Puzzling freezes with firefox 45.2.0esr

Emphyrio · 06-27-2016, 03:45 AM

after updating from firefox 38.8.0 -> 45.2.0 firefox freezes on me once in a while (mousewheel) scrolling through a webpage...the system seems stuck, except that it hitting a button (like escape, or ctrl) resolves it
inmediately (most of the time)..also running firefox through strace (like strace -enone firefox) seems to prevent any freezes..it seems like some kind of race condition or contention on the input system..

no my question is: is there anything I can do to try to diagnose this further or come up with a work around (since it is a bit of an older system, I think the firefox support answer would be to upgrade the system..)??

Rinndalir · 06-27-2016, 03:26 PM

First thing I would do is to disable javascript. about:config-> javascript

Emphyrio · 06-29-2016, 12:18 PM

thanks for the suggestion.. it doesn't make a difference

...I also tried a lot of the other potential fixes, like fiddling with the hardware accel. settings, smooth scrolling and disabling plugins or starting ff in safe mode.

I can't really figure out what would cause a seemingly hard freeze, but resolve with a simple keyboard press (it seems that would give *some* indication where the problem is..), on the other hand I wonder: is there any danger in running firefox under strace?

BryanFRitt · 06-30-2016, 09:25 AM

You might see more details if you try running Firefox from the command line, and look at any messages you see there as you mess with Firefox.

Also try setting flash, etc... to 'Ask to Activate' instead of 'Always Activate'
about:addons -> Plugins -> Shockwave Flash -> Ask to Activate

Emphyrio · 07-01-2016, 09:01 AM

the only warning I get (upon startup) is:

Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_set_colormap: assertion `GDK_IS_COLORMAP (colormap)' failed

but this one was also there for 38.8.0 and earlier versions...

(flash is not installed, and disabling all plugins doesn't make a difference)

there is also a bunch of DEBUG: messages generated in .xsession-errors but no clear errors.
(things like : (gnome-session:1942): DEBUG: GsmDBusClient: obj_path=/org/freedesktop/DBus interface=org.freedesktop.DBus method=NameOwnerChange)

BryanFRitt · 07-01-2016, 09:55 AM

Do you have "smooth scrolling" and/or "Use hardware acceleration when available" disabled/enabled? See if changing it will help.

Code:

about:preferences#advanced

[ I know you said disabling plug-ins doesn't help, but maybe saying this will help someone who comes across this issue. ]
Do you have "Automatic window resizer" installed?
"This 'Automatic window resizer' extension seams to cause Firefox to stutter during scrolling.
(about every 2 seconds for 1/3 of a second)
Disabling."
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...views/?src=api