Re: Firefox and/or mate-panel freeze and lock Xorg

[David]

On Mon, 23 Jan 2023 at 22:12, Ottavio Caruso
<ottavio2006...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Every now and again, something happens whenever Firefox is loaded and
> the whole screen is locked. I can't open a terminal and I can't move
> between workplaces (ctrl + alt + left/right).
>
> Then I have to switch to a virtual terminal (ctrl + alt + F2), check
> "top", but there is plenty of CPU and RAM available.
>
> Nothing weird in either dmesg, /var/log/messages or /var/log/Xorg.0.log,
> apart from:
>
> (EE) event0 - AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: client bug: event
> processing lagging behind by 33ms, your system is too slow
>
> [BTW libinput is a pain in the a. on my Thinkpad T440)
>
> I do:
>
> $ killall mate-panel # nothing happens in graphical mode
> $ killall firefox # Then I restart FF but the freeze happens again
> # killall Xorg # Xorg restarts, I log in and restart FF, but the same
> freeze happens
> # reboot # That's the only thing that fixes it.
>
> Where do I go from here?

Hi, did you look in the ~/.xsession-errors file?
Also maybe you could explicitly confirm which desktop
environment you are using, so we're not guessing.
Perhaps try starting firefox from a terminal so you can see if it emits
any error messages when the crash happens.
Maybe there are dbus logs somewhere?
These are just basic suggestions, maybe others here will have
better ideas.
Aside: have you looked at 'htop', it has a much nicer user interface than 'top'.

[songbird]

Ottavio Caruso wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Debian Bullseye with latest Mate as DM.

>
> Every now and again, something happens whenever Firefox is loaded and
> the whole screen is locked. I can't open a terminal and I can't move
> between workplaces (ctrl + alt + left/right).
>
> Then I have to switch to a virtual terminal (ctrl + alt + F2), check
> "top", but there is plenty of CPU and RAM available.
>
> Nothing weird in either dmesg, /var/log/messages or /var/log/Xorg.0.log,
> apart from:
>
> (EE) event0 - AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: client bug: event
> processing lagging behind by 33ms, your system is too slow

i've seen those in the past but i don't think they're
critical.

> [BTW libinput is a pain in the a. on my Thinkpad T440)
>
> I do:
>
> $ killall mate-panel # nothing happens in graphical mode
> $ killall firefox # Then I restart FF but the freeze happens again
> # killall Xorg # Xorg restarts, I log in and restart FF, but the same
> freeze happens
> # reboot # That's the only thing that fixes it.
>
> Where do I go from here?

i run Mate and testing with the exception that i keep
firefox running whichever version comed out and hits
unstable. that pulls a few other things in but not
many and it is ok for my purposes.

some months ago i was having the same sort of experience
but i was never able to figure out which it was that was
causing me problems. an upgrade must have fixed it because
the problem went away.

the other day i had it happen again. i'd not installed
the latest firefox from sid so after i restarted the
system i prompty did that.

when the freeze happens there is no way for me to get
input of any kind, how are you getting the system to
respond to you at all? for me i have to hit the switch
to restart. none of the alt-windows or the restart of
X keys work.


songbird

[David]

On Tue, 24 Jan 2023 at 01:30, Ottavio Caruso
<ottavio2006...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Am 23/01/2023 um 13:19 schrieb David:
> > On Mon, 23 Jan 2023 at 22:12, Ottavio Caruso <ottavio2006...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> > Also maybe you could explicitly confirm which desktop
> > environment you are using, so we're not guessing.
>

> You cut the first line of my message. It is MATE.

Oops, so I did! It was:

> Debian Bullseye with latest Mate as DM.

Sorry for my error!

Does the timestamp on the final message in ~/.xsession-errors correlate
with the Firefox lockup?

Another thought: according to the GNOME project [1], ~/.xsession-errors
is deprecated and we should look in the systemd journal now [2].

That link [1] has instructions to inspect journalctl as user, but I
would probably
also look as root if I have that access on the machine.

These are just non-targetted ideas for troubleshooting, I hope someone
else has better suggestions to help you.

[1] https://help.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/stable/session-debug.html.en
[2] Although GNOME probably considers that X Windows is deprecated too, and
we should use Wayland, or something, but I'm generally a late adopter of
operating system changes so I don't know anything about that :)