[SOLVED] Isolated web url access problem - certain wikipedia pages

This is an odd problem. There are some wikipedia pages I can't get to in certain browsers, but I can access more-or-less completely in others. Here is one, for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...va_and_C%2B%2B

Firefox: No access, never completes loading. The page never displays. The tab shows "Connecting..." with the rotating circle icon. At the bottom of the screen it says "waiting for en.wikipedia.org..." or "bits.wikimedia.org...".

Chromium: Slow, but eventually completes loading. The wikipedia page displays, but the circle icon continues to rotate in the tab, and at the bottom of the window, it says "waiting for upload.wikimedia.org..." After several minutes, the spinning circle icon stops and the page appears to be fully loaded.

Konqueror: No or incomplete load, but sometimes it completes. The screen is blank on first access. The K/gear icon continually spins. If I just let it sit there, it'll never load. If I keep stopping and reloading the page, the page will eventually display, but the load progress bar at the bottom will show a partial percentage load, like 43%, 64%, 89%. If I keep reloading, eventually it will load the page completely, and the K/gear icon will stop spinning.

Seamonkey: No or incomplete load. The screen is blank on first access. The Seamonkey icon continually bubbles. If I keep stopping and reloading the page, the page will eventually display, but the load progress bar at the bottom will show a partial load, and the status bar at the bottom says "Waiting for meta.wikimedia.org..." or "bits.wikimedia.org..." or "upload.wikimedia.org...".

Lynx: Loads immediately, no problem.


I'm not having this problem with any other site. I run my own caching DNS server, but turning it off and using my ISP's servers or the Google servers makes no difference. I've tried rebooting my computer and my router.

Any idea what might be going on, or what I can do to try to isolate the problem?

This is Slackware 14.0 64 bit with multilib.

Also, I tried the same link on a Slackware 14.1 32 bit system, a Windows Vista system, and an Android smartphone, and I got the same results given the same browsers, and similar results for non-Linux browsers.

JavaScript - the problem is some insane JavaScript on wikipedia.org.

And you think I am trolling? Joking? No - I am not.

Am I annoyed by it? Yes.

I have the same exact problem in my Android Firefox. And when I turn off JavaScript in my Android Firefox, wikipedia.org pages load just fine.

In my Slackware Firefox I have installed the NoScript add-on. And wikipedia.org is not white-listed of course.

And your test results show it too - lynx is a browser without JavaScript and voilá - wikipedia.org pages load fine.

Originally Posted by Z038 This is an odd problem. There are some wikipedia pages I can't get to in certain browsers, but I can access more-or-less completely in others. Here is one, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...va_and_C%2B%2B

Just went there (Firefox 24.3.0, Slackware 64-bit 14.1 with all patches, Java plug-in disabled, NoScript and Adblock Plus 2.4.1). The JavaScripts are the usual Wikipedia ones. And Lynx connects lickity-split.

Works fine; the page is Comparison of Java and C++.

Also works fine with SeaMonkey (with same plug-in as Firefox and Java plug-in disabled).

Don't have other browsers you mention (do have Konqueror but never use it).

Are you up-to-date with Firefox and SeaMonkey? The current patches for 64-bit 14.1 are at http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/...ches/packages/ if you haven't done them (including the kernel patches for 64-bit).

However, I have noticed that every so often things get really, really slow and I dump Firefox's cache which sometimes makes a difference (not always) at Edit, Preferences, Advanced, Network then shut down the browser (I only really use Firefox) and restart it. I also have found that disconnecting power from the router (Linksys BEFSR41, Ethernet) to "reboot" it helps (I only use fixed-IP addresses in /etc/resolv.conf but that's not the problem, I see that it's connected, it just sits there for a long time as you describe. My ISP is HughesNet 4G and I'm accustomed to the delay of up and down satellite communications. When things get slow I'll open a terminal and

ping -c 5 news.google.com
PING news.l.google.com (74.125.224.129) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from lax02s20-in-f1.1e100.net (74.125.224.129): icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=636 ms
64 bytes from lax02s20-in-f1.1e100.net (74.125.224.129): icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=605 ms
64 bytes from lax02s20-in-f1.1e100.net (74.125.224.129): icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=579 ms
64 bytes from lax02s20-in-f1.1e100.net (74.125.224.129): icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=637 ms
64 bytes from lax02s20-in-f1.1e100.net (74.125.224.129): icmp_seq=5 ttl=55 time=604 ms

--- news.l.google.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4248ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 579.003/612.565/637.982/22.238 ms

which tells me that my connection is good, DNS is good and the little circle thingy is still spinning.

I don't know what is causing this stuff (it's recent) -- you ping and the response is immediate, you connect with the browser and it sits there blinking at you (this, in my case, is true of LinuxQuestions and other sites too).

One thing I have noticed is that when a page takes a long time to load that the social network thingies they load up with are the ones that are waiting -- those find us at Twitter, Facebook and other nonsense JavaScript things (including the Google ones that LQ has).

On the other hand, most of the time, everything just goes blink and there it is. Seems to vary by time of day, phase of the moon, tilt of the kilt or none of those, who knows.

Adblock Plus now includes settings that will deny those social network and some other crap but I can't seem to figure out how to get that enabled in my existing Firefox installation -- a new Firefox install in a new user account lets you set those options but an existing one (mine is about 10 years worth of Firefox) won't display the options on Adblock Plus install (even remove the extension and reinstall doesn't want to work). I'm thinking it's time to bite bullet and dump Firefox and start over with it but, darn it, I don't want to lose all the password and stuff that have built up over time.

Tis a puzzlement.

Hope this helps.

Thank you both.

tronayne, thank you for the suggestions. My firefox is up to date at 27.0.1. I am using Noscript and Ghostery. I also have Java disabled. I also always have the social media sites blocked (facebook, twitter, etc) in Noscript. I tried clearing the Firefox cache, deleting cookies, and so on, but it didn't help. Then I installed Bleachbit and let it do a more thorough cleanup. That still didn't help.

MadMaverick9, it turned out that your idea about javascript on the wikipedia sites was on the money. I had wikipedia.org and wikimedia.org whitelisted in NoScript. I deleted them from the whitelist, and that solved the problem.