[SOLVED] Firefox freezes/hangs

[Slowpoke47]

I have gone back to FF101.1 twice after testing newer versions and the freezes disappear completely when I use FF101. I am now seeing slightly different results at the time of the freeze with FF104 than I did with FF102 or FF103.

All of those tests were done using the exact same hardware. If I can go back to FF101 and not have freezes then the issue seems to be something in FF. We are hypothesizing it is the way something in FF interacts with our hardware given those with newer hardware are not seeing this issue.

To follow up- If the issue is with FF, how would it cause Opera to freeze? And- if you move to an image that includes FF 102, do you then get freezes? That last might take some run time to find out, given the randomness of the freezes.

[Cosmo.]

We are hypothesizing it is the way something in FF interacts with our hardware given those with newer hardware are not seeing this issue.

I would not even underline this, because this would make it necessary to assume, that Opera interacts with the hardware in exactly the same way as FF (see Slowpoke47). So I do not hypothesize anything. I do only read this thread and try to find a way for those who are affected.

Who can tell, if the hypothesized interaction is quite another one, not the browser with the hardware, but with something else, something, what you have, what Slowpoke47 has, but what I do not have?

But let me follow the hypothesis for a moment: Than my suggestion would remove any hardware difference for all users. If in VB the browser, maybe 102, 103 or 104, does not freeze, than we can assume, that it is either the hardware, or anything, what is not installed by default in Mint.

[Slowpoke47]

As mentioned, our problem machine is being retired in favor of a new pc. New machine runs FF w/o issues. But, at the risk of exposing my ignorance, could SMG start with the image that includes FF 101.x and install one system update at a time, watching for a freeze to occur?

[SMG]

To follow up- If the issue is with FF, how would it cause Opera to freeze?

I do not use Opera. You created this topic about Firefox and everyone else having the problem is having it with Firefox.

You are the only one who mentioned Opera and I have no idea if or how it might relate to a problem with Firefox. It is possible your issue with Opera has no relevance at all to the problem with Firefox.

And- if you move to an image that includes FF 102, do you then get freezes? That last might take some run time to find out, given the randomness of the freezes.

I have already tested FF102, FF103, and FF104. All of them give freeze problems. The problems with 102 and 103 seem to be similar. There are some differences when it freezes with 104.

I just had a freeze with 104 while I was downloading an ISO. The downloaded eventually completed an hour later, but FF was still in a mostly locked up state. Once in a while I could get a tab to change and once the page even changed to a different tab, but I can see no rhyme or reason to how much CPU or memory FF is using or to what web pages are open. I had to close FF and restart it to clear the locked-up state (but I waited until after the download completed before doing that).

...could SMG start with the image that includes FF 101.x and install one system update at a time, watching for a freeze to occur?

There are no freezes when using FF101. I was using FF101 until a couple of days ago when FF104 was released. The rest of of my system was fully updated.

[bmbguy]

But, at the risk of exposing my ignorance, could SMG start with the image that includes FF 101.x and install one system update at a time, watching for a freeze to occur?

If you're trying to debug a problem, there is no reason to introduce extra elements to try and induce the failure. If SMG has a system where everything else is the same, and the only change is from FF101 to 104 and it fails, the problem is pretty isolated - if I had the tools to debug FF, that's the setup I would look at, without introducing other system elements, software, etc. While I don't deny Opera may have a similar or the same failure, that fact is immaterial in her case.

If you have a known issue, it is best to isolate that issue, fix it, then move on to the next issue, if there is one. I think that's the approach SMG is taking. If I were trying to debug her system, I wouldn't change anything else on it until I solved the FF issue.

[Slowpoke47]

You are the only one who mentioned Opera and I have no idea if or how it might relate to a problem with Firefox. It is possible your issue with Opera has no relevance at all to the problem with Firefox.

...could SMG start with the image that includes FF 101.x and install one system update at a time, watching for a freeze to occur?

There are no freezes when using FF101. I was using FF101 until a couple of days ago when FF104 was released. The rest of of my system was fully updated.

