firefox misbehaviour

[Russell L. Harris]

Is anyone else having trouble with firefox over the past week?

At first I noticed that NEW WINDOW sometimes was absent from the menu
(FILE > NEW WINDOW). Then, some bookmarks went missing. Now the TAB
AUTO REFRESH icon (and function) has vanished and does not reinstall.

Debian 11, firefox 91.9.0esr (64-bit)

RLH

--
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness
for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and
sweet for bitter! - Isaiah 5:20

[David Christensen]

On 5/20/22 20:09, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> Is anyone else having trouble with firefox over the past week?
>
> At first I noticed that NEW WINDOW sometimes was absent from the menu
> (FILE > NEW WINDOW).  Then, some bookmarks went missing.  Now the TAB
> AUTO REFRESH icon (and function) has vanished and does not reinstall.
>
> Debian 11, firefox 91.9.0esr (64-bit)
>
> RLH

I upgraded to 91.9.0esr-1~deb11u1 two weeks ago:

2022-05-06 15:42:02 root@laalaa ~
# apt-get upgrade
<snip>
The following packages will be upgraded:
firefox-esr ...
<snip>
Get:5 http://security.debian.org/debian-security
bullseye-security/main amd64 firefox-esr amd64 91.9.0esr-1~deb11u1 [58.7 MB]
<snip>
Preparing to unpack
.../01-firefox-esr_91.9.0esr-1~deb11u1_amd64.deb ...
Leaving 'diversion of /usr/bin/firefox to /usr/bin/firefox.real
by firefox-esr'
Unpacking firefox-esr (91.9.0esr-1~deb11u1) over
(91.7.0esr-1~deb11u1) ...
<snip>
Setting up firefox-esr (91.9.0esr-1~deb11u1) ...


File -> New Window exists and works.


I have not noticed any missing bookmarks.


I am unfamiliar with "TAB AUTO REFRESH icon (and function)".


David

[Hans]

Am Samstag, 21. Mai 2022, 05:09:38 CEST schrieb Russell L. Harris:
Hi Russell,

I do not have those issues you describe, but on my system firefox sometimes
completely freezes the system when calling some special websites.

Then nothing can be done, only the mouse is moving but no mouse clicking, nor
keyboard input is possible then.

The only way is the hard way: long press power button, so it switches off.

I admit, there are some plugins installed, like noscript and ublock origin,
which also might interfere.

However, for testing purposes on those sites I temporarly deactivate the
plugins.

And of course, it can not be excluded, that these sites also interfere with
the graphics driver, which is Nvidia.

Does this help?

Best regards

Hans

[Russell L. Harris]

On Fri, May 20, 2022 at 10:18:59PM -0700, David Christensen wrote:
>I am unfamiliar with "TAB AUTO REFRESH icon (and function)".

TAB AUTO REFRESH is an extension which automatically reloads the
current page every [specified number of] seconds.

I use it to refresh the weather bureau forecast web page about once an
hour and the web page for my personal weather station about every five
minutes.

When installed, TAB AUTO REFRESH displays an icon with a countdown of
the number of seconds until the next refresh. Clicking on the icon
brings up a window for resetting the refresh interval.

RLH

[Alexander V. Makartsev]

On 21.05.2022 10:57, Hans wrote:
> Am Samstag, 21. Mai 2022, 05:09:38 CEST schrieb Russell L. Harris:
> Hi Russell,
>
> I do not have those issues you describe, but on my system firefox sometimes
> completely freezes the system when calling some special websites.
>
> Then nothing can be done, only the mouse is moving but no mouse clicking, nor
> keyboard input is possible then.
>
> The only way is the hard way: long press power button, so it switches off.
>
> I admit, there are some plugins installed, like noscript and ublock origin,
> which also might interfere.
>
> However, for testing purposes on those sites I temporarly deactivate the
> plugins.
>
> And of course, it can not be excluded, that these sites also interfere with
> the graphics driver, which is Nvidia.

