firefox 3.0rc1 hangs

[daemacles]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

Using Ubuntu 8.04

An upgrade through the update manager of Firefox 3.0b5 to 3.0rc1 on 30 May 2008 causes Firefox to hang while initially loading and also frequently while browsing for minutes at a time.

Removing all plugins, ~/.mozilla had no effect, nor did removing and reinstalling firefox. Firefox 2 works fine.

Attached is output from 'strace firefox-3.0', highlight below which seems to be a stall when trying to contact localhost?? After strace prints the last line, Firefox hangs for a while then continues, strace spewing out more output. The same line dealing with sin_addr etc is always what gets displayed when firefox hangs.

.
.
.
read(30, "", 4096) = 0
close(30) = 0
munmap(0xb7bb1000, 4096) = 0
open("/etc/hosts", O_RDONLY|0x80000 /* O_??? */) = 30
fstat64(30, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=353, ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7bb1000
read(30, "127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain "..., 4096) = 353
read(30, "", 4096) = 0
close(30) = 0
munmap(0xb7bb1000, 4096) = 0
socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_IP) = 30
fcntl64(30, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0
setsockopt(30, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, [1], 4) = 0
connect(30, {sa_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(16001), sin_addr=inet_addr("127.0.0.1")}, 16 ((comment: hangs at this line))

>apt-cache policy firefox
firefox:
  Installed: 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
  Candidate: 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
  Version table:
 *** 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-proposed/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu3 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Packages

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

daemacles wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>
> Using Ubuntu 8.04
>
> An upgrade through the update manager of Firefox 3.0b5 to 3.0rc1 on 30
> May 2008 causes Firefox to hang while initially loading and also
> frequently while browsing for minutes at a time.
>
> Removing all plugins, ~/.mozilla had no effect, nor did removing and
> reinstalling firefox. Firefox 2 works fine.
>
> Attached is output from 'strace firefox-3.0', highlight below which
> seems to be a stall when trying to contact localhost?? After strace
> prints the last line, Firefox hangs for a while then continues, strace
> spewing out more output. The same line dealing with sin_addr etc is
> always what gets displayed when firefox hangs.
>
> .
> .
> .
> read(30, "", 4096) = 0
> close(30) = 0
> munmap(0xb7bb1000, 4096) = 0
> open("/etc/hosts", O_RDONLY|0x80000 /* O_??? */) = 30
> fstat64(30, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=353, ...}) = 0
> mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7bb1000
> read(30, "127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain "..., 4096) = 353
> read(30, "", 4096) = 0
> close(30) = 0
> munmap(0xb7bb1000, 4096) = 0
> socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_IP) = 30
> fcntl64(30, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0
> setsockopt(30, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, [1], 4) = 0
> connect(30, {sa_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(16001), sin_addr=inet_addr("127.0.0.1")}, 16 ((comment: hangs at this line))
>
>> apt-cache policy firefox
> firefox:
> Installed: 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
> Candidate: 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
> Version table:
> *** 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1 0
> 500 http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-proposed/main Packages
> 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
> 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu3 0
> 500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Packages
>
> ** Affects: firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
Try using a new profile and see if it helps any. Instructions on how to
do this properly is at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Bugs

Changed Summary to better relate to problem. I also added likely-sup tag
because i remember seeing this bug a few times since ~beta release. If i
recall correctly it was caused by bad profile but i dont remember exactly.

--
Sincerely Yours,
     John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246

[daemacles (daemacles)]

John,

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately running with the -ProfileManager flag doesn't help; firefox hangs at exactly the same place:

connect(24, {sa_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(16001), sin_addr=inet_addr("127.0.0.1")}, 16

before any windows are created, Profile Manager included. Eventually after a couple minutes of hanging the 'Choose User Profile' window appears.

Its as though firefox is waiting for a net connection to localhost which times-out, then continues loading/processing. That it tries to connect to localhost, but apparently doesn't need the connection as it works for a bit until the next time a connection is tried, seems odd. Netstat's output of the port used is below

>netstat -anp |grep -E '16001|Proto'
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
PID/Program name
tcp 0 1 192.168.1.5:56330 127.0.0.1:16001 SYN_SENT 455/firefox

I'd add that the problem occurs on my laptop (HP pavilion dv1000) but not desktop (custom), where firefox 3.0rc1 is working fine.

[daemacles (daemacles)]

Apparently at some point during the hardy upgrade the loopback device auto-start configuration was removed. Adding

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

to /etc/network/interfaces fixes the problem. Noticed same hangs happened with some other programs like gthumb and totem.

This is a ridiculous thing to happen...hard to track down to boot.

[cherry (dev-caltech)]

same with me :(
it sucks, i have to use seamonkey everytime, whereas all my settings are in firefox

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

 Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

 We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[danmb (danmbox)]

This happens when the localhost interface is firewalled. A workaround is

iptables -A INPUT -i localhost -j ACCEPT

but again, this is a ridiculous thing to happen and there should be a proper fix.

[Monkey (monkey-libre)]

Anyone has still this bug?

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Closing the bug as no further information has been provided.