Firefox and Thunderbird periodically crash, won't start again until rebooting

MirceaKitsune · 07-25-2018, 05:54 PM

My mother has been experiencing a severe issue on her computer for several months. After I got her a more performant motherboard today, the issue seems to have worsened rather than improved. I can't find any useful information to debug this problem, so I'm hoping someone else might have an idea about what is going on with her machine.

The issue only seems to affect software from Mozilla, namely Firefox and Thunderbird. After a few minutes of uptime, either Firefox or Thunderbird (usually the first) will crash, bringing up a popup that asks whether I wish to submit a crash report to Mozilla. Once a crash has occurred, the affected program will no longer start up until the computer is rebooted: The crash will now occur immediately as you try running the application. I've verified that no older process copies of the program are still running, tried a fresh profile and running in safe mode, and even logging out and back doesn't fix it!

When running FF or TB from a console once they become affected by the crash, I only see the following lines before I get the crash popup:

Code:

ExceptionHandler::GenerateDump cloned child 2855
ExceptionHandler::SendContinueSignalToChild sent continue signal to child
ExceptionHandler::WaitForContinueSignal waiting for continue signal...

Does anyone have an idea of what might be happening? Why would Firefox / Thunderbird periodically crash for no reason, and most importantly what does it change in that session that causes them to no longer start up until the computer is rebooted?

mrmazda · 07-25-2018, 11:09 PM

Are your parents also using Tumbleweed? If not, what?

How much RAM does their PC have?

Which FF and TB versions are installed, and from which repo(s)?

Code:

zypper ve

as root might find a conflict to resolve.

Crash reporting can be disabled in application preferences. Maybe disabling it will allow a restart without rebooting.

Mentioning this thread to the openSUSE maintainer Wolfgang R via opensuse-factory-mozilla@opensuse.org where he frequents could prove useful. irc://moznet/#firefox and #thunderbird could also be useful. I go there often, though not because of any crashing here. Firefox here is very stable.

Were you aware that most functionality of FF and TB are found combined in the (nominal predecessor) application from which each sprung, SeaMonkey? It's my primary app for both web and email on Leap.

If I had this problem I'd probably try the -no-remote startup switch, also in hope that restart without reboot would be possible.

MirceaKitsune · 07-26-2018, 05:45 PM

A heads up: I found at least part of the reason why Firefox / Thunderbird were crashing, followed by other applications today including the whole system. It appears one of the RAM modules was absolutely wrecked; I've ran memtest and found it was spewing a dozen errors per second! I removed two bad DDR2 modules in total, and the issue hasn't occurred again since. I didn't imagine the memory might have gone bad and was focusing on a software issue. I'll bump this if I notice it again and bad RAM wasn't the only cause.

frankbell · 07-26-2018, 08:41 PM

Nice detective work. Hardware has gotten so reliable that we forget that stuff wears out.

Bumps are frowned upon at LQ. Updates, however, are not.

boombaby · 07-27-2018, 11:04 PM

Hello, MirceaKitsune

You seem to have your problem solved. However I add the following FYI only.

I had the same problem with Vivaldi browser (on Mint). That is, once it locked up I could NOT restart it - exactly as you described. (It was damned annoying rebooting all the time - until I found a minor fix!)

To quickly "rid" the problem I used htop to kill a Vivaldi process, any process. (Often I had to kill two before they all disappeared.) Yes call me slack, but I was too busy to go "hunting" at the time.

Once the Vivaldi processes were removed I could start Vivaldi without any problems.

Recently I removed Mint then installed MX Linux (and ROSA) but that SAME problem has not returned.

Therein (ie new install and problem gone) it may be that "memory module" may not have been the problem, or the entire problem (for me, at least), otherwise I/you would expect problems of lockup to continue (even on a new distro). Furthermore, memory module problems would involve other programs/software too.

NB.
Having said THAT, let me add that, on the new MX linux I am having an occasional lock-up issue (complete freeze) which requires a hard boot. That may indicate a memory module problem, as you say. Strangely (without hard evidence yet) it seems to be when Libreoffice is being used. [Do not hold me to that one yet. I'm still checking (occasionally). I note that there is also preliminary evidence the issue could involve a "theme". This was mentioned in a link on some other site somewhere. Also I cannot get the mouse cursor to stay "big", which may also point (pardon the pun) to a "theme" thing.]

If you have any further lock-ups (or office or theme issues) please come back and post.

Regards,
boombaby