

At this point, WiFi would work about 50% of the time on boot/reboot. ifconfig always shows it as configured. The network-manager widget only shows it when it is configured via boot-up. If boot-up fails to configure WiFi the widget only shows Ethernet. It is displayed in network-manager but it is not available to connect. Network-manager showed Ethernet as available to turn OFF. Eventually I tried to put Ethernet up/down in as an option and eliminated Ethernet always up (this was explicitly not set to be always up, but that was the case anyhow) Now Ethernet up/down is always up on boot-up.

BEGIN DIGRESSION
When I looked at the password, I noted that in network-manager there is a wallet requirement to access the password (if I chose to use it) so I tried that. That accomplished requiring me to unlock the wallet on the occasions when WiFi was working. However WiFi did operate more often the before. I made the password available without wallet since it did no useful help in this problem. This improve operations even more, but not reliably at all times,
END OF DIGRESSION

I next installed WiFiRadar which sometimes would run and other times would not.(It remains installed but I am not using it now. In particular, it could not raise WiFi from the dead when it did execute properly. It did allow me to correct some elements of the WiFi configuration that network-manager had wrong. It fixed the password issue.

An odd part of this problem still occurs when WiFi does work (now about 80% of the time): ifupdown enp9s0 is connected as UP when WiFi is also UP on boot-up. In this situation Ethernet interferes with network access as if it is a valid connection to the same router as WiFi. When I disconnect ifupdown enp9s0, it remains available for connect but WiFi no longer is interfered with by the Ethernet connection that was not there. When I run ifconfig enp9s0 down, ifconfig no longer shows enp9s0 but the widget still shows ifupdown enp9s0 available to connect.

The Firefox issue appears to not be related to that application directly.

I have a broadcom WiFi device in a Dell 1525 Inspiron laptop.

[Michael F Winthrop (mwinthrop-1)]

The following kern.log is a record of the kernel events. Please note that I used the widget to close the Ethernet connection, and note subsequent issues. Also note that the WiFi connection has a lease time for a nailed up connection IP address (??)

dad@dad314159:/var/log$ tail kern.log -n 100
Sep 21 10:53:51 dad314159 sddm[3332]: Session "/usr/share/xsessions/plasma.desktop" selected, command: "/usr/bin/startkde"
Sep 21 10:53:51 dad314159 sddm[3332]: Adding cookie to "/var/run/sddm/{cfd8e347-ff7a-40eb-936b-7b97cbf4a408}"
Sep 21 10:53:51 dad314159 sddm-helper[3622]: [PAM] Starting...
Sep 21 10:53:51 dad314159 sddm-helper[3622]: [PAM] Authenticating...
Sep 21 10:53:51 dad314159 sddm-helper[3622]: [PAM] returning.
Sep 21 10:53:51 dad314159 sddm[3332]: Authenticated successfully
Sep 21 10:53:51 dad314159 sddm-helper[3622]: Starting: "/etc/sddm/Xsession" "/usr/bin/startkde"
Sep 21 10:53:51 dad314159 sddm-helper[3694]: Adding cookie to "/home/dad/.Xauthority"
Sep 21 10:53:51 dad314159 sddm[3332]: Session started
Sep 21 10:53:51 dad314159 kernel: [ 11.697101] audit: type=1400 audit(1506005631.852:30): apparmor="DENIED" operation="capable" profile="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=3747 comm="usb" capability=35 capname="wake_alarm"
Sep 21 10:53:51 dad314159 kernel: [ 11.702854] usblp0: removed
Sep 21 10:53:51 dad314159 kernel: [ 11.718373] usblp 2-2.2:1.1: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 7 if 1 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04B8 pid 0x1106
Sep 21 10:53:56 dad314159 NetworkManager[956]: <info> [1506005636.1609] manager: WiFi hardware radio set enabled
Sep 21 10:53:56 dad314159 NetworkManager[956]: <info> [1506005636.1610] manager: WWAN hardware radio set enabled
Sep 21 10:53:56 dad314159 kernel: [ 16.467172] audit: type=1400 audit(1506005636.620:31): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" profile="/usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi///usr/sbin/mysqld" name="/proc/4030/status" pid=4030 comm="mysqld" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1000 ouid=1000
Sep 21 10:53:56 dad314159 kernel: [ 16.467176] audit: type=1400 audit(1506005636.620:32): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" profile="/usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi///usr/sbin/mysqld" name="/sys/devices/system/node/" pid=4030 comm="mysqld" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1000 ouid=0
Sep 21 10:53:56 dad314159 kernel: [ 16.467178] audit: type=1400 audit(1506005636.620:33): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" profile="/usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi///usr/sbin/mysqld" name="/proc/4030/status" pid=4030 comm="mysqld" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1000 ouid=1000
Sep 21 10:53:56 dad314159 kernel: [ 16.495191] audit: type=1400 audit(1506005636.648:34): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" profile="/usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi///usr/sbin/mysqld" name="/etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback" pid=4030 comm="mysqld" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1000 ouid=0
Sep 21 10:53:56 dad314159 kernel: [ 16.521493] audit: type=1400 audit(1506005636.676:35): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" profile="/usr/sbin/mysqld-akonadi///usr/sbin/mysqld" name="/proc/4031/status" pid=4031 comm="mysqld" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1000 ouid=1000
Sep 21 10:53:56 dad314159 kernel: [ 16.524452] audit: type=1400 audit(1506005636.680:36): ap...