kanotix.com
General Support - Firefox problems
titan - 18.08.2006, 15:10 Uhr
Titel: Firefox problems
For the last couple of days ( after du) after using and shutting down Firefox when I go to restart it says there is already one running and looking on htop shows there is and I kill it. It only happened ocasionally but now it is getting more frequent. I have purged and reinstalled Firefox with no change, I don,t know if it is a mouse problem single/double click actions but the kicker only shows on version starting, short of a bug in kde I don,t know what it could be, any guesses.
Thanks
Ian
piper - 18.08.2006, 15:15 Uhr
Titel: RE: Firefox problems
Hi titan
After remove --purge
Did you remove the "moz" folder in your "home" ?
op4latino - 18.08.2006, 17:38 Uhr
Titel: RE: Firefox problems
When you shut firefox down, does firefox process stays running for more than a minute? If stays running for like 5-10 seconds and then shuts down, then nothing is wrong. Even the windows one does that sometimes.
titan - 19.08.2006, 10:04 Uhr
Titel: Re: RE: Firefox problems
piper hat folgendes geschrieben::
Hi titan
After remove --purge
Did you remove the "moz" folder in your "home" ?
Cheers Piper that seems to have sorted it.
Ian
piper - 19.08.2006, 10:19 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Firefox problems
Cool 
titan - 20.08.2006, 11:02 Uhr
Titel: Re: RE: Firefox problems
titan hat folgendes geschrieben::
Cheers Piper that seems to have sorted it.
Ian
Well it worked for a while back to normal now. Looking at htop it looks like although the application looks like it is being shutdown on the desktop it is not, and continues to run.
piper - 20.08.2006, 20:08 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Firefox problems
hmm, not good. Like op4latino says above, is normal and for me is worse in windows but does indeed close. How long does it take for ff to close fully?
titan - 20.08.2006, 21:09 Uhr
Titel: Re: RE: Re: RE: Firefox problems
piper hat folgendes geschrieben::
hmm, not good. Like op4latino says above, is normal and for me is worse in windows but does indeed close. How long does it take for ff to close fully?
It doesn't close down at all. It is a real mystery. I have been trying a few things and I changed the transparent option on the panel to off and the problem stopped. I have just come back to the PC and the problem is back, no idea what it is, it is intermittent
I hope 2006-01 is not too far away after 8 months surely a stable release can't be that far off. having installed easter rc4 and upgraded afer a disaster it is a far from straightforward exercise. I am begining to think after nearly two years maybe a distro based on Sid is not such a good idea. Ok installing and not upgrading but who would do that. I just get the feeling things are changing within the disto Kano hardly ever posts on the Engish part of the forum now compared with a year ago. Feeling a bit low and unsuported today I am sure tomorrow will be better.
Ian
piper - 20.08.2006, 21:14 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Firefox problems
titan
Sorry you feel that way and that you are having problems. The firefox thing is not a "kanotix" problem but a Mozilla problem. Kano and Kanotix has nothing to do with this IMHO. This also happens to windows users as well. Now this just might be me, but I look at it like, the less Kano posts, the less problems kanotix has. Now that is just my opinion.
ockham23 - 20.08.2006, 21:46 Uhr
Titel:
@titan, piper: The support issue is readily quantifiable. Statistics for Kano say:
Zitat:
Total posts: 10963
[39.34% of total / 11.22 posts per day]
Simply keep track of the average number of posts per day. You'll know after a few weeks whether the trend is up or down.
piper - 20.08.2006, 22:10 Uhr
Titel:
To me, this is a non issue. Kano shouldn't have to answer non-related kanotix problems if he does not wish to do so. Their are mods on forums for a reason, granted they too don't always have an answer. Does Mark shuttlecraft or whatever answer posts at Ubuntu ? I think we should be glad Kano takes his time period to answer posts and irc is a whole new ballgame
ockham23 thank you, I know all about stats and more
Swynndla - 20.08.2006, 22:38 Uhr
Titel:
titan ... I'd like to see the other firefox session ... can you paste the output of this command (run in konsole as user):
ps -ef | grep firefox
titan - 20.08.2006, 22:45 Uhr
Titel:
piper hat folgendes geschrieben::
To me, this is a non issue. Kano shouldn't have to answer non-related kanotix problems if he does not wish to do so.
