1376176 - Firefox stops updating the UI properly with force-enabled hw acceleration on Linux

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Graphics, defect, P3)

Description

[haarp]

I am using Firefox 54 on Gentoo Linux (kernel 4.9.16) and Intel hardware (Ivy Bridge mobile graphics (xf86-video-intel-2.99.917_p20170313), using DRI2. The issue was spotted on older Firefox version aswell.

I can enable layers.acceleration.force-enabled and gain impressive performance benefits, such as reduction of CPU usage during certain transitions from 100% to 10%.

Under certain circumstances however, Firefox appears to enter a broken condition. In this condition, the UI stops updating altogether or updates extremely slowly. Hovered tabs do not highlight, pages don't appear when switching tabs, changes on pages will not show up, etc. The main menu takes several seconds to show up after being opened.

Firefox also will not quit/restart under this condition. It'll shut down but the process will be stuck until killed manually.

I've found two triggers:

- Adding or removing a second monitor while Firefox is running
- Using the Xpresent-capable compositor in my window manager (Xfwm4-4.13)

Firefox's condition does not improve when the trigger is removed. Firefox needs to be restarted to recover from this.


I could not see anything suspicious in the browser console or stdout/stderr. I would very much like to discover what's going on and help debug. I'll be happy to provide any further debug information, logs, etc.

Comment 1

[Milan Sreckovic [:milan] (needinfo for best results)]

Could you give us the about:support graphics section?  Also, when this happens, are about: windows available, or are they "frozen" as well?

Comment 2

[haarp]

Attachment: about:support

(In reply to Milan Sreckovic [:milan] from comment #1)
> Could you give us the about:support graphics section?  Also, when this
> happens, are about: windows available, or are they "frozen" as well?

Thanks for your reply. I've attached an about:support dump, including the graphics section.

Yes, about: tabs (about:config, about:support, about:) are frozen aswell. I can sometimes get them to update by minimizing and restoring the window tho.

Pretty much the entire window is frozen. The only things left working properly are window decorations (handled by my window manager) and right-click menus (same, presumably)

Comment 3

[haarp]

Still happening as of Firefox 57.

Comment 4

[haarp]

Still happening in Firefox 61.0.

Comment 5

[mirh]

Could you, I dunno, try mesa-git and/or latest nightly?

Comment 6

[haarp]

Attachment: aboutsupport.txt

Still happening on different hardware and with Firefox 78.0.1. Both the integrated Intel graphics with xf86-video-intel-git/mesa-20.0.8 and an Nvidia card with the nvidia-440.100 driver (ruling out mesa) are affected.

I'm attaching a new about:support dump, but note that I have now disabled layers.acceleration.force-enabled - the freezes occur with it enabled.

Comment 7

[Konrad Kołodziejczyk]

Try set "layout.frame_rate" (about:config) to your monitor refresh rate (for example "60").

Comment 8

[Robert Mader [:rmader]]

Taking the freedom to close, doesn't appear to be a problem any more.