Re: (amd64) Strange browser problem

Paul Goyette

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Aug 12, 2011, 9:09:00 PM8/12/11

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On Fri, 12 Aug 2011, Robert Swindells wrote:

>> I am now running 5.99.55 kernel+userland from July 28, and all of my
>> packages have been updated to mid-July. With this combination,
>> firefox5 now fails to properly render many web pages.
>
> [snip]
>
>> Anyone got any clues on how I can debug and resolve this?
>
> Bad fontconfig settings or dirty cache ?
>
> Have you tried deleting ~/.fontconfig ?

I completely moved my ~/.fontconfig directory out of the way, logged
out, and logged back in (via xdm). No change - still broken. And I
noticed that a new .fontconfig directory did NOT get created - so I
moved the old one back.

>
> What do you see if you try to use a scaled font in xterm ?
>
> The following resources should make xterm use fonts in a similar way
> to Firefox, substitute something like Luxi Mono if you don't have
> Inconsolata installed.
>
> XTerm.vt100.faceName: inconsolata
> XTerm.vt100.faceSize: 9

I did this with Luxi Mono and it appeared to work just fine.

I'm suspecting that the javascript issue might be the culprit here,
although I don't know where that would get processed. It has been
suggested prvately that it could be that the scripts just aren't
properly being executed to provide their HTML output? (Does that make
sense? I have no clue how JS works.)

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Ian D. Leroux

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Aug 13, 2011, 4:05:34 AM8/13/11

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Quoting Paul Goyette <pa...@whooppee.com> (Fri, 12 Aug 2011 07:23:13
-0700 (PDT)):

> I am now running 5.99.55 kernel+userland from July 28, and all of my
> packages have been updated to mid-July. With this combination,
> firefox5 now fails to properly render many web pages.

I'm running a 5.99.55 amd64 kernel+userland built from July 29th
sources, firefox Aurora 5.0 compiled from source on the 30th, and I'm
not seeing the symptoms you describe (i.e. the links you provided render
fine).

> All of the problem web-sites I've recorded use java-script.

As far as I know, the JS interpreter is internal to firefox, so I'd
expect the problem to be there rather than in the base system ...

> I suspected at first that this might be a problem with firefox5,
> since my previous configuration had used firefox3.6. So I deleted
> firefox5 (and the current version of xulrunner) and installed 3.6
> (with xulrunner 192). Still the problem persists.

Installed from source or from an existing compiled package? If you
rebuilt from source, did you rebuild all your pkgsrc packages from
source on July 30th, or just update some of them?

Could this be a library version mismatch (probably in pkgsrc, since
you've rebuilt your userland)?

> I even removed firefox completely, and installed seamonkey instead,
> and still the problem persists!

Given how much firefox and seamonkey have in common, I'm not sure how
much that proves.

Regards,

Ian Leroux

Paul Goyette

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Aug 13, 2011, 5:00:49 AM8/13/11

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On Sat, 13 Aug 2011, Ian D. Leroux wrote:

> Installed from source or from an existing compiled package? If you
> rebuilt from source, did you rebuild all your pkgsrc packages from
> source on July 30th, or just update some of them?

It was a complete update of 250+ packages, all rebuilt from source.

>> I even removed firefox completely, and installed seamonkey instead,
>> and still the problem persists!
>
> Given how much firefox and seamonkey have in common, I'm not sure how
> much that proves.

I'm going to see if opera works...

--

Ian D. Leroux

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Aug 13, 2011, 5:59:14 AM8/13/11

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Quoting Paul Goyette <pa...@whooppee.com> (Sat, 13 Aug 2011 02:00:49
-0700 (PDT)):

> On Sat, 13 Aug 2011, Ian D. Leroux wrote:
> >> I even removed firefox completely, and installed seamonkey instead,
> >> and still the problem persists!
> >
> > Given how much firefox and seamonkey have in common, I'm not sure
> > how much that proves.
>
> I'm going to see if opera works...

If it doesn't, here's another thought: the problem could be at the
networking/firewall level. I'm no web programmer, but as I understand
it one common usage pattern with javascript nowadays is to keep a
connection open to the server and download data asynchronously (so that
you can update page content without reloading the whole page). If
something was closing or blocking that background connection I guess
you might see symptoms such as you describe, and it would be
independent of browser.