Piper you are taking what I said out of context, I don,t expect Kano to answer my problems personally. I just get the impression that he posts on the English section less often. What I think is irrelevant anyway, I either run Kanotix or I don,t , no problem. It would seem I am the only one with this problem anyway.
However I do think that lack of a stable release for a while is becoming an issue I have two friend who having seen my installation are interested in running Kanotix to escape Windows, one for his one man business but there is no way I am installing Easter rc4 as it will be me supporting them, just not worth the risk at this time and they are slowly loosing interest as time passes. No big issue I know the story, free etc just seems like Kanotix has potential it will never achieve. It does sound like the next release will be good especially with some decent art work and no f***ing penguins 
Don't take any notice of me it is just the end of a crap day !!
Ian
titan - 20.08.2006, 22:49 Uhr
Titel:
Swynndla hat folgendes geschrieben::
titan ... I'd like to see the other firefox session ... can you paste the output of this command (run in konsole as user):
ps -ef | grep firefox
Code:
ian@Kano:~$ ps -ef | grep firefox
ian 10629 23263 1 22:46 ? 00:00:01 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin
ian 10690 23263 0 22:46 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin
ian 11011 10924 0 22:47 pts/1 00:00:00 grep firefox
ian@Kano:~$
piper - 20.08.2006, 23:01 Uhr
Titel:
titan
I fully understand your frustration.
I just meant that stats on posts is a non-issue thing and "if" Kano posts less, does Not mean he does not care.
I know your having a bad day 
piper@KanotixBox:~$ ps -ef | grep firefox
piper 16180 2034 2 13:03 ? 00:07:07 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin
piper 6025 15911 0 18:04 pts/1 00:00:00 grep firefox
looks like you have 2 going or am I reading that wrong
EDIT: Swynndla wrote: I'd like to see the other firefox session ... ok, my bad
slam - 20.08.2006, 23:19 Uhr
Titel:
Zitat:
with some decent art work and no f***ing penguins
Well, I can definitely promise the artwork will be decent (not just because I didn't do it), but there might be still "some" penguins involved ....
Greetings,
Chris
h2 - 21.08.2006, 18:35 Uhr
Titel:
Also, please be aware that the default firefox configurations are absolutely horrible, and can lead to ram consumption of up to 1 gigabyte.
Please make sure the tips in this firefox memory / ram useage thread have all been implemented before you spend more time complaining about slow or sluggish firefox stuff. If problems persist after making all these corrections, then go onto the next step of debugging the issue.
Certain extensions and settings can lead to a massive memory / disk purge each and every time you shutdown firefox. This was especially problematic with the extension tab browser extension, if left to the default settings. But many other session manager extensions have the same potential.
titan - 21.08.2006, 19:16 Uhr
Titel:
h2 hat folgendes geschrieben::
before you spend more time complaining about slow or sluggish firefox stuff.
If you read the thread you will see that I have not spent ANY time complaining about slow or sluggish firefox stuff.
h2 - 21.08.2006, 19:22 Uhr
Titel:
sorry, I used both the wrong tone and the wrong term:
do the fixes and see if it resolves the issues. I've seen those issues before, and they were caused by one or more of the factors that the fixes correct. Slow or sluggish is in fact a symptom you are describing, but it's slow or sluggish shutdown, which I used to experience all the time before I found the cause of it, which was a default tab browser extension setting, which creates a slowly expanding disk cache of ALL previous browsing history. As time goes on, shutdown takes longer and longer, since it has to write that entire cache back to disk.
This is only one particular issue with one particular extension, by the way. There can be many others.
I've complained about things, in fact, almost everything with Kanotix I've complained about has been either directly or indirectly connected to firefox. Which is why I had to spend so much time figuring out the firefox problems.
And debian security people also complain about firefox, since it doesn't integrate well with the debian deb apt method at all.
Try the fixes, see if that corrects the problems. Removing your profile is to me in general not a real fix, since you still don't know what caused the initial problem. New profiles are recommended major version to major version, 0.9 to 1.0, 1.0 to 1.5, and so on, but should theoretically remain fairly stable within subversion releases, unless an extension is somehow corrupting them, but then it's important to figure out which setting/extension was doing that.
