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Trevor
Asked: 2018-05-08 18:59:00 +0800 CST

Firefox is freezing Ubuntu, how should I go about debugging it?

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I am running Ubuntu 16.04 and Firefox freezes my system about once a day. I know it is Firefox because my system works fine with Chrome. The same freezes occurred when running Firefox from live USB versions of Ubuntu 16.04 and 17.10. When frozen, the keyboard and mouse are unresponsive, and various Ctrl+Alt+ and Alt+SysRq+ combinations (commands on this page for example) don't seem to do anything. I end up having to hard reboot by holding the power button.

I am not a Linux expert, but my understanding is that at this point I should check /var/log/syslog, /var/log/kern.log, and similar files. I have checked the contents of these files, have web-searched the messages, but don't know enough to have any meaningful insights. So what should I do next?

If it helps, below is the end of my /var/log/syslog prior to the crash. And I would be happy to update my post with any more info. 

May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer dbus[848]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.nm-dispatcher.service'
May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer NetworkManager[876]: <info>  [1525735721.7446]   server identifier 10.239.100.1
May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer NetworkManager[876]: <info>  [1525735721.7446]   lease time 300
May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer NetworkManager[876]: <info>  [1525735721.7446]   nameserver '10.239.100.1'
May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer NetworkManager[876]: <info>  [1525735721.7446]   nameserver '10.239.100.1'
May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer NetworkManager[876]: <info>  [1525735721.7446]   domain name 'lan'
May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer NetworkManager[876]: <info>  [1525735721.7446] dhcp4 (wlp5s0): state changed bound -> bound
May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer systemd[1]: Starting Network Manager Script Dispatcher Service...
May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer dhclient[1352]: bound to 10.239.100.2 -- renewal in 139 seconds.
May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer dbus[848]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.nm_dispatcher'
May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer systemd[1]: Started Network Manager Script Dispatcher Service.
May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer nm-dispatcher: req:1 'dhcp4-change' [wlp5s0]: new request (1 scripts)
May  7 16:28:41 MyComputer nm-dispatcher: req:1 'dhcp4-change' [wlp5s0]: start running ordered scripts...
May  7 16:29:53 MyComputer wpa_supplicant[1118]: nl80211: send_and_recv->nl_recvmsgs failed: -33

update 1 (May 21 2018)

I am still getting freezes when I run Firefox from a terminal in safe mode with my profile path set to an empty directory (a step suggested by @dsstorefile1):

firefox -safe-mode -profile ~/some_empty_directory/ -no-remote -new-instance

I also ran debsums to check the checksums of the Firefox package, but it did not find any errors.

update 2

I installed Arch Linux on my machine and still got the same behavior. This means it is not a distribution-specific problem.

update 3

I upgraded by RAM, graphics card, and monitor. But the problem is still occurring.

update 4

I updated my BIOS, but the problem is still occurring.

firefox freeze crash

3 Answers

  1. I had a similar problem. It is weird, but when I deleted the browser history (more than 2 GiB data) the problem went away and has not come back.

    I know it sounds crazy but it helped me. I am not sure if it helps you, but I am sharing solution that which solved problem with Ubuntu freezing while using Firefox.

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  2. I have had this problem with Firefox for a long time, and it is not affected by updates to either Firefox or Ubuntu. It appears to be because Firefox does not release memory once it has taken it, so that every page you have loaded up stays in memory.

    As far as I know there are only two ways of dealing with this problem:

    1. periodically close Firefox down and relaunch it, or
    2. don't use Firefox.

    However, if anyone knows of a better solution that would be great.

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  3. Same situation for me, on Ubuntu/Mate/Xfce 20.04.3 LTS. As soon as I opened a second Firefox window, the computer froze, even the clock froze. I just then had to wait 5, or even 10 minutes ... or reboot (Alt Syst b, thanks to Magic SysRq key).

    I thought I had found a workaround for this problem: using Firefox ESR. As I use Firefox Sync to synchronize my passwords between my two other workstations (they also under Ubuntu, and without these problems on Firefox), I quickly found back my surfing environment on the internet.

    But after a few hours, the freezing problem surfaced again, excluding the version of Firefox ... Actually, if the X server crashed, the rest of the machine was functioning normally, for example we could connect from a remote station. SoI therefore decided to change the graphics card driver, as explained in binary driver Nvidia.

    And everything started to work normally !!!

    Results of the operation: it is "simply" a problem with the graphics card driver which blocked my computer, and not Firefox.

    my configuration: vendor : NVIDIA Corporation model : G84GL [Quadro FX 1700] driver : nvidia-340 - distro non-free recommended

    I imagine there is an xserver-xorg-video-nouveau bug which makes it incompatible with Firefox.

    Consequence: I reinstalled Firefox, standard version (92.0 (64-bit))!

    hope it helps

    Ernest.

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