Browser Freezes System during Cacheing.

[Kuya Marc]

When browsing and RAM usages reaches 463 MB, System completely FROZEN with excessive hard drive activity. System goes back to normal after 3 to 15 minutes.

As I write this post, 228MB out of 463MB is being used. This "Report a bug" page is being done in a single tab.

When visiting Facebook and not playing games nor viewing videos, within 10 minutes (average), system will freeze while excessive hard drive activity is in progress. Temporary solution has been exiting the browser every 15 minutes, and only use one (1) tab.

When visiting Wordpress.com (my blog), browser works fine until working with the post "box" and attempting to view my pages or posts, system will freeze from several seconds to several minutes.

The system does not crash! 10% of the time, the browser will ask to kill pages. Other than that, the longest time I had to wait to be able to use the system was 45 minutes. Despite excessive hard drive activity, I had to hold the power button down until my laptop turns off.

Alternatively, when I press Ctrl-Alt-F1, logging in can take up to five (5) minutes before I can enter 'sudo killall chromium-browser', Once I kill the browser, system is back to normal operation (at normal speeds).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: chromium-browser 17.0.963.56~r121963-0ubuntu0.11.10.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-17.27-generic 3.2.6
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-17-generic i686
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Mar 2 19:31:17 2012
Desktop-Session:
 DESKTOP_SESSION = Lubuntu
 XDG_CONFIG_DIRS = /etc/xdg/lubuntu/:/etc/xdg/xdg-/usr/bin/startlubuntu:/etc/xdg:/etc/xdg
 XDG_DATA_DIRS = /etc/xdg/lubuntu:/usr/share//usr/bin/startlubuntu:/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/:/usr/share:/usr/share/gdm:/var/lib/menu-xdg
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
Env:
 MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH = None
 LD_LIBRARY_PATH = None
InstallationMedia: Lubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release i386 (20111012)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_PH:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_PH.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: chromium-browser
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
chromium-default: CHROMIUM_FLAGS=""

[Steve Jackson (wildtoltec)]

I have the EXACT same problem:
Chromium Version 28.0.1500.71 Ubuntu 13.04 (28.0.1500.71-0ubuntu1.13.04.1)

[Saikrishna Arcot (saiarcot895)]

How much RAM do you have? Is it possible that the system is now starting to use the swap file?

[dino99 (9d9)]

Oneiric have reached EOL since a while and that issue is not reproducible with recent version(s)

[fcolcord (fcolcord)]

Chromium often takes over whole laptop. can't do anything else. Mouse stops moving. Screen unchanged. Hard disk thrashing. Have had this problem for months. Was about to give up, and thought I'd try to report it. This previous description seems closes to mine. Happy to file a new bug. Googling for bug indicates I should switch off hardware optimization in Chromium. I'm attaching \var\crash after having to exit Chromium after freezing using Alt+PrtScr+R E I S U B. Only the B did anything. Happy to help trouble shoot this. It would happen every day. I've started to use firefox instead. F