[SOLVED] Firefox freezes/hangs

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Slowpoke47
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by Slowpoke47 »

If the FF problem remains unresolved, an alternative is Vivaldi. I like FF too but FF doesn't return the affection.
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by Xanathus »

Hello all. I've been following this thread for a while now even though I'm not running Mint. My Ubuntu Budgie 20.04 and 22.04 LTS systems have been plagued by random Firefox freezes since 102 got installed. I had been running Firefox ESR and it updated to Firefox ESR 102. I have tried DEB, Snap and Flatpak versions of FF with no luck on any. Right now I am running the DEB version of FF 106.0 (64-bit). It did it's freezing nonsense twice since yesterday.

Last week I installed the previous version of Firefox ESR (91.x???, it was definitely in the 90s, not the 100s), but then it updated itself to 102.x before I realized it had done so.

Anyhow, the behaviour is the same as other described. FF seems to freeze up, but it is really just the graphics portion. If I scroll with my mouse wheel, nothing happens in the FF window. But when I click the FF icon in the Task Manager to minimize then un-minimize, the FF window contents get updated to the new scroll position. They are stuck again though.

So for me 102-106 are bad versions.
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by ajgreeny »

I am using firefox 105.0.3 as the direct downloaded .tar.gz from mozilla and running the application from the extracted executable in that.
I use the same method in all my distros in order to make sure I have the exact same version running in all distros so I can utilise the same profile for all and I have never had the problem that many of you seem to be having; I don't think I have suffered a freeze in firefox in many months or even possibly years.

Points of interest that may be relevant:
1) I never have a large number of tabs open as some users seem to; I can't see any reason to keep open tabs on which I have finished browsing.
2) I have a very configured GUI for firefox with many changes made to it by editing the ~/.mozilla/firefox/qn4bdmr0.default/chrome/userChrome.css file (with great help from a previous version of https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx/releases
3) I am using Mint 21-Xfce and Xubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 with no problem on any of those three distros.

So could it be my firefox profile that is saving me, could it be the direct downloaded archive from Mozilla or is it something else? I have no clue.
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SMG
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by SMG »

ajgreeny wrote: Fri Oct 14, 2022 4:57 pmSo could it be my firefox profile that is saving me, could it be the direct downloaded archive from Mozilla or is it something else? I have no clue.
Unfortunately, neither do we and, so far, other than verifying the bugs, there has been no response from Mozilla.

The two of us running the regression tests were downloading directly from Mozilla when running the tests builds (which are only available from Mozilla) so the fact you are downloading directly is not relevant to the issue. If you check the two bug reports, HW-WR/XFCE/Nvidia: WebRender occasionally goes crazy after suspend&resume and SW-WR/XFCE/Intel: Firefox window randomly freeze, you'll see this is happening to people using more than just Linux Mint or Ubuntu.

I had a freeze during testing when I only had one tab open so the number of tabs open is not the issue.

Two of us have independently verified this change Bug 1765399 is the one causing the issue. Each of the urls under Changesets link to the actual code changes which were made if you want to check them and see if they relate to your custom profile.
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by AZgl1800 »

i gave up on running the Mozilla versions, I just use what Mint Update provides, and restrict my open tabs to about 10 at most....
usually I only have multiple tabs open on Amazon when comparing products.

watching youTube has been the only problem for me, and recently it has not crashed in the last two updates....
I make it a point to kill FF after 3 videos and restart it... end of problem
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by blueberrymint »

Hi! I'm joining this topic as I too have been experiencing freezes on the last couple versions of Firefox. I don't know in which version exactly it started to occur. It doesn't even have a specific frequency. This week it has happened 3 times already. But last month it only happened like 1 or 2 times in total. It happens randomly, out of nowhere seemingly, and today Firefox has frozen again. I had 4 tabs open: 3 tabs from reddit and 1 tab for google seasrch results. But it doesn't seem like specific web pages are the reason for this. My laptop's CPU is Intel Core i3-7020U. I'm on Linux Mint 20.3. I sent a crash report. I hope this bug gets fixed soon.
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by SMG »

blueberrymint wrote: Sat Oct 15, 2022 2:51 pmI sent a crash report.
Your Firefox actually crashed? Mine just freezes so there may be more than one issue. :(
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by blueberrymint »

SMG wrote: Sat Oct 15, 2022 3:19 pm
blueberrymint wrote: Sat Oct 15, 2022 2:51 pmI sent a crash report.
Your Firefox actually crashed? Mine just freezes so there may be more than one issue. :(
No, it didn't crash, I just followed that one guide on one of Mozilla's help pages, where you have to find firefox process PID in the system monitor and execute a command that kills that process: kill -n SIGABRT <PID>. Then it said to send the crash report to Mozilla team after restarting the browser. I'm not sure I did it right, though. 😕 It also said to create a bug report but I'm really a total noob in that department, so I'm not as much help unfortunately.

Edit: adding the page with instructions that I followed - https://udn.realityripple.com/docs/Mozi ... ng_Firefox
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by SMG »

blueberrymint wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 6:51 am Then it said to send the crash report to Mozilla team after restarting the browser. I'm not sure I did it right, though. 😕
I think all one has to do is click the link to send the crash report.
blueberrymint wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 6:51 am It also said to create a bug report but I'm really a total noob in that department, so I'm not as much help unfortunately.
One needs to create an account with Mozilla to create a bug report. Or even to add your comments to the existing bug reports.
blueberrymint wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 6:51 am Edit: adding the page with instructions that I followed - https://udn.realityripple.com/docs/Mozi ... ng_Firefox
I do not know if what I and some others were experiencing is a "hang". Technically, we have been able to make some changes (by minimizing then maximizing FF), but will keep this in mind as an option when I re-install a version which I know will freeze.