Do the completion suggestions show up when you type into the
search box on the Google main page? Since they appear without page
loading and can't possibly all be downloaded at once, those must be
implemented using such a background connection.

--
Ian D. Leroux <idle...@fastmail.fm>

Paul Goyette

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Aug 13, 2011, 9:58:10 AM8/13/11

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On Sat, 13 Aug 2011, Ian D. Leroux wrote:

>>> Given how much firefox and seamonkey have in common, I'm not sure
>>> how much that proves.
>>
>> I'm going to see if opera works...

Oh, darn, opera is a pre-built rpm - not from source. Scratch that.

But in response to another suggestion, I installed links-gui package.
For the www.websudoku.com site, it was able to display the entire
game-board (although not sufficiently well to be able to play.) But it
failed to establish a https session to my D-link WiFi router.

>
> If it doesn't, here's another thought: the problem could be at the
> networking/firewall level. I'm no web programmer, but as I understand
> it one common usage pattern with javascript nowadays is to keep a
> connection open to the server and download data asynchronously (so that
> you can update page content without reloading the whole page). If
> something was closing or blocking that background connection I guess
> you might see symptoms such as you describe, and it would be
> independent of browser.

Two thinks lead me to discount the possibility of a network connectivity
problem. First is that the D-link WiFi router is directly attached, and
it is failing. Second is that the Google search page _does_ display
completion hints as I type. In fact, Google's results page is quite
useable.

On the other hand, I don't even get "echo" when I start typing into the
Yahoo search box.

>
> Do the completion suggestions show up when you type into the
> search box on the Google main page? Since they appear without page
> loading and can't possibly all be downloaded at once, those must be
> implemented using such a background connection.

See above.

--

Paul Goyette

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Aug 13, 2011, 10:06:39 AM8/13/11

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On Sat, 13 Aug 2011, Paul Goyette wrote:

> But in response to another suggestion, I installed links-gui package. For the
> www.websudoku.com site, it was able to display the entire game-board
> (although not sufficiently well to be able to play.) But it failed to
> establish a https session to my D-link WiFi router.

www/dillo also works for the websudoku.com link, but since javascript is
not enabled in dillo, many of the game options aren't available.

And dillo doesn't have working https support, so it also cannot manage
the WiFi router.

Dillo does, however, display a useable Yahoo search page, and useable
search-results page. Again, maybe/likely due to have JS disabled.

--

Paul Goyette

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Aug 13, 2011, 10:58:39 AM8/13/11

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On Sat, 13 Aug 2011, Paul Goyette wrote:

> On Sat, 13 Aug 2011, Paul Goyette wrote:
>
>> But in response to another suggestion, I installed links-gui package. For
>> the www.websudoku.com site, it was able to display the entire game-board
>> (although not sufficiently well to be able to play.) But it failed to
>> establish a https session to my D-link WiFi router.
>
> www/dillo also works for the websudoku.com link, but since javascript is not
> enabled in dillo, many of the game options aren't available.
>
> And dillo doesn't have working https support, so it also cannot manage the
> WiFi router.
>
> Dillo does, however, display a useable Yahoo search page, and useable
> search-results page. Again, maybe/likely due to have JS disabled.

I found a browser that works! www/epiphany does the job, including
javascript for my WiFi router. I'm not really thrilled about using
epiphany since it brings in so much other gnome-related stuff, but for
now it seems to be a necessary evil.

Ian D. Leroux

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Aug 13, 2011, 12:07:42 PM8/13/11

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On Sat, 13 Aug 2011 07:58 -0700, "Paul Goyette" <pa...@whooppee.com>
wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Aug 2011, Paul Goyette wrote:

> > On Sat, 13 Aug 2011, Paul Goyette wrote:
> I found a browser that works! www/epiphany does the job, including
> javascript for my WiFi router. I'm not really thrilled about using
> epiphany since it brings in so much other gnome-related stuff, but for
> now it seems to be a necessary evil.

Well, now we know that the problem is specific to firefox. That narrows
it down, but sadly not by much.

Ian Leroux

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