I have had similar issues with system locking up on rare occasion,
definitely noticeable because this system was rock solid stable for years.
For me it began to happen when I've updated "nvidia-driver" to version
"470.103" from "proposed-updates".
There is also XID #8 error¹ in syslog, at the time when a freeze occurs,
suggesting it is a Nvidia driver problem.
To verify my suspicion, I've downgraded "nvidia-driver" to version
"460.91" from "stable" and freezes are gone.
I didn't file a bug report about this, in fact I don't know if I should
and where to report it, but my system is running for a week now without
any problems.


¹ https://docs.nvidia.com/deploy/xid-errors/index.html

--
With kindest regards, Alexander.

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀

[Bret Busby]

Whilst you conspicuously omit indication of where you are located, I
have found that, here in Australia, the weather bureau has gone
malicious, and blocks access where a web site visitor tries to reload a
web page in less than a (unknown) specified period of time, which is
somewhere around four hours after the web page was last reloaded.

I have found using the pws dashboard for a local weather station on the
Weather Underground, to be both more reliable, and, more localised
(e.g., for me, https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/IWESTERN754),
as the local Weather Underground is within about a kilometre, and, the
weather bureau closest weather station, is about 10-15 kilometres away.
The Weather Underground PWS dashboard updates, usually,about every
10-20s, I think.

--
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............

[rhkr...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, May 21, 2022 01:57:29 AM Hans wrote:
> Am Samstag, 21. Mai 2022, 05:09:38 CEST schrieb Russell L. Harris:
> I do not have those issues you describe, but on my system firefox sometimes
> completely freezes the system when calling some special websites.
>
> Then nothing can be done, only the mouse is moving but no mouse clicking,
> nor keyboard input is possible then.
>
> The only way is the hard way: long press power button, so it switches off.

Coming from left field, I may be mis-remembering, but sometimes when I think
the system is totally frozen, I can press <ctrl><alt><F1> (even though the
keyboard otherwise seems dead), and get to whatever they call it (a virtual
terminal?) and recover from there (e.g., use top to see what is going on, then
maybe kill some processes that are using the most CPU (or maybe RAM),

[Hans]

Hmm, this combination is new to me. As I am using plasma5, there is
<ctl><alt><escape>, which changes the mousepointer to a skull.

Clicking then with the skull on some window, it will kill this window/
application. However, this does not work.

Pressing <ctrl><alt><F1> should switch to console 1, (F2 to 2, F3 to 3 and so
on) but this does not work, too.

As I said, completely frozen! Oh, and it is also not possible, to login from
another computer (i.e. with ssh), as due to the freeze authentication and
other things do not work then.

Best regards

Hans

[Alexander V. Makartsev]

On 21.05.2022 17:33, Hans wrote:
> Hmm, this combination is new to me. As I am using plasma5, there is
> <ctl><alt><escape>, which changes the mousepointer to a skull.
>
> Clicking then with the skull on some window, it will kill this window/
> application. However, this does not work.
>
> Pressing <ctrl><alt><F1> should switch to console 1, (F2 to 2, F3 to 3 and so
> on) but this does not work, too.
>
> As I said, completely frozen! Oh, and it is also not possible, to login from
> another computer (i.e. with ssh), as due to the freeze authentication and
> other things do not work then.

Last week, when my system froze, I was able to use SysRq¹ key
combinations to sync disks, remount and reboot.
Might be a good idea to check if it is enabled² (it should be enabled by
default AFAICR), and keep instructions handy, if your system will freeze
once again.


¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key
²
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-manual/restrict-sysrq.en.html

[Russell L. Harris]

On Sat, May 21, 2022 at 03:57:50PM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
>Whilst you conspicuously omit indication of where you are located, I
>have found that, here in Australia, the weather bureau has gone
>malicious, and blocks access where a web site visitor tries to reload
>a web page in less than a (unknown) specified period of time, which is
>somewhere around four hours after the web page was last reloaded.
>
>I have found using the pws dashboard for a local weather station on
>the Weather Underground, to be both more reliable, and, more localised
>(e.g., for me,
>https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/IWESTERN754), as the local
>Weather Underground is within about a kilometre, and, the weather
>bureau closest weather station, is about 10-15 kilometres away. The
>Weather Underground PWS dashboard updates, usually,about every 10-20s,
>I think.
>
>--
>Bret Busby
>Armadale
>West Australia
>(UTC+0800)

Hi, Bret. I am in central Texas, a little southeast of Austin. My
weather station is at alysonwonderland.org.