I started this thread before I had freezes in Opera- it's installed just as a backup, ironically, due to the FF issue, and is hardly used. Once Opera froze, I started another thread mentioning both browsers- assumed site protocol was to not rename a thread or stray from the title. Apologies if I have misled.

You're right- there may be no connection between the freezes of the two browsers. But the timing is most coincidental. As you can see, I'm no expert, just trying to help shine some light on a troublesome problem. I've had to re-do several efforts due to a freeze.

[Mint-Mate-User]

There is a Mozilla bug report # 1781167 which sounds similar to the issues reported here. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1781167 "Firefox window randomly freeze" If you sign up with Mozilla bug reporting, I believe you should be able to comment in this bug report to add your experience. Seems like the poster needs support of others with the same problem, since Mozilla could not reproduce the problem.

[SMG]

There is a Mozilla bug report # 1781167 which sounds similar to the issues reported here. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1781167 "Firefox window randomly freeze"

I just had Firefox freeze and tested to see if I clicked or move the scroll bar and then minimized and maximized if anything changed. It did. It didn't clear the freeze, but tabs did close or the page did scroll down just like the person described.

I tracked the system monitor for the freezes the past two days. Freezes do not seem to track with absolute firefox-bin memory usage, but when Firefox freezes I can watch its memory usage slowly climb so something is happening even though I am not interacting with it. It does seem like the memory has to go over a certain value before a freeze will happen, but sometimes it was way over what seemed like was the threshold before a freeze happened while other times it was barely over.

[bmbguy]

I found it's a little difficult to track memory, etc., with Firefox, since it launches multiple processes depending on the settings in config. I don't fully understand which processes do what, but if you look in about:config and search for 'processCount', you'll see that defaults are set to 8 and 4 for the various types of processes. That explains why I've seen so many FF related entries in the system monitor.

My experience is the same as yours, SMG: Firefox will 'respond', but often it's after it gets 'kicked' with a system/window level message, like minimize, maximize, etc. That's similar to an earlier post I did, when I said it would put up the 'close' popup after I hit the "LM" button in the LL corner.

Just for kicks, I tried to see if I could launch another instance of FF when the one is locked up. Another instance can be launched, but it doesn't work either, never really gets started.

[antikythera]

I just had a complete system lockup from FF 104.0.1 to the point of the screen going blank and the KB and mouse becoming unresponsive. It's actually never got to that point with earlier releases.

This was the system with the nvidia GPU though, so not entirely unexpected but even so...

raising elephants was not an option

[SMG]

I just had a complete system lockup from FF 104.0.1 to the point of the screen going blank and the KB and mouse becoming unresponsive.

My freezes are strictly limited to Firefox. I thought that was the case for others as well.

I do have hardware acceleration turned off (even though I only have integrated Intel on this laptop). Everything else on the desktop works just fine. I used the trick of minimizes and then maximizing the FF window described in the bug report to view some tabs when FF froze on me today. I've not yet moved to FF104.0.1 yet.

What's really odd about your experience is the Firefox 104.0.1 Release Notes only indicate one issue:

Fixed

Addresses an issue with Youtube video playback that was affecting some users.

Which would hopefully help AZgl1800's issue.

[antikythera]

My system only freezes with Firefox too which is why I posted. It is strange and I'll just take the easy out and switch back to the Linux Mint build of Chromium instead now because it's been far too long already (the best part of a year). The freeze has been reported to Mozilla and they can't or won't fix the issue.

[SMG]

My system only freezes with Firefox too which is why I posted.

My system does not freeze. Only the Firefox app freezes. Everything else continues working just fine.

[antikythera]

My system only freezes with Firefox too which is why I posted.

My system does not freeze. Only the Firefox app freezes. Everything else continues working just fine.

because it crapped out the nvidia driver on mine

[SMG]

My system only freezes with Firefox too which is why I posted.

My system does not freeze. Only the Firefox app freezes. Everything else continues working just fine.

because it crapped out the nvidia driver on mine

Now I understand. There was supposed to have been a fix related to Nvidia on Linux with FF 103.

