<CLOSED> Firefox randomally crashes

[npattiso]

My Firefox 30 installation (from repository) on LMDE will randomly crash. This started yesterday after a system reboot. I have not been able to find a repeatable pattern for when Firefox crashes as all incidents have appeared totally random. Firefox will crash immediately upon startup, or will successfully start and run for minutes to hours before the next crash occurs. I have already tried the following steps:

1) Deleted (renamed) my firefox profile and profile.ini file and created a new profile
2) Googled the error message but can't find any recent occurrences of this error. Issues pertaining to Firefox 12 and below appear to refer to graphic drivers?
3) Disabled hardware acceleration in Firefox
4) Ensured newest version of VMWare tools is installed

As for my lmde installation, I have lmde running on VMWare workstation in console only mode (no GUI at boot). I start a vncserver session to initiate a GUI and access my installation via my internal network. The about:crashes on Firefox shows the following error:

GLXtest process failed (exited with status 1): GLX extension missing

Any assistance in determining/interpreting the root cause of this issue or resolving my Firefox crashes is appreciated. Thank You.

[gtsfer]

What does this command show when run in the Terminal? Can you copy/paste it back here?

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inxi -G

[npattiso]

Thank you for looking into this. The command reports:

user@lmde ~ $ inxi -G
Graphics: Card: VMware SVGA II Adapter X.Org: 1.7.7 drivers: vmware (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1366x768
GLX Renderer: N/A GLX Version: N/A

[gtsfer]

Firefox does have occasionally some problems with random crashes on some systems. In your case it sure looks like it's graphics driver related. For instance my "Graphics" stuff looks like this...
[quote]
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA G72 [GeForce 7300 LE] bus-ID: 01:00.0
X.Org: 1.14.3 drivers: nouveau (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1920x1200@60.0hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NV46 GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 9.2.2 Direct Rendering: Yes

Your last line in that output indicates no GLX Renderer is there. You might run this command as it gives a more complete (full line) for the graphics driver and GLX on the system. You really only care about the "graphics" section, but "inxi" is strange with some options, sorry about this oversight. I expect the rest of the GLX line will say "Direct Rendering: No".

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inxi -Fx

So the trick now is to try and find a driver for your "SVGA II Adapter" and install/get it working in LMDE in VMware.

EDIT: Fwiw.... "inxi -Gx" seems to give the full output line for GLX Graphics including the "Direct Rendering Enabled:" item.

[PatH57]

Hi,

are you running Mint as a virtual guest? vmware driver are only for virtual machines.

[npattiso]

Yes, I am running LMDE as a VMWare Guest running on Debian 7. I am finding it concerning that I need to have hardware acceleration for Firefox to function properly (even with hardware acceleration disabled in Firefox). I have been running this setup for a couple years with various Debian and Linux Mint flavor VMWare guests with no issues related to hardware acceleration. In fact, I have never had hardware acceleration functioning in VMWare (until today).

So via my additional troubleshooting today:

1) Upgraded video drivers on Debian 7 VMware host. Hardware acceleration was disabled on the host as well. Was using the Nouveau NVidia drivers, now using the non-free NVidia drivers with GLX.
2) When starting VNC session on Debian 7 VMWare host, I still have no hardware acceleration. Therefore when I start VMWare workstation hardware acceleration is disabled. I do not run X on my VMWare host by default, therefore up to this point in time I have always started a VNC session, started VMWare workstation, booted my guest, then killed the VNC session on my host machine.
3) As a test, I ran startx on my VMWare host and had hardware acceleration enabled via the newly installed NVidia drivers. glxinfo confirms that I have hardware acceleration. I started VMWare workstation and booted my LMDE VMWare guest. I saw no warnings for the lack of hardware acceleration on the host when I did so.
4) After step 3, I started VNC on my VMWare guest and noticed that I still had no hardware acceleration. inxi -G:
Graphics: Card: VMware SVGA II Adapter X.Org: 1.7.7 drivers: vmware (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1366x768
GLX Renderer: N/A GLX Version: N/A
5) After step 4, I ran startx on my LMDE VMWare guest from the virtual console in VMWare. I now have hardware acceleration - inxi -G report:
Graphics: Card: VMware SVGA II Adapter X.Org: 1.14.3 drivers: vmware (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1024x768@60.0hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on SVGA3D; build GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 9.2.2

So I guess the next steps now are:
1) Get hardware acceleration to work in VNC (is this even possible?) -OR-
2) Get Firefox to run properly with no hardware acceleration via VNC. I already have hardware acceleration disabled in the Firefox settings. Is it respecting this setting? The lack of hardware acceleration has not negatively impacted Firefox until the past week nor do I believe that it should be a requirement to run Firefox.

