Firefox crashes repeatedly after system update

[Marco38]

How to reproduce:
- Download and install Ubuntu Mate 16.04.2 LTS, Raspberry Edition, on a micro SD card.
- Boot the Pi with that card, and launch Firefox. Everything's OK so far. By the way, it's FF 54.0.
- Update everything either with Software Updater or with apt-get update + apt-get upgrade.
- (Attempt to) launch Firefox again. It won't start at all, and all you'll get will be a window repeatedly saying that Firefox has crashed, and proposing to send a bug report.

I've initially noticed this issue on the latest (LTS) version of the Raspberry Edition of Ubuntu Mate (16.04.2), and afterwards reproduced it on the 32-bit version of the Desktop Edition (16.04.3), so it's not a Raspberry-specific issue. But, oddly enough, not on the 64-bit version, where Firefox was updated from 54.0 to 56.0 and kept running fine. I did not try more recent versions of the Desktop Edition (17.04 or 17.10) because the latest available for the Pi is the 16.04.2.

I wish I could help more, by pinpointing precisely what has gone wrong, but this is the first time I report a bug in Ubuntu, and I don't know where to start the debugging.

Thanks for reading,

Marc

[Alex ARNAUD (alexarnaud)]

Hello,

Ubuntu Mate 16.04.3 is available for the Raspberry Pi. Could you try with this release ? Which version of Firefox produces the issue ?

Best regards.

[Marco38 (marco38)]

Hello, and thanks for replying,

I'd be glad to test right away, but the latest version of Ubuntu Mate for the Raspberry Pi that I'm able to download from https://ubuntu-mate.org/download/ is the 16.04.2 LTS, unlike users of the Desktop version who can download 16.04.3 LTS (and PowerPC users who are limited to 16.04.1 LTS). Where may I download that 16.04.3 LTS version for the Raspberry Pi, please ? Or should I start from a 16.04.2 and perform a 'apt-get dist-upgrade'?

P.S. As I said in my initial message, the version of Firefox that ships with the Raspberry Edition of Ubuntu Mate 16.04.2 LTS is Firefox 54.0.

Best regards,

Marc

----- Mail original -----
De: "Alex ARNAUD" <email address hidden>
À: "marc terrier" <email address hidden>
Envoyé: Mardi 24 Octobre 2017 17:35:23
Objet: [Bug 1726616] Re: Firefox crashes repeatedly after system update

Hello,

Ubuntu Mate 16.04.3 is available for the Raspberry Pi. Could you try
with this release ? Which version of Firefox produces the issue ?

Best regards.

--
You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
report.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1726616

Title:
  Firefox crashes repeatedly after system update

Status in ubuntu-mate:
  New

Bug description:
  How to reproduce:
  - Download and install Ubuntu Mate 16.04.2 LTS, Raspberry Edition, on a micro SD card.
  - Boot the Pi with that card, and launch Firefox. Everything's OK so far. By the way, it's FF 54.0.
  - Update everything either with Software Updater or with apt-get update + apt-get upgrade.
  - (Attempt to) launch Firefox again. It won't start at all, and all you'll get will be a window repeatedly saying that Firefox has crashed, and proposing to send a bug report.

  I've initially noticed this issue on the latest (LTS) version of the
  Raspberry Edition of Ubuntu Mate (16.04.2), and afterwards reproduced
  it on the 32-bit version of the Desktop Edition (16.04.3), so it's not
  a Raspberry-specific issue. But, oddly enough, not on the 64-bit
  version, where Firefox was updated from 54.0 to 56.0 and kept running
  fine. I did not try more recent versions of the Desktop Edition (17.04
  or 17.10) because the latest available for the Pi is the 16.04.2.

  I wish I could help more, by pinpointing precisely what has gone
  wrong, but this is the first time I report a bug in Ubuntu, and I
  don't know where to start the debugging.

  Thanks for reading,

  Marc

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mate/+bug/1726616/+subscriptions

[Marco38 (marco38)]

Hello,
I see that the status of this ticket has been changed from "New" to "Invalid" without any explanation. Is there something I did wrong (or that I could have done better) when I submitted the bug ?

[Etienne Papegnies (etienne-papegnies)]

Hello @marco38
The invalid status is only there on the Ubuntu-MATE side of this bug.
This is because responsibility for fixing this bug does not lie with the Ubuntu MATE team but instead with the Firefox developers.

[Marco38 (marco38)]

Hello @etienne-papegnies
Thanks for the explanation. In the meantime, I have uninstalled Firefox and started using only Chromium on that RPi. I tried to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox, recently, hoping that it would solve the issue, but to no avail for now. Let's hope the Firefox devs will be able to solve this rapidly.