249638 - Mozilla hangs for some considerable time on page load - maybe caused by advertising?

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[Richard Neill]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040514
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040514

Often, (about once per day), I find that Mozilla hangs when loading a page. It
will give all the appearances of having crashed, and may take 30 seconds to
begin to respond. During this time, I cannot view content in other tabs nor
mail. This lack of responsiveness does not happen in most cases of pages being
slow to load; only in some specific cases, and these are not usually repeatable.

My guess is that it is the embedded adverts, randomly selected, and served by
other servers which cause the problem - these are sometimes very slow to load.
Adblock does seem to help. 

It seems that there is one particular moment during an http transaction where,
if the remote end stalls/fails, the entire mozilla browser appears to lock up
until the expected packet eventually arrives. This can take a long time.

Sorry this is so vague - it's a real problem, but is very hard to track down a
test case.



Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.



Expected Results:  
Mozilla should never lock up just because one tab has gone "dead". Also it
should perhaps give up/time out a little sooner.

Comment 1

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

Hi!

I'm running Linux. I am working with a digital camera that is connected to the
network using TCP/IP. The camera can be configured and accessed using a browser.
Therefore I use Mozilla quite a lot.

After updating to Mozilla 1.7, I recognize a lack of responsiveness, too.

It's hard to give instructions how to reproduce this behaviour. Maybe the
Mozilla locks up because I use a lot of pages that contain <FORM> elements.

Comment 2

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

Mozilla 1.7.3 also hangs. Not only when loading a page but also when switching
tabs. This only happens in the Linux version.

I've thus downgraded to Mozilla 1.6 and now it works like a charm. No hangs any
more. Prompt and careful execution :-)

Comment 3

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

Richard,
please try Mozilla/Firefox with that Engine dated 20040113 (e.g Mozilla 1.6) and
see if you still experience the livelocks.

Comment 4

[Richard Neill]

Daniel,

I do recall this happening with 1.6, and in fact back several versions before.
But it is sufficiently rare that it's hard to find a reproducible test case.
(That also means that your suggested test won't work - because there's no way to
distinguish between "everything is fine" and "it just hasn't been unlucky yet")

However...I did actually find one such case: please look at Bug 253595
Also, see Bug 183122

Regards, Richard

Comment 5

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

> (That also means that your suggested test won't work - because there's no way to
> distinguish between "everything is fine" and "it just hasn't been unlucky yet")

When I was using 1.7, the "hangs" were not rare. So when switching back to 1.6 I
immediately noticed the difference.

Thanks for the links, I'll have a look at the mentioned bugs.

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 7

[Richard Neill]

Yes, this is still current. There is a related bug, i.e. bug 253595 which has
had recent activity. [A workaround is to install adblock.]

Comment 8

[Andrew Schultz]

==> networking

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Yes, this is still current. There is a related bug, i.e. bug 253595 which has
> had recent activity. [A workaround is to install adblock.]

still see this issue? bug 253595 is WFM.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

no testcase and no response, so => incomplete