MASTER "Firefox is already running, but is not responding" when /home is an NFS directory

[Michael Helmling]

Binary package hint: firefox

When trying to start firefox I always get the error "Firefox is already running, but is not responding". even though
 - "ps -A|grep firefox" returns nothing
 - this happens just after a reboot
 - all lockfiles in the .mozilla-dir are gone, in fact the error even occurs on a fresh added user

I have absolutely no idea what could cause this; removing firefox and installing it again also didn't help. Mozilla (suite) and konqueror work.

[Roel Huybrechts (rulus)]

Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been
reported into our bug tracking system, but the maintainers do need
more information to fix the bug. Could you please provide more information in the other report?

[Freddy Martinez (freddymartinez9)]

try sudo killall firefox-bin and also paste the result of a pstree. There may be another program using it, Have you considered loading in safe mode?

[Michael Helmling (supermihi)]

This problem seems to be quite volatile, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. However I'm _sure_ that no firefox or firefox-bin process was running (I'm not a noob, and as I said, ps -A | grep firefox returned nothing).
What do you mean with "safe mode"?
The problem might be related to some NFS problems here (/home is a nfs dir), but I have to investigate further and try to give more helpful hints.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

Hi,

is this problem gone for you?

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

appears to be gone for reporter. If you still see it, reopen.

[Matthias (m-ihmig)]

I have the same problem - I am using central HOME directories, mounted with NFS.
Sometimes, I cannot start Firefox (same message as in title).

I can (temporarily solve it, if I restart the nfs server (I use nfs-kernel-server), but the error reoccurs after a few days.
I also have a problem with openoffice (with Locking Enabled) despite having nfs-common installed on the clients (but I did not find statd lockd tools? are they included somewhere else?).

What I use:
- Server: Edgy, nfs-kernel-server
- Client: Edgy, nfs-common

What does not help:
- removing ~/.mozilla on client
- restarting client
- (re)mount nfshomes on client

What _does_ help:
- on client: mount nfshomes with "nolock" option
- on server: init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

So, to me, it looks like a locking problem. For now I can work around this if I disable nfs locking completely (nolock), but this is no solution.
How can I get the locking tools to work with ubuntu?

Thank you,
Matthias

[Hilario J. Montoliu (hjmf) (hmontoliu)]

I'm reopening this report as seems to be confirmed at bug #129203:

I can't add information to but #73457 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/73457), but I have reproduced this.

My situation
- /home/ is an NFS directory
- Firfefox has ungraceful shutdown (power off)
- No lock files anywhere "find . -name lock -print -quit" returns nothing
- "ps aux | grep firefox" shows nothing

[Sam M (sammymason)]

I had this same problem, both with Firefox and Thunderbird. I noticed the following:

- all the problems began when I tried to point my Ubuntu profiles to my XP profiles
- both apps worked fine in XP the whole time
- as soon as I switched my profiles back to the Ubuntu partition, I could use both apps again

Looking around, I found one site that instructed me to create a FAT32 partition to store my profiles on so that both OSs could use them. This led me to believe that the problem was with Ubuntu's ability (or lack thereof) to write onto XP's NTFS partition, where all my files are still stored.

So, I did some looking around and came across this guide to letting Ubuntu write onto NTFS:

DISCLAIMER: I am very new to Ubuntu and cannot promise that this will work.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=217009

After following that guide both programs worked perfectly. My Firefox extensions from XP even work in Ubuntu still!

Hope that helps.

[Michael Helmling (supermihi)]

This problem didn't appear any more since upgrading to feisty. Since the boxes are still frequently used without that problem appearing a single more time, I think it's ok to mark this fixed.

[Christopher Yeleighton (giecrilj)]

Steps to reproduce (Gutsy):
1. Open Firefox.
2. Tell Synaptic to submit a bug report.
BANG.
3. Quit Firefox.
4. Tell Synaptic to submit a bug report. (Firefox opens.)
5. Alt-F2 http://anything.
BANG.

[stevenschlansker (stevenschlansker)]

I apologize for resurrecting this bug report from the dead, but I anticipate that if I file a new report it will just be marked as a duplicate of this one :)

I recently upgraded a few machines to Intrepid and am now experiencing this problem. Same symptoms - 90% of the time firefox says it's already running or refuses to start at all (no windows or anything). Firefox is already not running. There's no stale lockfiles.
Remounting the NFS file system with nolock mitigates the problem, but that's obviously not an acceptable long-term solution

Setup:

Client: Intrepid Ibex up-to-date amd64 with /home mounted NFS
Server: FreeBSD 7 with a UFS2 volume exported

Could someone confirm and/or reopen the bug?

I am very willing to help troubleshoot, but I'll need some guidance - I don't know too much about NFS locking.

Thanks,
Steven Schlansker

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Mon, Nov 03, 2008 at 09:36:07PM -0000, stevenschlansker wrote:
> I apologize for resurrecting this bug report from the dead, but I
> anticipate that if I file a new report it will just be marked as a
> duplicate of this one :)
>
> I recently upgraded a few machines to Intrepid and am now experiencing this problem. Same symptoms - 90% of the time firefox says it's already running or refuses to start at all (no windows or anything). Firefox is already not running. There's no stale lockfiles.
> Remounting the NFS file system with nolock mitigates the problem, but that's obviously not an acceptable long-term solution
>

I have at least one more report about NFS /home and problems with
"already running".

From current evaluation its the places.sqlite file in your profile.

AFAIR, mvoing that to a different place and moving immediately back
will fix that. Seemed a bit like a lock to me. Also it only happens
when cold booting or when umount doesnt properly work on shutdown.

You think thats the same bug?

How did you check that there is no stale lock file on nfs client side?

 - Alexander

[stevenschlansker (stevenschlansker)]

This bug seems to have resurfaced in Intrepid, I hope reopening it is the right thing to do. If not, tell me and I'll file a new one or something.

[Siafu Linux (siafulinux)]

I'm having the same problem as I posted in the forums at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=992718.

I too have an NFS /home mount. Mine occurs if Firefox closes unexpectedly such as if the power goes out or if I log out of Gnome without closing Firefox first.

Deleting lock files and kill commands do not work and the only way I can get it to open again is by editing ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini and changing IsRelative=1 to IsRelative=0. Then Firefox will open, but as a new profile - so all bookmarks and so on need to be manually added.

Reopening is a good idea stevenschlansker :-)
JC

[Siafu Linux (siafulinux)]

Thanks Matthias, the "nolock" option works great for me and has helped me not lose my sanity on this end :-).

[stevenschlansker (stevenschlansker)]

However, mounting everything nolock is definitely not a long term solution... is anyone taking a look at this issue? Is this bug something that should be filed at Mozilla instead?

[Siafu Linux (siafulinux)]

No it isn't a long term solution, but at least I can continue working. It definitely needs to be addressed IMHO. Not sure it's a mozilla problem or not.

I do know it did the same with Seamonkey and also with Transmission. I think it's more an NFS issue.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 02:31:59AM -0000, Siafu Linux wrote:
> No it isn't a long term solution, but at least I can continue working.
> It definitely needs to be addressed IMHO. Not sure it's a mozilla
> problem or not.
>
> I do know it did the same with Seamonkey and also with Transmission. I
> think it's more an NFS issue.
>

maybe NFS4 helps?

 - Alexander

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

please open new bugs instead of resurrecting