Page 1 of 1

Linux Mint Cinnamon useless with Firefox installed

Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2013 1:08 am
by gman8321
Running Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon 64 bit. With latest updates. Every time I use Firefox my systems freezes. Also, when i have Firefox installed I run into some desktop issues, so I completely removed Firefox. Problem is I need Firefox, it is the only Linux browser that runs the Cirtix ICA Client properly. Can anyone recommend a way to start troubleshooting Firefox?

Re: Linux Mint Cinnamon useless with Firefox installed

Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2013 5:58 am
by karlchen
Hello, gman8321.

Whenever you experience a severe problem with Firefox, the first thing to try is
+ moving away the current Firefox user profile (not removing it, you might need later or even restore it)
+ creating a new Firefox user profile

Reason:
Most of the time Firefox problems are caused by some kind of corruption inside the existing user profile rather than by the Firefox software itself.

How to create a new profile:
  • In case it should be running - unlikely in your case - shutdown Firefox
  • Go to your personal Firefox profile folder.

    Code: Select all

    cd ~/.mozilla/firefox
  • There will be a folder name with radomly looking characters and the extension .default. Rename this folder to .bak. In the following commandline replace {randomly_named_folder} by the real string that you see. (Here e.g. the folder has got the name mwad0hks.default.)

    Code: Select all

    mv {randomly_named_folder}.default {randomly_named_folder}.default.bak
    mkdir {randomly_named_folder}.default
  • Now that there is an new empty Firefox profile folder, launch Firefox.
Does anything freeze? Hopefully not.

Provided the freezes have gone away, your problem has been solved. Yet, you will have to start to re-configure Firefox in the way you had before.You may use the files in the backed-up folder {randomly_named_folder}.default.bak as a reference. But it restoring this folder to its old location would be unwise.

Provided the freezes happen again, we will have to find out what their root cause really is:
Is Firefox the only programme that you use and this is why you put the blame on Firefox?
Anyway, in case the freezes go on, then we will need some details:
  • Screen out put of the command

    Code: Select all

    inxi -Fx
    (Camouflage any MAC addresses before posting)
  • Are there any error messages in the file /var/log/syslog generated around the time that Firefox was launched?
  • Are there any error messages in the file ~/.xsession-errors?
Kind regards,
Karl

Re: Linux Mint Cinnamon useless with Firefox installed

Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2013 8:28 am
by Tejas_0
Another way to create a Profile: Run Alt+F2 firefox -ProfileManager

Re: Linux Mint Cinnamon useless with Firefox installed

Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2013 9:33 am
by Tejas_0
A Word of Caution for all who have suffered Multiple FF related System Crashes.

It appears the situation could be of more far-reaching consequence than first thought. Spent most of the day trying to put right the filesystem where my browser profile was situated. Did not realise anything amiss until couple of days ago. Several lines of ext2 error messages displayed on the console would have been missed had I not been keeping keeping an eye on Flash from the console during a video download,

Today ran fsck, and it looks like the filesystem was corrupted some two weeks ago (corrupted inodes from files in browser profile directory all dated 11 Dec), but only now coming to light. Damage although worrisome not drastic (inodes with incorrect block count, inodes sharing same blocks, same blocks claimed by multiple files, directories corrupted and salvaged). The only other affected directory was part of an apt archive. The archive directory and the profile directory were the only ones being constantly updated, so most affected.

There seems to be a very real possibility that a browser related system crash (in this case SeaMonkey, all the same Mozilla) occurred at sufficiently low level as to be able to screw up ext2 file management. Might not be bad idea to run fsck on filesystem containing profile, just in case.

To play safe, and there might be other ways of playing safe, have moved profiles to an expendable reiserfs (said to be better for this kind of thing) partition. Very little extra effort required for firefox:

Code: Select all

mkdir /expend/part/prof
firefox -profile "/expend/part/prof"
Restore extensions by opening xpi file, generated by using FF extensions FEBE & CLEO on current profile. Using FEBE have been able to transfer all that was needed to start the new profile with a clean sheet. :)

Re: Linux Mint Cinnamon useless with Firefox installed

Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2013 3:36 pm
by Previous1

Re: Linux Mint Cinnamon useless with Firefox installed

Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2013 4:33 pm
by FreedomOfTheOpenCode
gman8321 wrote:Running Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon 64 bit. With latest updates. Every time I use Firefox my systems freezes
I've been using Firefox with latest updates in Cinnamon 64 bit ever since Mint 16 came out, but I haven't had any problems with it. I'm using ext4 and no swap partition.