Firefox 'hangs' ... and can't be killed from the task-bar. (Solved)

[cobaka]

Hello fellow Puppians!
I report a problem with Firefox. Degree: Nuisance to somewhat annoying.
Details of my hardware & OS etc are given below this growling and howling.

In general this posting is about some incompatibility between Firefox and uPupBB32.
Or - perhaps - something only in Firefox.

Here is a general description of the problem.
I spend about as much time using Firefox as I spend using Puppy Linux. Routine stuff - looking at the Australian weather bureau, collecting mail, downloading spec sheets for this and that ... Buying occasionally from eBay. Visiting this forum. Recently I find Firefox 'hangs' completely. By this I mean it is unresponsive to keyboard or mouse. At times (I think this is correct) a single page will 'lock up' and if/when I close that tab response returns but mostly FF just 'hangs'. I have had the entire OS 'lock' up but this is rare. Mostly the Puppy just keeps working. and working. and working.

When FF 'hangs' (mostly) I cannot close the application using the red (close) dot at the top right-hand side of the window.

Restarting FF.
When Firefox 'hangs' I go to the task bar icons. (bottom of the screen). "Closing" Firefox does nothing. The next option on the menu ('kill') appears to work - but no! When I try to re-start FF (mouse to 'applications -> Internet -> Firefox) the OS tells me I already have an instance running. (What? I just killed it! How can it still be running? Oh well ...) If I want to restart Firefox then I must close the first.

This is how I "kill" FF. At the top of the uPupBB window I see a row of icons. 5th from the left ... I see 'process/task-manager'. (It is grey. Looks like a monitor). Using this I can terminate (Term) Firefox. After that - I can re-start Firefox from the Application menu. Correction. I don't 'term'. I 'kill'

This ends my description of the problem.
It's annoying - but not fatal. I suspect the problem lies with Javascript code running with particular pages downloaded from the net. I have not evidence of this - only a suspicion.

Details of my installation:
HARDWARE:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500 CPU @ 3.30GHz
Socket Designation: Socket 1155
Manufacturer: Intel Voltage: 1.0 V
External Clock: 100 MHz
Min/Max Speed: 1600/3700 MHz
Current Speed of Core 0:1999 MHz, 1:1903 MHz, 2:1841 MHz, 3:1913 MHz. Core Count: 4
64-bit capable: Yes

MEMORY:
Memory Allocation:
Total RAM: 8075 MB
Used RAM: 5954 MB (I have a LOT of 'stuff' in 'spot' Downloads. Datasheets, circuit diagrams, Youtube videos and Audio ... 1121MiBytes.)
Free RAM: 2121 MB
Bash says:
# free
.......... total ......... used ........ free ........... shared ..... buff/cache available
Mem: 8269668 ... 927880 ... 1731604 ..... 288932 5610184 6327500
Swap: 262140 0 262140
#

OS:
Distro: BionicPup32 19.03
Window Manager: JWM v2.3.7
Desktop Start: xwin jwm

Applications: Various, but what is running at the moment is typical.
ROX file-mangager (2 copies, but often 3 or 4)
The terminal (almost always running)
Libre-Office 5.3.7.2
Geany 1.29
Firefox 89.01 (and a message saying 'up to date').

OK, yes, I'm running 32 bit software on a 64 bit machine.
I do this because I have a number of 32-bit machines and I run the same Puppy on these.
Frankly, nothing I do demands much more and a slow 32-bit machine and the ease of installing (or re-installing) a single version Puppy Linux on EVERYTHING is worth a lot to me. That's why I use Puppy

In my mind Puppy Linux is like a dream ... easy to install, reliable (except for this bug with FF), fast and it works across a different platforms (P4 to I5 or I7). Puppy Linux is a dream come true ...

Cobaka
2021-06-22
This is the day (the 22nd) Hitler launched operation Barbarossa - and in so-doing plunged the world into a dark, dark place. Thankfully our Russian (or Soviet) ally survived and we came out of that dark place. Thins might have ended differently. We English-speaking peoples owe a great debt to the Soviet people, and particularly to Poland, Belarus and Ukraine.

[ozsouth]

@cobaka - after a forced shutdown, you could run in a terminal: killall -9 firefox
I made a firefox startup script with that command running first, then a 1 sec sleep, then starting firefox, due to frequent crashes.
Firefox seems to have had a long history of memory leaks. Sadly your type of experience and the increasing number of sites firefox wouldn't open is why I switched to chrome (64bit). There are 32bit chromium versions about, although 32bit options are diminishing fairly rapidly.
Peebee's 32bit browsers are here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/lxpup/ ... /browsers/
EDIT:
I have Peebee's ChromiumUBB.sfs (32bit) as a .pet if you want it. (posted edit from it under bionicpup32-19.03).

[Flash]

To kill Firefox. I restart the X server (Ctrl + Alt + Backspace or Menu -> Exit -> Restart graphical server).

[Grey]

This is how I "kill" FF. At the top of the uPupBB window I see a row of icons. 5th from the left ... I see 'process/task-manager'. (It is grey. Looks like a monitor). Using this I can terminate (Term) Firefox. After that - I can re-start Firefox from the Application menu. Correction. I don't 'term'. I 'kill'

2021-06-22
This is the day (the 22nd) Hitler launched operation Barbarossa - and in so-doing plunged the world into a dark, dark place. Thankfully our Russian (or Soviet) ally survived and we came out of that dark place. Thins might have ended differently. We English-speaking peoples owe a great debt to the Soviet people, and particularly to Poland, Belarus and Ukraine.

Yes, this is a memorable date, thank you. Thanks to all the English-speaking peoples for their courage and unbending fortitude. And special thanks to the Australian soldiers for their participation and endurance in the Pacific theater of operations during World War II.

As for Firefox... It periodically freezes for everyone who uses it frequently - as befits an old sly Fox from ancient legends Until I switched to Chromium-Ungoogled, I often killed firefox-bin process in the Task Manager.

[bigpup]

Firefox help:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fi ... responding
Firefox hangs or is not responding - How to fix

[rockedge]

my Firefox's has been hanging up unexpectedly for months now....I started a thread on the forum some time ago on the subject....no resolution as of yet.
The only way I have found to recover is to open a terminal and use:

Code: Select all

killall firefox 

this has been happening on Bionic, Fossa but not on WeeDog or DebianDog series. It can happen with 2 tabs open or 30+ and sometime seems related to the type of web page content Firefox is parsing. I have not found it possible to kill Firefox in this hung state from the tray or any other way other than with the killall from the command line or Htop or another task manager.

It's so bad I made a script that has a shortcut on the desktop to kill and restart Firefox. The browser hangs with or without apulse and or run-as-spot

[8Geee]

Flash's recommendation (Restart Graphical Server {X}) after the kill in tray should work.

The culprit is usually "Black Hole Scripting" in which the browser sinks below the event horizon. Poor, and unprofessional scripting.

8Geee

[cobaka]

@8Geee @rockedge
@bigpup @Grey
@Flash @ozsouth

Thanks to all (above) who replied. Generally 8Geee seems to sum up the situation - sloppy from within a web-site not coding in Firefox itself. (Correction suggested by @8Geee)
I would guess at failure to code adequately for a non-sharable resource or recursive subroutine that creates a memory-gobbling stack.
The problem appears to be associated with particular sites. I think Rockedge made that point.

I have found I can kill the process from the application shortcuts at the top of the screen - Process/Task Manager.
That works - the task bar "kill" appears to work - but doesn't.

Having said that - I will close this thread.

Cobaka

[8Geee]

Sloppy coding at the website, not browser.