Firefox becomes visually unresponsive while scrolling down a webpage and does not recover
Categories
(Core :: Graphics, defect)
Tracking
()
People
(Reporter: guitarmy, Unassigned)
References
(Regression)
Details
(Keywords: regression)
Attachments
(2 files)
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:104.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/104.0
Steps to reproduce:
I am on Arch Linux / XFCE and this has been happening since at least FF 102, possibly as early as 101. It is still happening with 104.
I cannot reliably reproduce this issue, as it seems to happen semi-randomly. But it most frequently happens when I am browsing Github or Reddit. It has happened a couple times with some other sites like Twitter.
The issue always occurs when I am scrolling down the page. I always use my mouse's clickwheel to scroll, I am not sure if that is relevant. But the problem always happens in mid-scroll.
Actual results:
What happens is that the page will freeze, and the browser becomes mostly visually unresponsive. When I click to another tab, the browser still shows the frozen page of the tab that it "froze" on. The browser itself is not frozen, as I can still interact with the menu bar and tab controls. But it does not visually update. I can 'X' out of tabs when I click the approximate area of the tab 'X's, and I can see the the container drop-down menu when I click the approximate area of the new tab button, but the browser does not visually update that the tabs have been closed. The only indication that anything is happening when I close tabs is that the window's title bar is updating with the next tab's page title. Firefox cannot recover from this state and I need to completely exit and restart Firefox. FF does seem to exit cleanly and it does not hang. CPU and memory usage is normal when this happens.
Expected results:
This seems to be affecting other users as well, as evidenced by this reddit thread:
https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/weqzwm/firefox_suddenly_freezes_on_certain_sites_linux/
The thread was created by a Linux user, but a Windows user is also reporting having the same issue.
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Comment 1•3 years ago
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The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Widget: Gtk' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.
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Comment 2•3 years ago
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Could you please capture a performance profile while the bug is happening? see the instructions at https://profiler.firefox.com/
I understand it may not be trivial if this happens randomly, but if it's often enough on those websites, maybe you can catch it.
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Comment 3•3 years ago
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I could not reproduce this issue on my Ubuntu 20.04 using the latest Nightly 106.0a1 and Firefox 104.0.2.
Reporter, when time allows, please use the indications provided in the previous comment and post here the performance profile.
Thanks!
(In reply to Marco Bonardo [:mak] from comment #2)
Could you please capture a performance profile while the bug is happening? see the instructions at https://profiler.firefox.com/
I understand it may not be trivial if this happens randomly, but if it's often enough on those websites, maybe you can catch it.
i personally have not been able to capture a performance profile yet (the dev tools pane does not function properly while the issue is occurring) but please see the profile that Jussi has attached above. (thanks Jussi!)
and I can report that the issue is still happening with FF 105.
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Comment 6•3 years ago
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From the profile in comment 4 there is no clear sign of Jank, but this looks more like a visual/compositor problem.
In the compositor thread I see tags with long PAINT times, not sure if related.
Moving to Core::Performance for investigation since it's unclear if this is more widget or graphics.
(In reply to Marco Bonardo [:mak] from comment #6)
From the profile in comment 4 there is no clear sign of Jank, but this looks more like a visual/compositor problem.
In the compositor thread I see tags with long PAINT times, not sure if related.Moving to Core::Performance for investigation since it's unclear if this is more widget or graphics.
When the "freeze" happens Firefox will not refresh itself without tricks. Meaning I need to minimize and maximize Firefox window, open some window on top of it, etc. Not sure what exactly makes Firefox eventually to refresh itself, but something in that seems to work. IE Firefox seems to work otherwise correctly, but it just stops refreshing itself. That might explain the long paint times. I had to use the tricks in order to take the profile log.
I've been browsing the web with my dev tools performance pane open for a few weeks now, and I have found that with Firefox 105 it is impossible to capture a performance profile while this issue is occurring because Firefox will not load the profile tab after clicking "Capture." So I went back to using 104 for a while and was able to capture this profile. I started the recording the performance profile immediately after the issue started happening, let it record for 5-10 seconds, and then captured it. And I can confirm that the issue still happens with Firefox 105.0.3.
'... and I have found that with Firefox 105 it is impossible to capture a performance profile while this issue is occurring because Firefox will not load the profile tab after clicking "Capture." '
It is not impossible, I did it. You just have to force firefox to refresh the window (minimize & maximize the window, try opening other window on it, etc). Click the capture only once and then force firefox to refresh the window, otherwise it does not work.
The problem still persist on version 106.0.1.
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Comment 10•3 years ago
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I personally don't see the long composites mentioned in comment 6, but maybe I'm missing something. Considering the 'tricks' used to recover the browser it does feel to me like this is probably a graphics or widget issue. Moving this to graphics for now as they are probably better equipped to answer questions here.
Also moving this out of performance because as far as I can tell there isn't really a performance issue here but rather a complete breakdown of functionality.
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Comment 12•3 years ago
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(In reply to guitarmy from comment #0)
I am on Arch Linux / XFCE and this has been happening since at least FF 102, possibly as early as 101. It is still happening with 104.
The issue always occurs when I am scrolling down the page. I always use my mouse's clickwheel to scroll, I am not sure if that is relevant. But the problem always happens in mid-scroll.
Sounds like the exact same issue many of us are seeing in Bug 1781167 [SW-WR/XFCE/Intel: Firefox window randomly freeze] and Bug 1780972 [HW-WR/XFCE/Nvidia: WebRender occasionally goes crazy after suspend&resume].
MozRegression testing identified Bug 1765399 [Improve how VsyncDispatchers swap out their VsyncSource] which was added in Firefox 102 as the source of the issue although it has not yet been determined what part of that change is causing the freezes.
I came across your post in the Reddit thread while searching for ways to debug the problem which led me here. I guess learning how to use the profiler is next on my list.
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Comment 13•3 years ago
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I started firefox from terminal (version 106.0.3 64bit) and I got these warnings/errors:
[GFX1-]: glxtest: libEGL missing methods for GL test
[GFX1-]: glxtest: libEGL missing eglGetDisplayDriverName
[2022-11-05T23:18:28Z ERROR mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\0\0"
[2022-11-05T23:18:28Z ERROR mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\0\0"
[2022-11-05T23:18:28Z ERROR mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\0\0"
... a lot of repeating of the last three ...
Not sure if this is helpful or not. No extra warnings/errors were given when the freezing occurred.
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Updated•3 years ago
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Comment 14•3 years ago
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:mstange, since you are the author of the regressor, bug 1765399, could you take a look? Also, could you set the severity field?
For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.
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Comment 15•3 years ago
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Firefox 106.0.5 and Firefox ESR 102.4.0 on Debian Linux (sid), LXDE desktop: both browsers will freeze on Reddit while scrolling and UI becomes unresponsive, whether it is on Private Browsing, and/or a regular Firefox window. Only add-on installed is uBlock Origin.
Must exit all open Firefox windows in order to use it again.
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Comment 16•3 years ago
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The bug is still alive and well-being in version 107.0.
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Comment 17•3 years ago
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(In reply to Jussi from comment #16)
The bug is still alive and well-being in version 107.0.
...and 102.5.0esr (became unresponsive while scrolling on https://nypost.com/business).
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Comment 18•3 years ago
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Most probably dupe of Bug 1781167
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Updated•3 years ago
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Description
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