1463557 - Firefox 60.0.1 becomes unresponsive on MacOS 10.12.6

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Mike]

Attachment: firefoxcrash.rtf

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_6) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/11.1 Safari/605.1.15

Steps to reproduce:

Launch Firefox, navigate to a website. Open a new tab and navigate to a website. Open another tab and navigate to a website.


Actual results:

The third or fourth tab (if you continue loading tabs/websites until failure) fails to load the website. Firefox becomes unresponsive and requires a Force Quit to exit. This also occurred on Firefox 60.0. 


Expected results:

Firefox should load websites in multiple tabs without any issue and stay responsive. The remedy that has worked so far is invoke about:support, click Refresh and replace the user's Profile folder and import settings. Sometimes renaming the Profile is required. Not a real fun experience in enterprise and remote scenarios.

Comment 1

[ovidiu boca[:Ovidiu]]

Hi Mike, 

I tested this issue on Mac OS X 10.12 with FF 61.0.1 and FF Nightly 62.0a1(2018-05-25) and I can't reproduce it.

There are a couple of things that you can do: 

Please test if the issue is reproducible in safe mode, here is a link that can help you:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode

If you still have the issue please create a new profile, you have the steps here:https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Managing-profiles#w_starting-the-profile-manager

Please download Firefox Nightly from here: https://nightly.mozilla.org/ and retest the problem.

Comment 2

[Mike]

Thanks for reviewing Ovidiu!

I will check out your procedures when able, but while waiting for response, here's what I've observed:

This exact issue has afflicted 10 users so far but expect more next week. The remedy isn't too bad :(

1. Install FF 60.0.1
2. Open window and enter about:support.
3. Click on Refresh Firefox...
4. FF creates backup of User's Profile folder and saves it to the Desktop.
5. FF creates new Profile.
6. FF migrates what it needs from Users Profile back to newly created Profile folder.
7. Should be happy from this point on but...
8. FF at some point, several relaunches later will revert to using the old Profile folder!
9. Since items have been moved out from the old Profile folder, the User sees loss of bookmarks, history, etc.

Remedy:
Copy the old Profile folder name in ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/ and delete it, then rename the FF 60.0.1 created Profile folder (which is something like u7j3a3gj.default-1526499062070) to the old Profile name (mike.bainter.default) and bookmarks, etc. is restored and FF 60.0.1 works normally.

Is it possible items in the old User Profile folder is causing the unresponsive and freezing issue. Reverting back to FF 59.0.3 does not cause any issues.
Here are the items in an old User Profile that do not migrate to a FF 60.0.1 created Profile when using Refresh:

blocklist-addons.json
blocklist-gfx.json
blocklist-plugins.json
blocklists (folder)
browser-extension-data
cert_override.txt
cookies.sqlite.bak
cookies.sqlite.bak-rebuild
enumerate_devices.txt
extension-settings.json
extensions (folder)
features (folder)
gmp-gmpopenh264 (folder)
gmp-widevinecdm (folder)
healthreport (folder)
kinto.sqlite
localstore.rdf
mimeTypes.rdf
notificationstore.json
places.sqlite.corrupt
prefs-1.js
revocations.txt
search-metadata.json
search.json
secmod.db
serviceworker.txt
shield-recipe-client.json
storage/default/
storage/permanent/
storage/temporary/
weave (folder)
webapps (folder)

Thanks for your help!

Comment 3

[Mike]

Just a thought that I will check, it's possible that when FF 60.0.1 creates the new Profile and begins using it, the profiles.ini still has the original old Profile set. Hmm.

Comment 4

[ovidiu boca[:Ovidiu]]

Hi Mike, thanks for your update and details, I retested this but unfortunately I'm not able to reproduce it.

Comment 5

[Mike]

Thanks for checking it out, must be an environmental issue at this site.

Comment 6

[Jens]

Hi, 

I do believe I have similar issues at least starting with 60.0.1 running on MacOS 10.13.4. Actually this behavior was part of a discussion with colleagues already and it seems like this is not an issue on individual machines.

While working in FF you basically open a new tab or klick on a link to open a new site, FF will do open the tab but never load the page. Any other pages are still open in tabs, but as soon as you try to load different content it will not load anymore. At some point FF will just get unresponsive and you need to force quit it.

It happens quit often, but it is not clearly connected to any special pages or content.

What can I do to help deliver some more evidence?

Bests
Jens

Comment 7

[Jens]

Submitted crash reports which might be related:

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-4e7e496c-7fb6-480c-8526-3234e1180529
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-944f376e-0c14-4da5-b5e2-e34391180529
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-f93f0afe-3037-4b78-8c27-9643b1180528
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-40a7a61c-848b-4997-a076-422c90180528
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-806cd0bf-be16-4a0f-97e7-8f96f1180528
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-9a0a3060-2e93-49d6-b4a9-6a68e1180528

Comment 8

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Can you still reproduce this on current Firefox releases.

Comment 9

[Mike]

Hi Dave,
Thanks for the follow up! I've completely forgotten about this, either I worked around it, or it resolved itself with a subsequent update, so no such problem on current Firefox release.

Comment 10

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Thanks, sorry it took so long to get back to you.