Also, re users switching or not switching to kanotix, it's my feeling that people should want what kanotix has to offer. In other words, it's an educated choice, you know what you want in a linux distro, you know why you want it, and you know that kanotix just happens to be the only one that fits your needs / wants / requirements. Obviously, if it doesn't meet someone's needs, they shouldn't use it, and if it stops meeting a user's needs, that user probably isn't using the right distro.
This is how I found kanotix, and it's why I use it. I had to have a true debian based distro, I wanted it to run kde by default. I did not want it to be commercially oriented like ubuntu or mepis, both of which I tried at some point before settling on kanotix.
When I did my full switch, I waited for 2005-4 because I knew from reading etc that this would be a release worth waiting for, which it was, and still is.
In fact, you can install 2005-4 today, upgrade it all fully, and except for a few new features and graphics, you'll have an uptodate system. All my boxes run 2005-4 updated, not because it's the last stable release, but because that was the release that was available when I installed it. If I'd started with Easter, all my boxes would run Easter updated. And if I was waiting for 2006-1, that's what they would all run. And they'd all be sid updated to latest through dist-upgrade. And that's why I use kanotix, in a nutshell. This ability to upgrade to latest was my absolute top number one priority for my desktop. I don't like reinstalling, not when I ran windows, and not when I run kanotix.
titan - 21.08.2006, 20:32 Uhr
Titel:
h2, you make me feel guilty now. I don,t think I can recall a negative post from you.
I have looked at all the obvious possible causes and tried removing the one extension I use Gmail manager. I did apt clean in case the version I had was corrupt purged Firefox and removed the firefox and mozilla files from my home folder and did a clean install and it seems to be working ok for a few hours so far. I will reinstall gmail manager tomorrow if it continues to work ok. I have in the past made some of the changes you suggest on your site but can't say I noticed a major difference.
My half hearted whine about a stable release was out of character for me, I understand the situation and should have known better. The friend with his own business has no interest or knowledge of computers but is fed up with viruses and problems with Windows, he seems to be paying someone every other week to sort his PC out. He wants to run Kanotix having seen and tried mine but I want any version I install for him to be stable. I am happy to help him but I would like a single cd to install a current version and that is not posible at this time.
Thanks for your help
Ian
h2 - 21.08.2006, 20:51 Uhr
Titel:
titan: what I would do for someone who wants a kanotix install would be install on their system, bring upto date to latest kernel, all features, full du [that's one reason I wrote my script, so I could do this for other people fairly easily - the fact other people seem to like it came as a pleasant but unexpected bonus for me], then they'd be ready to go.
Of especial importance for such users is configuring firefox for them with the tips I listed, and to check their extension configuration, since firefox will be the top tool used by people, and problems with it should be avoided.
I've now made the firefox thread a library item on my forums, so it will be easy to find in the browsers forum.
I get frustrated too, especially when I started out full time with kanotix, before that I'd always given up and gone back to windows, just dual booted, but once I decided to fully switch, I had to start learning how to deal with issues when they came up, which definitely gets frustrating [I'm thinking of the rdiff-backup bug I discovered, the gtk2-engines-gtk-qt+firefox quagmire I got stuck in that almost made me give up on running a linux desktop, but not quite, etc.]
Re gmail mail manager, while I'm not familiar with it, it does sound like it might have the potential to cause exactly the issue you are describing, especially if it keeps a local log of your gmails, that would possibly, over time, if not written that well, create just that type of expanding cache of data to write to disk on shutdown, like tab browser extension did. It was only once I looked in the extension folder tab browser extension created and saw the massive history file that I finally figured out the slow shutdown issue.
The problem was this in tab browser extension:
on session close:
sessionhistory-data = current-session + sessionhistory-data
as you can see, this will balloon up in size over time since it's never cleaned up.
It takes some thinking to work around this issue, you have to save current session, have a prevoius session variable, that is cleaned every close, etc.
The easy way to test if it's an extension issue is always to start firefox using the -safe-mode option, then see if the behavior duplicates. If it doesn't, then it's an extension issue, or a corrupted profile.
Swynndla - 21.08.2006, 23:36 Uhr
Titel:
Personally, I see it this way:
The business that employs me uses debian servers, but they will only run stable debian (ie Stable release, not just a stable version of testing or unstable). A lot of other businesses do this too. Unstable is called "unstable" for a reason, and I personally wouldn't recommend that a business install kanotix and especially if they intended to dist-upgrade! 
