1728764 - Intermittent hangs in Firefox and Thunderbird

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Widget: Cocoa, defect, P2)

Description

[Nicklas Boman [:smurfd]]

This has been edited many times. I have after time conculded that this has only todo with taking out or putting in a HDMI cable with a USB-C dongle into my Mac when im not logged in. Nothing todo with youtube as i first thought or similar. It however only affects Firefox and Thunderbird, no other things im using...

When you see this, no worries. Maby its not filed correctly!

TL;DR Firefox and thunderbird hang when i login in the morning never while using them.
Machine always on with power and always on connected to network via cable.

Basic information

I have dreaded writing this bug report for a while, not knowing what to write to make it so that anyone can make sense of it. Got a tip that creating Crash reports and submitting those are great. See those below, hope you can reach those urls.

This started a while ago, i would say, around release of 89 of firefox, and started happening in Thunderbird when i switched to Thunderbird 91.

What i have tried to do to get rid of the problem so far :
A Fresh profile in firefox. ie removing all profiles and the Firefox folder from disc.
Disabling a few of my already few plugins.

Steps to Reproduce:

Have the mac in screen lock mode, ie blank screens. not even the login prompt.
Pull out one of the HDMI cables i have, in a usbc dongle.

Expected Results:

No hang

Actual Results:

Both firefox and thunderbird "hang" when i login to my machine.
I write "hang" because if i for example in Firefox click on another tab, nothing happens. But, if i switch to another program, ie the terminal, that tab that i selected renders.
Similarly in thunderbird, if i select a email and switch to another program it will show that email in the preview view...
Thunderbird i can just right-click in the Dock and take Quit.
Firefox i have to Force-quit, by right-clicking and pressing the Option button on the keyboard...

Workaround:

The workaround is to login on my mac before pulling out one of the HDMI cable

More information

firefox crash report
https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/af240a2c-2610-43af-a542-ba8fd0210902

thunderbird crash report
https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/255cc42d-742a-40b1-a18c-fc8f80210902

Basic systems configuration:

OS version: MacOS Big Sur 11.5.2 (actually 11.6 now)

GPU model: Apple M1

Number of cores: 8

Amount of memory (RAM): 16

Thanks so much for your help.

Comment 1

[Nicklas Boman [:smurfd]]

also no real CPU or memory usage to speak of.
--- update 8th sepetember. Monday 6th september the same problem in both firefox and thunderbird. (no problem during the weekend)
Tuesday, No problem in firefox, only problem in thunderbird.
Wednesday No problem in firefox. No problem in thunderbird...
(only difference is that i have not watched any youtube during the days this week)
updated firefox and thunderbird today (after noticing that there was no issue)

--- update 9th september
unfortunately problem in both thunderbird and firefox again (after update to FF 92.0 and TB 91.1.0)
have also restarted the machine(after 25day uptime), lets see how things progress.
--- update2 9th september
this makes no sense.
today it froze again, both thunderbird and firefox during the day(it has always been between like 22cet to 08cet it would happen otherwise). now it happend at like 16cet after the screenlock had been on for like 20min.
So i thought i would generate a crash report again for both thunderbird and firefox.
Did a ps aux|grep hunderbird and then kill -SIGABRT processid
Started with Thunderbird, went to the Trouble shooting information in thunderbird and clicked the crash report. It opened up in firefox, and firefox was no longer hanging.... HUH?

Thunderbird crash report :
https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/9bb5e924-352c-4958-9bf4-2d20e0210909

it just HAS to be something on my machine that is causing this, but what...

--- update 18th september
have not had a hang during the whole week. and probably not since last update 9th. Only difference is that i have started to login to my mac showing two monitors, before removing one of the attached HDMI cables (to plug into my work computer). Before this i have always janked the cable and hdmi-to-usbc dongle out before unlocking the mac.

--- update 13th october
have edited the main report.
have concluded that it has Only todo with janking the hdmi usbc dongle out of the mac.
have not had a problem in weeks, because i have first logged in and then removed the hdmi cable. but this morning i was to tired and forgot, so i got hangs...

Comment 2

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

This seems to be a Mac specific issue, Markus, you might be interested in this.

Comment 3

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

This reminds me of bug 1682713. It probably has to do with our vsync implementation. It definitely needs a rewrite.

Comment 4

[Nicklas Boman [:smurfd]]

Awesome, im not alone :)

Found these questions from one of the bugs mentioned or linked from one of those. Was just able to reproduce it to get some answers to those.
It was not enough to wait a minute or two after the screen locks to remove the hdmi cable, but after like 15-20min and then removing the hdmi it hanged.
(even though i feel like you know what you need to know already :))

• Does Firefox eventually recover? happened once, out of 20ish times.
• Does it beachball during the freeze? no beachball
• Are tab hover effects displayed? no tab hover effects
• Does tab switching work? kindof, if i switch to another application.
• When the mouse moves over the URL bar, does the cursor change to the text cursor? yes
• Does the window respond to resizing? kindof, the window gets resized but the webpage does not always follow so it can be cutoff.

Did also get one of those Samples from the main process...attaching, aswell as a screenshot of my power settings.
and like i said, i have a very solid workaround

Comment 5

[Nicklas Boman [:smurfd]]

Attachment: Sample of Firefox.txt

Comment 6

[Nicklas Boman [:smurfd]]

Attachment: Screenshot 2021-10-14 at 22.12.25.png

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Nicklas, do you still crash?

Comment 8

[Nicklas Boman [:smurfd]]

Hey Wayne,
Sorry i have forgotten about this one.
I have changed my usage a bit(like not using the dongle for hdmi) but this has not happend in a long long time.
So im closing it as: Works for me (now)
Br