1846399 - Tab hangs with JS intensive websites like Facebook, Google

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1849022

(Core :: Performance: General, defect)

Description

[Nguyễn Hồng Quân]

Attachment: Firefox tab hangs with Facebook

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/116.0

Steps to reproduce:

• Use Firefox v116 (non-ESR), installed from https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/ppa/, on Ubuntu 23.04. UA: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/116.0
• Open https://mail.google.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/ in one tab, and other light websites in other tabs.
• Scroll back and forth in Google / Facebook tab.
• Switch to tab with light websites, do some activities there (scroll, click some links).
• Switch back to Google / Facebook tab.

Actual results:

The tab that opens Google, Facebook hangs. The page is blank white with one spinner.

Expected results:

Should see and interact with Google, Facebook as normal.

The problem does not happens with Firefox ESR installed on the same PPA.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::JavaScript Engine' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Timothy Nikkel (:tnikkel)]

uploading a profile using https://profiler.firefox.com/ would be helpful

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

This bug was moved into the Performance component.

:ng.hong.quan, could you make sure the following information is on this bug?

• For slowness or high CPU usage, capture a profile with http://profiler.firefox.com/, upload it and share the link here.
• For memory usage issues, capture a memory dump from about:memory and attach it to this bug.
• Troubleshooting information: Go to about:support, click "Copy raw data to clipboard", paste it into a file, save it, and attach the file here.

If the requested information is already in the bug, please confirm it is recent.

Thank you.

Comment 4

[Nguyễn Hồng Quân]

Attachment: memory-report.json.gz

Comment 5

[Nguyễn Hồng Quân]

• Here is profile result: https://profiler.firefox.com/from-browser/calltree/?globalTrackOrder=i0wh&hiddenGlobalTracks=1wh&hiddenLocalTracksByPid=4526-04wf~13092-0~4682-0~6553-0~12524-0~6510-0&thread=0&v=9
• Memory report has been attached.
• For "about:support", Firefox hangs entirely when I open this page, so I cannot get data from it.

Comment 6

[Timothy Nikkel (:tnikkel)]

You have to choose to upload the profile. The profiler link you sent is just a link to a local profile that only exists on your system. There is a button "upload local profile" on the top right of the profiler ui page.

Comment 7

[Nguyễn Hồng Quân]

More info, the "about:support" page makes whole Firefox freeze if the Facebook tab hangs, and is Ok if Facebook tab does not hang.

Comment 8

[Nguyễn Hồng Quân]

Hi, this is the profile result: https://share.firefox.dev/3OGshLv

Comment 9

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

The process is hanging in a sync PWebGL::Msg_Initialize message. The CanvasRenderer thread is stuck in a syscall in the driver, in swrast_dri.so.
Unfortunately there are no symbols for the driver.

Daniel, this sounds like the issue you were looking into recently. Is there a bug about that, and can you dupe this bug over?

This report is also from the Ubuntu PPA build.

Comment 10

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Yup, that was bug 1849022, which sounds like comment 9 exactly.

Comment 11

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to Nguyễn Hồng Quân from comment #7)

More info, the "about:support" page makes whole Firefox freeze if the Facebook tab hangs, and is Ok if Facebook tab does not hang.

This seems to be because about:support attempts to initialize a WebGL context (here, I think); and if the CanvasRenderer thread is stuck forever in a syscall, then about:support gets stuck waiting at this point (just like other web content does).

Comment 12

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Reporter: if you're looking for a workaround, we've had at least one report that this issue goes away if you use the Mozilla "official" build, available here: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/

(See the "Download options and other languages" link there, if you want a different localization from the default one that's offered to you there.)

That version is just a .tar.bz2 that you can extract into a folder of your choice and run directly (and e.g. drop a symbolic link into some directory that's in your $PATH like maybe $HOME/bin if you want to be able to start Firefox more directly), so it's not quite as integrated into your system as the PPA-provided version is. It does auto-update itself when updates are available, though (and according to the user from bug 1849022, it's not affected by this issue).

If you do happen to try that to get back to a working Firefox setup, it'd be helpful if you could confirm whether it helps or not -- that's useful information for other affected users, and it helps us narrow down what might be going on. Thanks!