Closed Bug 342742 Opened 18 years ago Closed 15 years ago

When many tabs are open, it takes very long (minutes) for Firefox to die, even after the last window closes

Categories

(Firefox :: General, defect)

2.0 Branch
x86
Linux
defect
Not set
major

Tracking

()

RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

People

(Reporter: tonymec, Unassigned)

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.5) Gecko/20060626 Firefox/1.5.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.5) Gecko/20060626 Firefox/1.5.0.5 - Build ID: 2006062604

see below "Steps to reproduce" and "Actual Results".

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Close Firefox (yesterday's nightly) by File -> Quit
2. Answer "Close Tabs" to multitab closing menu
3. gunzip -vf firefox-1.5.0.5.en-us.linux-i686.tar.gz
4. tar -xvC /usr/local -f firefox-1.5.0.5.en-us.linux-i686.tar
5. Click Firefox icon on desktop

Actual Results:  
Popup message:

Firefox is already running, but is not responding. 
To open a new window, you must first close the 
existing Firefox process, or restart your system.
                                          [ OK ]


Expected Results:  
Firefox should have started up.

- Workaround: Close and restart X11 window manager session. This includes re-entering login name and password. After that, Firefox can be started with no problem.
- This bug is not new in today's nightly; I've been experiencing it for some time. Maybe since the Linux installer stopped being updated each night.
- Thunderbird does _not_ exhibit this bug AFAICT.
Version: unspecified → 1.5.0.x Branch
Additional info:

Bug happens when restarting Firefox by clicking an icon whose command-line is "firefox %u", not when typing "firefox" at the konsole command-line prompt. (Without the quotes of course.)
I noticed today that the zombie instance of Firefox (which I had recently ordered to close, and all whose windows had disappeared) did close spontaneously, but quite slowly (couple of minutes = significantly longer than it took to unzip and untar both Fx and Tb tarballs). The fact that many tabs (about 50) were open might be relevant.

Suggestion: Would it be possible to open a popup "Firefox is closing. This may take several minutes", possibly with a progress bar, which would stay open as long as possible while Firefox is closing, in any case longer than the main window?

If the above suggestion is regarded as unfeasible, I won't oppose marking this bug as WONTFIX.
Reporter, do you still see this problem with the latest Firefox 2? If not, can you please close this bug as WORKSFORME. Thanks!
Whiteboard: CLOSEME 06/27
(In reply to comment #3)
> Reporter, do you still see this problem with the latest Firefox 2? If not, can
> you please close this bug as WORKSFORME. Thanks!
> 

It still takes extremely long for Fx2 to close when very many tabs are open. I have learnt to watch the memory and CPU histograms in ksysguard, waiting for the dramatic drop which signals the death of the firefox-bin process. I still think adding a popup or progress dialog as suggested in comment #2 would be a GoodThing™. I'm therefore not resolving this bug WORKSFORME, but I will accept a WONTFIX resolution.
Summary: After tarball install, Firefox won't restart without closing/reopening X11 window manager → When many tabs are open, it takes very long (minutes) for Firefox to die, even after the last window closes
I'm not familiar with linux what so ever, but can you see if this problem also happens with a new firefox profile?
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_manager

It could be that an extension or plugin is causing a problem when firefox is shutting down; a new profile would tell us if it was extension-related at least.
Severity: critical → major
Summary: When many tabs are open, it takes very long (minutes) for Firefox to die, even after the last window closes → After tarball install, Firefox won't restart without closing/reopening X11 window manager
Whiteboard: CLOSEME 06/27
Version: 1.5.0.x Branch → 2.0 Branch
Summary: After tarball install, Firefox won't restart without closing/reopening X11 window manager → When many tabs are open, it takes very long (minutes) for Firefox to die, even after the last window closes
(In reply to comment #5)
> I'm not familiar with linux what so ever, but can you see if this problem also
> happens with a new firefox profile?
> - http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_manager
> 
> It could be that an extension or plugin is causing a problem when firefox is
> shutting down; a new profile would tell us if it was extension-related at
> least.
> 

I can't tell. I set my home page to "the current pages" and restarted Firefox in safe mode, but only the first 15 tabs were opened. Clicking the Home button re-opened the same 15 tabs a second time.
Tony, Do you see this in 3.0 but not in 3.5 nightly*? If so see bug 453178 comment 1.  If you see this in a nightly, see the blockers to bug 407981.
* or the equivalent Seamonkey
This bug was reported using a version of Firefox that security and stability updates are no longer provided for.  All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3 by selecting 'Check for Updates' in the Help menu or by going to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html

If you can no longer reproduce this bug using the latest Firefox 3.0.x version, please change the status of this bug to 'RESOLVED' 'WORKSFORME'.

If you can still reproduce this bug, please provide additional details to help resolve this issue.
No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please reply if you can still reproduce this bug with Firefox 3.5.3 or later in a new profile with the latest plugins (flash, quicktime, java, etc.).
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 15 years ago
Resolution: --- → INCOMPLETE
FWIW, I experienced this issue many times from Firefox 3.x to 3.5.3. In fact, Firefox almost never closed properly and I had to kill the process manually. Firefox 3.5.4 nightly seems to behave better so far.
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