How do I troubleshoot web browsing troubles (using Fedora 6 + Mozilla )?
 

I have been using Fedora Core 6 and Mozilla Firefox 3.0.6 for awhile now, but I'm still rather inept at troubleshooting Linux network issues so this post is going in the 'Newbie' forum.

The end user explanation of my trouble is basically: I cannot browse to several websites, like www.msnbc.msn.com or www.youtube.com, that I have visited successfully in the past. The browser will randomly give me a partial page or a blank page and display the "please wait" mouse cursor as though the page is loading. I have never received an error, though I must admit that I haven't been very patient waiting for one. I discovered that for many sites (e.g. Google) clicking the Stop and Reload buttons often brings up the page I tried to receive. I cannot think of any changes that I have done to my system that correspond to my browsing troubles.

Steps I've taken so far: I opened the System Monitor tool and noticed that no network activity appears there once the browser starts its "please wait" mode. I tried disabling all the plug-ins to the browser (I only have Java and Shockwave Flash anyway). I decided to try creating a new profile in Firefox, but the trouble occurs there as well. I found some reports in Google from users noting the same trouble with vers. 3.0.6 of Mozilla (though under WinXP). Per a suggestion in those reports, I attempted to download the newest release (3.1beta), but the download just hung up on the "Starting..." point in the download manager. This is when I remembered that I installed Opera (vers. 9.25) and tried a different browser altogether. Opera had the same issue. I am able to ping most sites giving me trouble (I assume the others block the ping request). I tried running a traceroute command on www.msnbc.msn.com and it appears to be successful in reaching MSN. The last entry I received was:

17 * ten2-1.tuk-76c-1b.ntwk.msn.net (207.46.36.201) 92.580 ms *

Questions: What should I do next to troubleshoot the issue? If this was a Windows system, I would suspect a virus or other malicious program. Could this be a problem with my Linux install? My system is very standard so if anyone is susceptible, it's me!


Current Operating System: Linux dhcppc0 2.6.22.14-72.fc6 #1 SMP Wed Nov 21 13:44:07 EST 2007 i686 (from the Xorg.0.log file)

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011912 Firefox/3.0.6 (from the About Mozilla Firefox box)

first i would install fedora 9 or 10 ( 10 IS recommended ) all support for 6 ended a long time ago .
I am surprised that ff3 would even run in fedora 6 .

as to your problem it sounds like a flash or java problem . there are NO rpm's to fix for that in fedora 6 .
but updating flash ( to adobe) and java might help ?

Update (solution?) to my problem
 

First of all let me respectfully rant about John's first suggestion. Why is it that nearly every time an unusual software problem occurs, the first suggestion to come from computer experts is upgrading to the newest OS? People like me prefer to eke as much use as possible from older hardware, and keeping an older OS seems to make sense in terms of not overloading that hardware with the newest toys found in OS upgrades. This was always my biggest complaint with companies like Microsoft (sorry if that comparison offends the Linux community). Why should I pay to upgrade an OS that is otherwise working overall? (I know, Linux can be obtained for free, but I assign some value to my time so I'm still paying.)

OK. Enough soapboxing about needless upgrading. My system is now working normally again. Two things have changed since I reported my troubles. One of them followed John's suggested solution to upgrade Flash. The best part is that I didn't need to really do anything to get the update. The package updater popped up with the newest Flash libraries ready to install. The second change also came via automated update. I now have version 3.0.7 of Firefox. Unfortunately, I cannot be certain which of these changes corrected my problem because I hadn't been out to those sites giving me trouble until after both updates were completed. Oh well, my thanks go out to anyone who puzzled over this issue.

hi super_dave_42 next time you might want to mention the system specs ? like this is a old - p3 with 128 meg ram that had win 98 on it, and that you can NOT put fedora 10 on it . That way we will not tell you to do that .

Doh! It appears I forgot to include that info in my original post. Please accept my apologies. The system has a 1 GHz processor and 1 Gig of ram. To be honest, I've had the machine so long I don't remember what class of processor, best guess without digging out my paperwork is P3. It ran Win2000 originally. I chose to use Fedora 6 because at the time it seemed to be the version that matched Win2K specs best. I also was limited by the fact that the machine doesn't have a DVD drive and FC6 fits onto a reasonable number of CDs. I have a sneaking suspicion that somebody will tell me that my selection process was incorrect and I could have installed a newer version, but like I said before, FC6 has been working for me well so far. Even this puzzling web browsing issue was fixed automatically, even though FC6 is no longer officially supported. Gotta love that!

You mentioned that initially you had the same problem with the Opera browser as well. I don't think that the Mozilla upgrade did cure that one as well, so it's rather the flash plugin was the problem, I guess (though I don't know if Opera uses the same plugin).

Just a note:
There is nothing wrong with Fedora 6. Most security updates are relevant mostly for servers with constant public access on a fixed IP number. The habit of always installing the latest distro version is prone to cause trouble sometimes. I liked Fedora 1, hated version 2 and 3, loved Fedora 4 and had it for a very long time on some of the older PC's, missed versions 5, 6 and 7 (though I upgraded the old Fedora 4's to version 6 later on old hardware), then got Fedora 8 and have it on most newer PC's, skipped 9, have Fedora 10 on one box (it's nice if you survive that brain-damaged initial install with the crooked network GUI tool and mismatched yum setup). Having a recent distro version is fine, but not exactly necessary to solve a concrete software problem.

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