In case it is useful/relevant, the full inxi -Fx report is below (via VNC):
System: Host: lmde Kernel: 3.11-2-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.8.1) Desktop: MATE 1.6.1 Distro: LinuxMint 1 debian
Machine: System: VMware product: VMware Virtual Platform
Mobo: Intel model: 440BX Desktop Reference Platform Bios: Phoenix version: 6.00 date: 07/31/2013
CPU: Dual core AMD Athlon II X4 645 (-MCP-) cache: 1024 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4a svm) bmips: 12456.8
Clock Speeds: 1: 3114.190 MHz 2: 3114.190 MHz
Graphics: Card: VMware SVGA II Adapter bus-ID: 00:0f.0
X.Org: 1.7.7 drivers: vmware (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1366x768
GLX Renderer: N/A GLX Version: N/A Direct Rendering: N/A
Audio: Card: Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97] driver: snd_ens1371 port: 2040 bus-ID: 02:02.0 Sound: ALSA ver: k3.11-2-amd64
Network: Card: Intel 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper)
driver: e1000 ver: 7.3.21-k8-NAPI port: 2000 bus-ID: 02:01.0
IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:50:56:34:95:82
Drives: HDD Total Size: 17.2GB (30.6% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: VMware_Virtual_S size: 17.2GB
Partition: ID: / size: 16G used: 5.0G (34%) fs: ext4
Sensors: None detected - is lm-sensors installed and configured?
Info: Processes: 167 Uptime: 28 min Memory: 703.2/2004.5MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.8.2
Client: Shell (bash 4.2.45) inxi: 1.9.14

[npattiso]

So after some additional investigation:

/usr/lib64/dri/swrest_dri.so was failing to load libexpat.so.0 when I initiated vncserver. I had to add a sym link for /usr/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.0 to point to libexpat.so.1. After doing this my VNC session will load GLX:

inxi -G
Graphics: Card: VMware SVGA II Adapter X.Org: 1.7.7 drivers: vmware (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1366x768
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.3, 128 bits) GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 9.2.2

So this is an improvement over before where GLX was not available. The glxdemo command will now open a window with a big yellow square in it. Previously glxdemo would generate an error and exit. However this has had no impact on Firefox. After accomplishing this I opened up Firefox and it is still randomly crashing with the message:

GLXtest process failed (exited with status 1): GLX extension missing
WebGL? WebGL-

Any ideas?

[gtsfer]

Let me look around. I can't claim much expertise with VMware but that doesn't seem to be the issue and probably never was. I am remembering a thread from a couple of months back on Firefox and GLX errors and it's ringing a bell now. It sure does look like you have GL running fine now for whatever that's worth so it has to be with Firefox after all. I'll see if I can find that one.

Btw... you can use this to test GL too and it gives some statistics in terminal if you wait a few seconds. You probably already know this one.

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vblank_mode=0 glxgears

[gtsfer]

Not sure but this might lead you in the right direction. This is exactly the opposite of what you need to do, but the settings mentioned for Firefox may be useful. I am including 3 links, the first one actually leads to the second two but I thought I'd make it easier to follow until you sort through it.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 24#p888014
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/960789
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/957459

[npattiso]

Thank you to everyone for your assistance thus far. We can stop troubleshooting this issue for the moment. Linux Mint Debian is too unstable. I am not sure what the issue is but now dpkg, inxi, and various window manager applets are also randomally crashing or seg faulting. Firefox was just the first symptom of what is going on. My first guess would be hardware however I believe that is unlikely since my Host OS is running without issues (installed at Debian6 years ago, upgraded to Debian 7 via apt-get >6 months ago). My other VMs are not having issues either. It is just the Linux Mint Debian that started going south. At this point there is nothing further we can do with this issue until I can confirm that hardware is not the issue.

[gtsfer]

That's odd, I have no such issues with LMDE on my system. However I'm not running in a VM. Imho it's the most stable of all Mint editions. But if you're having all these problems, then well, I get it.

Can you edit your first post and maybe add <CLOSED> to the subject if you're not going to pursue any further? It's not "solved" so this might make more sense. Thanks!

[npattiso]

Turns out I did have bad memory after all. Ran a memory test on the VM host and found a bad stick. On the bright side I now have GLX working on my VM. Thank you to everyone who helped. Marking this topic <CLOSED>.