[antikythera]

Yes, I saw that too but it didn't help unfortunately, anyway I'm currently using Microsoft Edge Stable for Linux because I'm feeling lazy and can just sign into my MS account for the profile config how I like it.

[colinp1234]

I used my Toshiba L300 for a few hours on Monday to see if Firefox would freeze up, but got no bites. It is a year older than my Dell (2008 compared to 2009 for my Dell), with similar specs: 4GB RAM, on-board Intel video and both with Intel Core 2 Duo processors (T4400 for the Dell and T5500 for the Toshiba) and the Toshiba didn't freeze, while the Dell will freeze up at any time from Firefox launch to maybe an hour or so. Both laptops have pretty well the same settings, both with Mint Mate 20.3 and Firefox 104.

So I have "seemingly" narrowed it down to something about Firefox and my Dell and I "think" that maybe Mint Mate has nothing to do with it. Of course, that may change next time I try my L300...

[ThaCrip]

I just got that freeze/hang issue on my primary PC (i5-3550 CPU/1050 Ti 4GB GPU with NVIDIA v515.65/16GB of system RAM) on Firefox v104.0.1 a moment ago, which I think makes for my 2nd time now.

I just hope this does not occur commonly enough to become a real issue though as if it only occurs for me once every day or two (I leave my PC on all of the time with Firefox running pretty much all of the time) I can probably deal with it. but if it started to occur say every couple of hours or so tops, that would likely become a big problem and could force me to change browsers etc, which I would rather avoid.

[Mattumanu]

I had this same problem beginning a few weeks ago. I'll give the timeline of what happened. I was on Linux Mint 19 Tricia.

About a month ago I was trying to fix a problem with Lutris. The devs who work on Lutris had pushed out a new version that required some dependencies that I apparently did not have installed. I was using the terminal and I began by doing an update on the entire system. What I had forgotten was that I had excluded x-org from updating through the update manager because one version of x-org didn't play well with my hardware, and since then I had been only updating x-org when needed. However, when I did an update of the entire system, I unknowingly pulled in a new version of x-org that didn't play well with my system.

Keep in mind I had forgotten about the problems with x-org and was unaware that it had been updated as well.

So after my failed attempt to fix Lutris, Firefox and Steam began to have intermittent freezes. I tried updating firefox but that did not help. Steam refused to launch games that previously worked with no problems. I tried completely uninstalling Firefox, then purging it and reinstalling it, but the problem persisted. I tried disabling all extensions, and the problem persisted. I tried doing the same things with steam, but the freezes and crashes persisted. Steam even started to refuse to shut down properly. I tried using timeshift to roll back, but it was obvious I no longer had a snapshot old enough to fix the problem.

Even trying to use Firefox in safe mode led to it randomly crashing either at start up or later on.

My solution at the time was to buy a new NVME drive and install Linux Mint 21, Vanessa. I used the old drive, which was still in the system, to populate my new installation, installed steam, and installed my apps that I like. Easy Peasy.

But yesterday I decided to boot back into Linux mint Tricia, and I discovered that a new version of X-org was available. I updated ONLY that one thing, and now firefox and steam work with no crashes at all. In fact, I'm writing this up on Tricia right now.

So I did some digging. The version of xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu that wasn't giving me trouble was 18.1.99. I was on that version because the next version gave me problems so I was being careful of updating. Basically, if it wasn't high priority critical I left it alone. The update I did back when I tried to fix Lutris gave me 21.0.0. Which is listed as "almost stable". For me, it wasn't stable at all. The latest version, 22.0.0, brings the system back to normal. Firefox works as it should, and Steam launches games with no trouble. Steam also closes as it should. I did fine where I could get older stable versions of X-org, but it's working fine now, and Vanessa has 22.0.0 and works fine as well. Whether or not there were other conflicts going on I'm not certain.

Thus ends my adventure in Linux Crashland, and everyone (who had a talent for it) lived happily ever after.

[bmbguy]

I've been following the discussion at the Mozilla bug report page. I just had a freeze with gfx.webrender.software set to true (I'm on an AMD processor, Radeon graphics).

Figured I might give some of those suggestions a try.