Open Bug 1827575 Opened 1 year ago Updated 3 months ago

Nvidia/Linux: The Firefox window becomes unresponsive when loading a webpage with a bad connection

Categories

(Core :: Graphics, defect, P2)

Product:
Core
Component:
Graphics
Version:
Firefox 111
Platform:
Desktop
Linux
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: felixbrakel, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 2 open bugs)

Details

(Keywords: hang)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/111.0

Steps to reproduce:

This issue is hard to reproduce as (I heavily suspect) it depends on the quality of the internet connection at the time of loading the webpage. Because of ongoing maintenance in my area I get really high packet loss (near 100%) for the first couple of seconds when making a new connection. This makes webpages load very slowly and is what I suspect is causing the entire Firefox window to become unresponsive sometimes.

I understand that you will most likely need a lot more info to reproduce this but I am not sure how to provide it and I am asking for your help with providing this. I am comfortable with for example building Firefox from source with additional debug features if that is needed.

Let me what tools I can use to more accurately report the characteristics of my connection as well, if that would be useful.

Thus the steps to reproduce given the properties of my connection are:

This will produce the described issue about 1 in 10 times.

Actual results:

The webpage loading icon is still displaying as normal (animation does not freeze), however switching tabs, closing tabs, or opening menus is not possible as the UI has become unresponsive.

Other Firefox windows are still responsive and appear to be unaffected.

CPU and RAM usage remain normal.

Expected results:

The page loading slowly is to be expected as the connection is quite unstable, however the UI should not become unresponsive.

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.

Component: Untriaged → Widget: Gtk
Product: Firefox → Core
Component: Widget: Gtk → Networking

Thanks felixbrakel for taking time to file the bug.
We would require profiler output when you observe the issue. You can find the detailed instructions here.

Additionally, for debugging networking specific issue, we need http logs.
You can send to email necko@mozilla.com if you are concerned about sensitive personal information.

Let us know if you need any additional support in collecting these information.

Flags: needinfo?(felixbrakel)

Hello Sunil,

Thank you for getting in touch.

I will try to capture a profile, however I expect that once the UI freezes I will be unable to start the profiler so I will have to try and trigger the bug on purpose which may take a while.

  • Felix
Flags: needinfo?(felixbrakel)

I have managed to trigger the UI freeze and capture a profile by starting the profiler from another window.

https://share.firefox.dev/3MNx4tY

A couple of thing I noted:

  • It is possible to switch tabs but only by unfocusing the window and then focusing it again which seems to force a refresh.
  • I can't access the menus.
  • I can still scroll through the webpage that is currently open even though the rest of the UI is frozen.
  • The animation of the tab loading in is still playing even in the frozen UI
  • It seems dragged some tabs around and the UI froze in the middle of this animation, the tabs are still clickable as described in the first note.

From the profile I don't see anything unusual from networking side. Moving the bug to Core: Graphics to investigate the UI freeze.

Component: Networking → Graphics

Thanks for the report! Please open about:config, set gfx.canvas.accelerated to false, restart Firefox and test if this problem still occurs.

Blocks: wr-nv-linux
Keywords: hang
OS: Unspecified → Linux
Hardware: Unspecified → Desktop
Summary: The Firefox window becomes unresponsive when loading a webpage with a bad connection → Nvidia/Linux: The Firefox window becomes unresponsive when loading a webpage with a bad connection

Done. I'll let you know if the problem occurs again or in a week if it does not.

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:bhood, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Flags: needinfo?(bhood)

Will update Severity after the OP reports back.

Severity: -- → S3
Flags: needinfo?(bhood)
Priority: -- → P2

(In reply to Darkspirit from comment #6)

Thanks for the report! Please open about:config, set gfx.canvas.accelerated to false, restart Firefox and test if this problem still occurs.

I have had no more UI freezes so it looks like this successfully circumvented the issue

Blocks: gpu-canvas

Alright posting this here because it might be related.

I experienced another UI freeze today but only with part of the UI this time.

This time I cannot interact with the horizontal section containing the toolbar, address bar, as well as the forward, refresh, and back buttons of the UI in any way.
Right clicking does nothing, left clicking does nothing, and hovering over things also does nothing.

I have recorded a performance profile again and will send it to you over email if that is required.

And as I write this I got the full freeze in a different window as well.

So in conclusion: setting gfx.canvas.accelerated to false makes the freezes significantly less frequent, but does not eliminate them.

The webpage loading icon is still displaying as normal (animation does not freeze), however switching tabs, closing tabs, or opening menus is not possible as the UI has become unresponsive.

I can't access the menus.

I can still scroll through the webpage that is currently open even though the rest of the UI is frozen.

The animation of the tab loading in is still playing even in the frozen UI

I experienced another UI freeze today but only with part of the UI this time.
This time I cannot interact with the horizontal section containing the toolbar, address bar, as well as the forward, refresh, and back buttons of the UI in any way.
Right clicking does nothing, left clicking does nothing, and hovering over things also does nothing.

Which desktop environment and Linux distribution&version do you have?
Does it only occur after accessing menus? (bug 1820542, bug 1810092, widget.gtk.grab-pointer, widget.gtk.ignore-bogus-leave-notify)

It seems dragged some tabs around and the UI froze in the middle of this animation, the tabs are still clickable as described in the first note.

It is possible to switch tabs but only by unfocusing the window and then focusing it again which seems to force a refresh.

This sounds like bug 1796960: Does this problem only occur after switching tabs? Can the bug be prevented by setting nglayout.enable_drag_images to false on about:config and restarting Firefox?

It does look very similar to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1796960!

I can't trigger it the same way, but the symptoms look identical to mine.
I am using Archlinux + KDE plasma 5.27 with picom as compositor and i3 as window manager.

I'll change that setting and see if the issue persists.

How did it play out? And the latest nightly supposedly addressed bug 1796960.
(if network conditions are too good to reproduce, I believe they might be simulated with tools like clumsy or even just iptables)

(In reply to mirh from comment #15)

How did it play out? And the latest nightly supposedly addressed bug 1796960.
(if network conditions are too good to reproduce, I believe they might be simulated with tools like clumsy or even just iptables)

Apologies for never providing an update.

I have not experienced this issue for a while now, and forgot about it. Unfortunately I do not recall when this stopped being an issue, it might have been after changing this setting.

I have also switched to using the flatpak version of firefox. That may have had something to do with it.

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