www.slacky.eu Never Finishes Loading
 

I would appreciate some help from some web gurus.

I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.16 in Slackware 12.1. Every time I visit www.slacky.eu web site, the mouse pointer always remains in hourglass mode and the progress bar never completes.

There is something that prevents the page from loading to completion. Or, the page is fully loaded but some kind of handshake signal is not being received correctly.

I surf conservatively, therefore I enabled numerous Firefox features. No change.

I temporarily renamed my mozilla profile folder to create a new profile. No change.

I booted Firefox in safe mode to avoid loading extensions, etc. No change.

I then visited slacky.eu with Konqueror. The progress bar took a long time to complete. Possibly then the problem is not entirely with Firefox or my preferences or extensions.

I have a broadband connection.

The never ending progress bar is harmless and easily stopped by pressing the Esc key, but nonetheless annoying.

Any thoughts about troubleshooting?

Thanks.

I occasionally get this with ads, possibly adblock is taking a while to block the ads. What happens if you hit refresh while it's hanging?

Strange. I just tried it twice in Firefox with no problems (same with Opera). I am using Adblock Plus in Firefox, if that makes a difference. Do you have any javascript/flash/etc.-blocking extensions installed?

[edit]I should probably learn to read. Same problem in safe mode. *sigh*[/edit]

Problem Solved
 

Okay, problem solved. Bear with me as I share my little venture!

Refresh button has no effect.

I do not use the adblock extension, but to block most ads I use a secondary hosts file with dnsmasq and a similar file with squid. I temporarily disabled the dnsmasq and squid services. I temporarily configured firefox not to use any proxies.

Same hanging result.

However, the progress bar finally completed after about 3.5 minutes. Perhaps this was happening before but I lacked the patience to wait that long.

I kept dnsmasq and squid disabled. I restarted Firefox in safe mode (I have the NoScript extension installed and there are too many associated options that could affect what I am seeing.).

Same hanging result.

However, the idea of ad blocking reminded me that the hanging effect often is related to DNS lookup issues. Hmm.

I maintain in my /etc/hosts file the IP addresses of all the sites listed in my Firefox bookmarks. This was a habit I started long, long ago when I was miserably stuck on dial-up. Every little tweak helped in those days. I ran a daily script through cron to keep the hosts file fresh. I still run that daily script because, well, every little tweak helps. Still . . . I wondered.

I keep a /etc/hosts.min file that contains nothing but the bare minimum for my modest home network (I use static addresses). I renamed /etc/hosts to hosts.bak and copied hosts.min to hosts.

I started Firefox in safe mode and tried the slacky.eu site. The progress bar completed in <drum roll> --- less than 4 seconds. Actually, the page loaded completely immediately --- the time delay is probably caused by the site being on the opposite side of the world from my location and possibly a slow or busy server.

Next I started Firefox in normal mode. Same pleasurable non-hanging result.

Next I restarted both squid and dnsmasq. I restarted Firefox in normal mode. Same non-hanging result.

I restored my original /etc/hosts file. Same hanging result.

Okay, now my curiosity is peaked. Which IP address in my hosts file is the cause?

I opened the source code for the slacky.eu web page and scrolled through http URLs and matched any I found in my original /etc/hosts file. I found only one suspect. I commented out the reference and restored my original hosts file.

I started Firefox in normal mode. Same pleasurable non-hanging result.

I used dig to find the IP address for the problem URL. Nope, not the same as what was in my hosts file. I edited the IP address in my hosts file. I restarted Firefox.

Problem solved. No hanging.

Oh, I suppose you want to know the culprit URL, huh? :D

<Playing Alfred Hitchcock suspense movie organ music in background>

www.paypal.com

This hanging issue has been occurring for a long time. Therefore I have no idea why my daily updating script is installing the incorrect IP address for www.paypal.com. I'll have to look into that. :scratch:

I hope you enjoyed the little story. Thanks for helping!