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Tab crashes on EFF Panopticlick site unless in safe mode, but starting with clean Firefox and disabling hardware acceleration doesn't fix it in non-safe mode

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  • Last reply by saf1

saf1
saf1
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Hi,

I started off having problems with quite a lot of extensions installed, but I've done some investigation and so I'll describe the most basic form of the problem.

I'm running Firefox Quantum 68.0.1 (64 bit) on Ubuntu MATE 18.04.2 LTS on a 4GB RAM VirtualBox 6.0.8 r130520 (Qt5.6.2) guest under a Windows 7 host. 3D acceleration is enabled in VirtualBox and I have the guest extensions (version 6.0.8) installed.

To start off from a clean Firefox configuration, I move the .mozilla directory aside to some random name and start Firefox. In a new tab I visit https://panopticlick.eff.org/ and choose "Test Me". The test process starts but as it comes to the results page the tab crashes. This is a fresh configuration so there are no addons, themes or extensions other than the defaults. I've tried disabling hardware acceleration in the preferences but it doesn't fix the problem.

If I restart Firefox in safe mode the Panopticlick site works fine.

When the tab crashes I don't seem to get any information; about:crashes shows no crashes, perhaps because Firefox hasn't crashed, just the tab.

What I've read so far suggests that if it works in safe mode but not otherwise the problem is an addon or extension, but I don't have any. Is there any way to get any more information about the crash?

For what it's worth, other sites - but not all - show similar tab crashing behaviour which can be avoided by going into safe mode. ebay.co.uk seems quite prone to it, but it doesn't always go wrong immediately; I've mentioned Panopticlick above because it seems to be a reliable way of reproducing the problem and doesn't require any authentication before it goes wrong.

Thanks.

Steve

Hi, I started off having problems with quite a lot of extensions installed, but I've done some investigation and so I'll describe the most basic form of the problem. I'm running Firefox Quantum 68.0.1 (64 bit) on Ubuntu MATE 18.04.2 LTS on a 4GB RAM VirtualBox 6.0.8 r130520 (Qt5.6.2) guest under a Windows 7 host. 3D acceleration is enabled in VirtualBox and I have the guest extensions (version 6.0.8) installed. To start off from a clean Firefox configuration, I move the .mozilla directory aside to some random name and start Firefox. In a new tab I visit https://panopticlick.eff.org/ and choose "Test Me". The test process starts but as it comes to the results page the tab crashes. This is a fresh configuration so there are no addons, themes or extensions other than the defaults. I've tried disabling hardware acceleration in the preferences but it doesn't fix the problem. If I restart Firefox in safe mode the Panopticlick site works fine. When the tab crashes I don't seem to get any information; about:crashes shows no crashes, perhaps because Firefox hasn't crashed, just the tab. What I've read so far suggests that if it works in safe mode but not otherwise the problem is an addon or extension, but I don't have any. Is there any way to get any more information about the crash? For what it's worth, other sites - but not all - show similar tab crashing behaviour which can be avoided by going into safe mode. ebay.co.uk seems quite prone to it, but it doesn't always go wrong immediately; I've mentioned Panopticlick above because it seems to be a reliable way of reproducing the problem and doesn't require any authentication before it goes wrong. Thanks. Steve

All Replies (2)

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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The crashes might be a memory problem. Did you check for memory problems and made sure that Firefox has enough memory?

Did you try to disable 3D acceleration in VirtualBox ?

See also:

saf1
saf1 Question owner
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Thanks for getting back to me!

I don't see any obvious signs of memory problems; how would I check? Here's the output of 'free' shortly before the crash:

$ free -h 

             total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available

Mem: 3.9G 953M 1.8G 93M 1.1G 2.6G Swap: 2.2G 0B 2.2G

I've also upgraded VirtualBox and guest additions to 6.0.10 this morning, but that makes no difference either way.

If I disable 3D acceleration in VirtualBox it works fine. Obviously I'd prefer not to have to do this; is there any way to investigate the problem further?

Thanks.

Steve