The weather bureau web site does not restrict access:

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Smithville&state=TX&site=EWX&textField1=30.0077&textField2=-97.1566

I considered wunderground.com, but the last time I checked, it seemed
to me that wunderground "boilerplate" was too restrictive. So I have
been paying for hosting and have been running the open-source weewx
package for several years.

My hardware is Davis, which has proved reliable. The only failures
have been a bad supercapacitor, loss of an anemometer cup in a
hailstorm, loss of windvane signal due to a lightning strike, and an
anemometer shaft slowed by a spider web. Each problem has been subtle
and has necessitated a bit of detective work, but Davis support in
diagnosis has been exceptional.

RLH

[Jeremy Ardley]

On 22/5/22 12:44 am, Russell L. Harris wrote:
> On Sat, May 21, 2022 at 03:57:50PM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
>> Whilst you conspicuously omit indication of where you are located, I
>> have found that, here in Australia, the weather bureau  has gone
>> malicious, and blocks access where a web site visitor tries to reload
>> a web page in less than a (unknown) specified period of time, which
>> is somewhere around four hours after the web page was last reloaded.
>>
>> I have found using the pws dashboard for a local weather station on
>> the Weather Underground, to be both more reliable, and, more
>> localised (e.g., for me,
>> https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/IWESTERN754), as the local
>> Weather Underground is within about a kilometre, and, the weather
>> bureau closest weather station, is about 10-15 kilometres away. The
>> Weather Underground PWS dashboard updates, usually,about every
>> 10-20s, I think.
>>

> Hi, Bret.  I am in central Texas, a little southeast of Austin. My
> weather station is at alysonwonderland.org.
>
> The weather bureau web site does not restrict access:

> --


I assume this is off topic, but the Australian Bureau of Meteorology
operates many web pages with specified frequency of update. The most
used are the radar and current observations pages that update every 10
minutes.

http://www.bom.gov.au/wa/observations/perth.shtml

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR702.loop.shtml#skip

I monitor nearby wundergound data stations but the observations are
generally unreliable.

An alternative source is department of agriculture data updated each
minute at https://weather.agric.wa.gov.au/ This also has a much higher
density of stations that the BOM network.

Personally I run Arduino systems monitoring my personal weather sensors,
with a plan to use my Raspberry Pi under Raspbian to publish the data
along with my existing ADSB receiver data.


Jeremy

[Russell L. Harris]

On Sat, May 21, 2022 at 07:57:29AM +0200, Hans wrote:
>Does this help?

Yes. Noted and filed for reference. Thanks.

I changed several items under SETTINGS and that helped, but I don't
understand the interactions.

RLH

[David Christensen]

On 5/20/22 22:57, Hans wrote:
> Am Samstag, 21. Mai 2022, 05:09:38 CEST schrieb Russell L. Harris:
> Hi Russell,
>
> I do not have those issues you describe, but on my system firefox sometimes
> completely freezes the system when calling some special websites.
>
> Then nothing can be done, only the mouse is moving but no mouse clicking, nor
> keyboard input is possible then.
>
> The only way is the hard way: long press power button, so it switches off.
>
> I admit, there are some plugins installed, like noscript and ublock origin,
> which also might interfere.
>
> However, for testing purposes on those sites I temporarly deactivate the
> plugins.
>
> And of course, it can not be excluded, that these sites also interfere with
> the graphics driver, which is Nvidia.

I was experiencing a intermittent problems with Firefox, video,
keyboard, mouse, USB, etc., on Debian 9/ 10/ 11 and Xfce for a year or
more. Only recently did I discover that I had a bad mouse.


Over the years, I have destabilized more than one Debian system by
installing software via some means other than official Debian packages.
I checked my machines prior to discovering the mouse problem, and I
had a few machines with a Debian package for Firefox or Thunderbird, and
a Mozilla package for Thunderbird or Firefox. So, I reverted the
mis-matching machines to Debian packages for both Firefox and
Thunderbird. It did not solve the problem, but it eliminated one
possible cause.


David