I've been hoping the FF developer responsible for the change causing the issues might give some tips on how to debug/troubleshoot this, but nothing so far. :|
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cretsiah
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by cretsiah »

i thought it was just the age of my computer

but im running LMDE 5 and it is having firefox issues
- freezing / lagging

chromium does it to but a hell of a lot less often
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by Slowpoke47 »

cretsiah wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 5:28 pm i thought it was just the age of my computer
chromium does it to but a hell of a lot less often
Interesting comments- OP here, from back around end of June when I began seeing freezes. At that time I was using a Dell Inspiron, circa 2007 vintage, running Mate 19.2, and the advice I got was that my antique pc was the problem. Lost in the larger discussion was the fact that Opera froze a couple of times as well. Main pc now is Dell Opticon 5060, a year or so old, Mate 20.3 and FF fully updated, and about a month ago FF froze twice within around 10 minutes, no problems before or since as of right now.

Made me wonder whether FF was truly the culprit, or whether there are multiple issues.
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by Mint-Mate-User »

SMG and Bmbguy, it appears no one is responding to you at Mozilla Bug Reporting. You might want to look at this mozilla page, https://wiki.mozilla.org/ReleaseEngineering
Look at the section "Contacting Release Engineering". You should not let yourself be ignored for all the good work you both did.
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by Karkorst »

Hi, I've been following this thread for a while after having this problem since it was introduced into FF. I've seen a lot of people speculate about specific hardware configs and so on so I wanted to add mine after having the browser freeze over 5 times yesterday. :roll:

This is a laptop from 2008 with an AMD Turion CPU and dedicated ATI Radeon graphics on Mint Cinnamon 20.3
I'm never out of memory when the freeze happens.
Disabling HW acceleration in FF doesn't help.
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by SMG »

Karkorst wrote: Sat Oct 22, 2022 10:46 amThis is a laptop from 2008 with an AMD Turion CPU and dedicated ATI Radeon graphics
I posted on the bug report to re-emphasize the issue is happening with differing graphics.

I decided to test FF106.01. I made it a little over a day before the first freeze. The second freeze happened less than hour after the first. :|

I will start hunting through other bug reports this weekend to see if I can find any tips about running logs which might help identify the issue.
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by AlexBrau »

the frequency of crashes has improved slightly since i set the browser cache to be automatically cleared on exit.
maybe it will help you a bit too.
sad situation... that no developer cares about the problem.
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by AZgl1800 »

Odd,
for me, Firefox has not crashed in the last two updates and it use to at the drop of a hat, but ONLY when viewing too many YouTube videos in sequence.

Now, I click on home after each YT video is done, the click on the Icon for YouTube Subscriptions and go on watching as many as I want.
I have fallen asleep and YT is still running several hours later.
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Karkorst
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by Karkorst »

AlexBrau wrote: Sun Oct 23, 2022 4:49 am the frequency of crashes has improved slightly since i set the browser cache to be automatically cleared on exit.
maybe it will help you a bit too.
sad situation... that no developer cares about the problem.
My FF clears cache and cookies on exit since several years and I get a few freezes every day. If I don't get one it's a good day! Also I close FF at the end of the day, if that changes anything.

Also you are saying crash here. Do you really mean crash or freeze?
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by AlexBrau »

sorry, i wrote crash but meant freeze.
when frozen and when i minimize and restore the window, the firefox view is updated.

I never clear the cache, but I've noticed that my freezes improve slightly if I clear the cache when exiting. (close firefox about 5 times a day)

Overall I'm not affected very much, it seems, only about 1 freeze in 3-4 days.
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by vjayer »

ajgreeny wrote: Fri Oct 14, 2022 4:57 pm I am using firefox 105.0.3 as the direct downloaded .tar.gz from mozilla and running the application from the extracted executable in that.
I use the same method in all my distros in order to make sure I have the exact same version running in all distros so I can utilise the same profile for all and I have never had the problem that many of you seem to be having; I don't think I have suffered a freeze in firefox in many months or even possibly years.

Points of interest that may be relevant:
1) I never have a large number of tabs open as some users seem to; I can't see any reason to keep open tabs on which I have finished browsing.
2) I have a very configured GUI for firefox with many changes made to it by editing the ~/.mozilla/firefox/qn4bdmr0.default/chrome/userChrome.css file (with great help from a previous version of https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx/releases
3) I am using Mint 21-Xfce and Xubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 with no problem on any of those three distros.

So could it be my firefox profile that is saving me, could it be the direct downloaded archive from Mozilla or is it something else? I have no clue.
Maybe it is your profile as SMG had already mentioned ruling out direct download binaries. The bug the two here had narrowed it down to that went into the final v.102 release was related to some software side or mozilla manipulated v-sync, which I don't really understand, so I wonder if some of your configuration for the GUI may have inadvertently mitigated that issue.

Also I'm curious, what is your video hardware and if amd or nvidia, are you using the proprietary drivers?
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Re: Firefox freezes/hangs

Post by Menard »

My general opinion about Firefox from the repositories :
I have banned all addons
It is the less issued brother among all, the other being Chrome, brave, Opera, all tested with a very big number of tabs, more then 100
I never reseted my profile for more than 3 years
Firefox gives clearly bader results in some graphic tests than the other (tests on webpage www.wirple.com/bmark )
I have a bug that is not present when creating a new profile but came back quickly, in the folder pre-selection when downloading a file, it pre-selects anyplace, as it must pre-select the last one ... very annoying so I must use Opera for this

In my system Firefox is dedicated to pages with video or long pages with pictures and or video, and I open many tabs quickly , notice no Facebook neither Youtube, sometimes 3 or 4 Youtube added tabs but it is ok I use it for Instagram and Tiktok
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