That might be a controversal view on this forum, but it's what I believe. Don't get me wrong, I think kanotix is excellent for the user, and this community offers the user a ton of support. The kanotix developers are awesome and they bring out solid, up-to-date kernels. It's just that IMO kanotix and unstable-debian just isn't designed for business servers where the business is relying on the server not breaking.
piper - 22.08.2006, 02:27 Uhr
Titel:
What i would do is remove --purge again
Find every instance of "moz" (on that partition except t-bird) and remove it. Reboot (yes sounds like windows) and reinstall, after you reinstall - - DO not OPEN firefox ---reboot, if that don't work, I have no clue. You should not be having 2 instances of firefox running, and from what I see, you do. I have had very little trouble with ff, not saying that others don't but I am lucky. If you look at the Moz forums many people do. Anywho, there is Opera
Swynndla - 22.08.2006, 02:45 Uhr
Titel:
And when you reboot, make sure it's the proper way:
K > Log Out > Restart computer
... just to make sure that KDE remembers what apps to run on startup.
piper - 22.08.2006, 03:20 Uhr
Titel:
Good point Swynndla !!
slam - 22.08.2006, 08:50 Uhr
Titel:
Zitat:
Personally, I see it this way:
The business that employs me uses debian servers, but they will only run stable debian (ie Stable release, not just a stable version of testing or unstable). A lot of other businesses do this too. Unstable is called "unstable" for a reason, and I personally wouldn't recommend that a business install kanotix and especially if they intended to dist-upgrade!
That might be a controversal view on this forum, but it's what I believe. Don't get me wrong, I think kanotix is excellent for the user, and this community offers the user a ton of support. The kanotix developers are awesome and they bring out solid, up-to-date kernels. It's just that IMO kanotix and unstable-debian just isn't designed for business servers where the business is relying on the server not breaking.
Well, I do run Kanotix in businesses and on servers. However, I partially agree: Without an admin who knows what he does running Debian unstable on a server is not a good idea. But: Actually it's a bad idea to run a server with any operating system without an admin who knows his job! System stability is his responsibility, the operating system is just the framework he uses.
I don't agree with the rest. Just opposite to your opinion Debian Sid is designed for business servers - it's nothing else then the bleeding edge of Testing and Stable. And running a more recent operating system instead of an old & frozen version with tons of patches and fixes has become good practice in the industry. Why do you think more and more servers run Fedora instead of RHE, why would Ubuntu believe in server business then?
Running Debian Sid on a server has a huge advantage: You always receive security related updates and bug fixes straight and first. You don't depend on the work of the Debian security team or release cycles - you always are up to date. Don't take me wrong, the Debian security team does a great job, as do the maintainers who build other fix-packages and backports to Debian Stable, but all that takes time - and not everything finds its way into Stable.
I am not talking about running Debian Testing anywhere in a production environment (workstation or server) whit a network connection - that's plain stupid.
When we are looking at the corporate desktop, things are slightly different. There you don't need all the newest packages, but you need something stable and secure, easy to maintain and administer. Often you need to make sure that the operating system remains the same, even if a user did something stupid. there are several different approaches to that, depending very much on the infrastructure you are faced with. Personally I felt in love with running Kanotix "fromiso" and persistent homes for the users on a network share, or on portable media. You will find other solutions and ideas here in the forums, some very interesting and innovative.
The key-word in your comment was "dist-upgrade". Although Debian makes it very easy to do that, it's just not trivial or simple. You need to know and to check what's going on when dist-upgrading, otherwise better stay away from it. That's why we have implemented the "Update-Install" as a new feature into our installer - it takes care for you of all those problems.
So, Kanotix is the perfect solution in several different scenarios. It does however not free the admin from his duties (but might make his live easier).
Greetings,
Chris
titan - 22.08.2006, 09:04 Uhr
Titel:
Thanks guys, since yesterdays post Firefox now seems to be working ok. The error message I was getting according to the Mozilla site could have been due to a corrupt profile. Shutting down Firefox it would disapear from the desktop but hang so htop showed it as still running and me killing it allowed a restart.
I would agree in general with Swynndla about Sid and business maybe not being ideal partners but I am talking about one PC not used for mission critical tasks just correspondence and e-mail and it will be easier for me to support him if he is using the same distro.Especially if there is no du and I don,t tell him the root pasword. 
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