Firefox runs quickly for me when I am root, but not when I am a normal user. When I am a normal user, pages are downloaded reasonably quickly, but the display is updated very slowly. For example, when I press a key while the cursor is in the search box, it takes approximately three seconds before the character is displayed, and when I open a new tab, it takes approximately three seconds before the new tab is displayed. After I open a new tab but before it is displayed, the so-far not displayed search box still accepts input. For example, if I open a new tab, then press the keys t,e,s,t, and <return> before the display updates, it will show is has searched the Internet for "test" once the display updates.

I have an Intel Arch Linux laptop and use Ratpoison as my window manager. Generally no error messages are produced when running Firefox as a normal user. The contents of ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log are here. The output of lspci -v is here.

To try to fix this, I updated my system and regenerated ~/.mozilla for a normal user. None of this helped.

I have not experienced this, so I don't have an answer.

I have a couple of suggestions for troubleshooting, though.

Try running top in a a terminal as you browse and keeping an eye on what is using how much memory as you use Firefox (this article tells how to pipe top output to a file).
Start Firefox from the command line in a terminal and watch for error messages as you browse.
Look for Firefox errors in the logs (this forum post describes where Firefox logs stuff).

Let us know what you find.

startup firefox with no addons enabled?
Can't speak to firefox as root, since I never run firefox as root.

When I run one version of Firefox as root and another as a normal user, the one run as a normal user doesn't display slowly and my settings for running it as root are used when running it as a normal user, even though this normaly isn't the case.

The output of top -n 1 -b when Firefox is running as a normal user and no instances of Firefox are running as root is here. Though it shows 0% CPU usage, I have noticed that when I run top without arguments, take an action to make Firefox update its display, and then look at top before Firefox does so, CPU usage is at roughly 13% for one of my cores and roughly 1% for the others.

When I previously ran it, there were no errors in the terminal, but when I ran it some more it started repeatedly logging "(firefox:1294): dconf-CRITICAL **: unable to create file '/run/user/1000/dconf/user: Permission denied. dconf will not work properly." I changed file permissions to eliminate the error. Though the error stopped being shown, Firefox's speed did not noticeably change.

journalctl -qb /usr/bin/firefox has no output while running Firefox as a normal user not running it as root.

When a normal user, I run Firefox with no addons enabled.

If you have ran firefox as root chances are... worms in java got into the fox belly. Tar to back up both /root/.mozilla and /home/$USER/.mozilla keep it safe for in case you will miss your bookmarks. Then If you have something worthy in the waste basket called /tmp back them up first then remove everything from /tmp.

Remove also firefox files inside /home/YOU/.cache.

Finally, run firefox as ordinary user.

Hope that heals. I have done it my self before. It worked.

m.m.

I followed these directions but noticed no difference in the speed the display was updated. Also, I highly doubt the issue is a Java worm, as I don't have Java installed.

I also reinstalled Firefox completely, to no avail.

This is very confusing. Normally, you shouldn't ever need to run Firefox as root. If you do, then things may get weird. The developers do not expect anyone to run Firefox as root, so any strange bugs caused by it are not ones the developers would have prepared for.

Note that Firefox does not play nicely with itself when trying to run it in multiple processes on the same screen. Instead of opening a second instance of Firefox, it will open a new window in the currently running instance of Firefox. It expects the running user to be the same, of course.

My guess is that it's getting confused because some files which should have been created and owned by the normal user were instead created and owned by root. I'd wipe clean various folders in your normal user home folder to try and deal with this. And remember to never run Firefox as root. Any bugs you encounter from running as root will not be ones the developers have anticipated or would be familiar with.

So, I'd try something like this:

I'm not sure if there are any other Firefox related files to worry about, but those will likely encapsulate anything causing your problems.

So basically:

step1) quit Firefox. Wait maybe 10 seconds to be sure it's totally quit (you can confirm with ps -A)

step2) Do the above steps in a terminal to get rid of any Firefox files with bad access issues

step3) Run firefox again to see how it goes. This should be like running it for the first time.

Remember, if you run firefox as root then you may cause weird things to happen again.

I followed these directions to no avail.

that is honestly all you have to say after someone took the effort to write it all out for you with steps, commands and alternatives?
may your fingers rot off.
or wait, maybe you are a bot?

Is the user in the video group?

Did root run a gui web browser (*sigh*). If so you might have .xyz files in your ~/ of that user owned as root. So you can't write things like cache due to permission issues. Or something else is seriously b0rked. If there's nothing precious to be saved, rm-ing some .mozilla, .config/???, and .cache type things might be a good start. They should get re-created when the programs that use them start and can't find them.

(problems often solved with a fresh install in half the time)

ondoho... let us be considerate to people who are not reared by parents to appreciate gratitude. Some appreciate our efforts, some don't even care feel nor express simple compliment for being grateful, it reflects the way how their parents trained when young.

1 members found this post helpful.

nah, doesn't work either.

but on topic:
you can't just say it didn't work when there's commands and steps that must have created some sort of output.
looking closer i see that isaackuo formatted it in a way that you have to actually understand it and adjust to your situation. can't just copy-paste.
so simply copy-pasting the commands would have created a very distinct error message.
which would have needed to be posted here.
it just baffles the mind.

Okay, I still don't really understand the symptoms, but I think Shadow7 has the right hunch. Running Firefox (or even something else) as root has probably caused some weird files in the user's home directory to be owned by root.

Since it seems that removing only ~/.mozilla/* and ~/.cache/mozilla/* were not sufficient to clear things up, I'd look at moving ALL of the configuration files from the home folder.

I'd use the following steps:

1) Log out, so the GUI is on the login screen.

2) Use Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to a text console login screen. (You will use something like Ctrl-Alt-F7 to get back to the GUI login - the exact F key required might vary.)

3) Log in as root at the text console login screen.

4) use something like this to move ALL of the user's config files:

This should wipe out all of userid's config files (including any which are mistakenly owned by root).

5) Use something like Ctrl-Alt-F7 to get back to the GUI login, and log in as userid. See if Firefox works properly.

You can then selectively copy back various config files from junkjunk2 for stuff that you don't feel like setting up again. Note that if you COPY the files back as the regular user (NOT as root), the new copies will be owned by the regular user, not root.

Thank you for the response. Following your directions resulted in no noticeable changes in speed. I was already in a terminal and Xorg wasn't running, so I didn't exit a GUI or log in as root and instead used su.

Edit: Improved formatting and I initially forgot to execute commands as root, so I redid them.