Firefox hangs in Mint9 LTS

[Helmut]

Hi,
couldnt find this topic in the forum. I Am running Mint 9 (LTS) with Firefox on an up-to-date system and surf the net with it. At this point all is OK. Am finished and close Firefox (currently Vers. 2.6.24, being the latest for Mint9), which it does, to do something else. Some time later want to run Firefox again, try doing so, and this problem occurs:
An info box pops up and says: "Firefox already running. Close all other instances of Firefox..." However Firefox is not open and yet refuses to run.

I then Logout in an attempt at solving the problem. An infobox immediately comes up: "Firefox-bin not reponding" Choice of Force-Quit has no effect.

So I shutdown the Computer and reboot, now I can start Firefox. It will work for one session, until the same happens again.
This has been going on for some time. The last Mint-update (from Firefox version 2.6.21?) to 2.6.24 has changed nothing in this respect.

Question:
A) What can I do about this?
B) Is this a known Firefox-bug?

Helmut

[xenopeek]

Firefox only allows one instance to run. It happens on other computers as well that the shutdown of Firefox is sometimes slow, and the instance you ordered to close remains active in the background for a little while as it completes the shutdown. If that happens, you get this message when you try to restart Firefox. When it happens on my Windows 7 or Linux Mint 11 machine, it usually resolves within 30 seconds. If not the case on your end, you can press Alt+F2 or open a terminal and run:

Code: Select all

pkill firefox

(But perhaps firefox-bin is needed in your case.) This kills the remaining Firefox instance by name, allowing you to start another.

You may be aggravating the time needed for shutdown depending on how many and what kind of add-ons you have installed.

[Helmut]

Thank you, I shall try that when it happens again.
Helmut

[nunol]

The same thing happens to me on Mint 9 LTS with Firefox 3.6.24, I use top to kill firefox-bin by PID.