Firefox grays out and crashes

Bug #230922 reported by shanen (Shannon Jacobs)
12
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: firefox

I'd be pretty shocked if this is a rare crash, but I'm not sure how to describe it. I'm not sure how to find which previously reported bug it belongs to. I'm not sure how to diagnose it better. I followed the link about debugging procedures and the link about Firefox, but I'm not sure where to begin with that. Right now the only thing I'm sure about is that Hardy Heron is worse than the previous release. This is not good.

I can describe the fatal behavior pretty well. I normally work with several Firefox windows open. One of them apparently get overloaded and and all of them become grayed out and unresponsive. Sometimes they recover, sometimes not. If not, I can usually force Firefox to close. When I restart Firefox, it sometimes remembers the previous window configuration, and sometimes does not. The problem seems most likely to be triggered by a webpage that involves Java or Flash video.

Visual effects are currently set at Normal, so the graying out behavior is specific to this setting. Sometimes I am running with no visual effects and in that case Firefox just freezes. I think the problems are more frequent with this setting so right now the only diagnostic I can think of is to try setting the visual effects to the Extra setting to see if that makes things worse.

I don't know if this is related to the white screen of death which is affecting this same machine. However, I am sure that those crashes seem to be worse under Hardy Heron (compared to Gutsy), and that I do have to do more things to get back to the running state now.

On other machines running Hardy Heron, I don't see exactly the same problems, but the Hardy Heron machine that I use second most frequently definitely has serious problems with the JavaScript in Firefox 3. The really nasty crashes seem to be limited to this particular Sharp machine (so far and knocking on wood).

Revision history for this message
John Vivirito (gnomefreak) wrote :

Are you using a nvidia card with the nvidia-glx-new drivers from repos?
Is it X that shuts down or just firefox?

Changed in firefox-3.0:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
shanen (Shannon Jacobs) (shanen) wrote :

It's a Mebius notebook, so no graphics card. I think the chipset information was supposed to be included with the files that wound up attached to the other similar bug I reported with the Help menu option inside of Firefox.

Pretty sure it is only Firefox. I can switch to other windows and do things. However, I have seen something similar involving Open Office, so there might be something else going on at a higher level?

Case in point. As I was typing this reply, when I hit the "?" at the end of the last sentence, Firefox grayed out and became unresponsive, but it only lasted for a few seconds (that time).

Revision history for this message
shanen (Shannon Jacobs) (shanen) wrote :

Just confirming that this bug is persisting with the latest release (RC 1). I think the most distinctive instance is actually when I try to quit from Firefox. Very often it fails to close all of the windows, and winds up in this state. I still haven't figured out the pattern, but most common is that it fails to close any of the currently open windows, or it fails when it gets to the last one. Sometimes it will start closing windows and get hung up part way, but that seems less common. Once it gets there, the only apparent course of action is to nuke the window (and get the warning about not doing so).

Since it seems pretty stable now and happens about 75% of the time, I should be able to do some diagnostic testing, though I have no idea what to test or what sort of data would be helpful.

Revision history for this message
Alexander Sack (asac) wrote : Re: [Bug 230922] Re: Firefox grays out and crashes

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 01:55:17AM -0000, shanen (Shannon Jacobs) wrote:
> Just confirming that this bug is persisting with the latest release (RC
> 1). I think the most distinctive instance is actually when I try to quit
> from Firefox. Very often it fails to close all of the windows, and winds
> up in this state. I still haven't figured out the pattern, but most
> common is that it fails to close any of the currently open windows, or
> it fails when it gets to the last one. Sometimes it will start closing
> windows and get hung up part way, but that seems less common. Once it
> gets there, the only apparent course of action is to nuke the window
> (and get the warning about not doing so).
>
> Since it seems pretty stable now and happens about 75% of the time, I
> should be able to do some diagnostic testing, though I have no idea what
> to test or what sort of data would be helpful.
>

Please obtain a backtrace and attach that to this bug. How to do is
documented here:

 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Bugs#head-c576e78d92cb3c959c271158b6ace98be835de83

 - Alexander

Revision history for this message
shanen (Shannon Jacobs) (shanen) wrote :

Thank you [Alexander Sack] for your reference to the backtrace procedures. I've been too busy with other matters to look into it until today, though I have seen several more crashes. (Pretty much daily now.)

Unfortunately, the instructions for the backtrace procedures are quite complicated. They seem hard to understand, mostly because I don't know where my system currently stands in relation to those procedures. Meanwhile, new versions of various packages will appear... It also seems very likely that this procedure will change the nature of the problem enough that it seems probable that my efforts will be wasted. Then there will be the potential of future problems if I can't reverse the procedures... Sorry, but right now and based on the current level of problems, your request seems to be on the wrong side of reasonable.

May I suggest that such crucial packages as Firefox should include a debugging option in the Preferences? It would be a relatively simple option that we could just switch on, so that we could quickly help you collect the information about such crashes.

For right now I'm just planning to suffer for the brief period until the actual Firefox 3 arrives, and then see if the problem persists.

Revision history for this message
Jayson Rowe (jayson.rowe) wrote :

Since it's been a very long time since any additional info was added to this bug, I'm just checking to see if this is still an issue, and find out what additional work should be done on this bug.

Revision history for this message
shanen (Shannon Jacobs) (shanen) wrote :

I have just confirmed that it continues to exist in Ibex, but I still have no real idea about the real cause and I'm still unwilling (and regard myself as basically technically incompetent) to tackle the complicated backtrace procedures.

Currently what I have done is disable the proprietary driver for the ATI graphics. However, this seems to be like trying to prove the negation, and I'm not optimistic. There are often long periods when I see no crashes--but I've seen two in the last two days. I had actually run Ibex experimentally on another partition for several days before upgrading my primary working partition--and then the crashes started again, after long crash-free period.

I'm getting so fed up that I'm starting to think about dumping this Sharp notebook even though it isn't that old. It's just too much of a nuisance under Ubuntu... How much am I willing to pay to avoid Windows? Especially since it's no skin off of Microsoft's nose. The maker already paid for my Windows even if I don't use it.

Revision history for this message
Pedro Villavicencio (pedro) wrote :

Closing this bug report as no further information has been provided. Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for. Thanks!.

Changed in firefox-3.0:
status: Incomplete → Invalid
To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Duplicates of this bug

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.