Arch Linux

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

[Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

I use firefox 39 with KDE plasma5 - all Arch  and KDE is fully updated.
And I do think this only happens on Arch as I can see...

Even though I uninstalled flash firefox crashes on youtube when using the navigation bar or switching to the next video. It is very annoying that the mozilla help pages seem to be way outdated - I have never found any useful hints there. Obviously I tried with activating html5 content on youtube, also tried turning it off..

Example? The mozilla help pages tell me over and over again that I should start firefox in "safe mode" (which is essentially just the same as my normal mode cause I do not have any addons!) and enter "about:crashes" in the address bar. But "about:crashes" is an invalid page, it doesn't exist on my system. Though "about:plugins" works fine. 

So
- safe mode doesn't help
- removing flash doesn't help
- disabling java doesn't help
- disabling hardware acceleration (how to do that without flash?)
- "about:crashes" produces "invalid page"
- turning off syncing and other firefox "goodies" does not work either
- deleting ~/.mozilla in combination with all the above produces the same results
- trying with the package "firefox-kde-opensuse" from aur is the same just an older version of firefox
- switching youtube html5 preferred option on/off doesn't help
- trying everything above with a fresh user doesn't help

Please help someone. I can work around most crashes by reinstalling flash. But on many sites, like "24hoursofhappy.com", firefox crashes immediatly on loading...

Also if someone has a good suggestion for web browsing with KDE I really like to hear it. ATM browsing with KDE is a huge mess: rekonq isn't really developed anymore, konqueror is dead, chrome/chromium do not integrate very well and firefox - which is an integration mess also - crashes on random stuff...

Maybe web browsing is overrated and a major and important DE like KDE shouldn't bother with it.

thx for reading and for any help,
piedro

p.s.: also the whole KDE bug tracking and debug system doesn't catch any browser crashes...

Last edited by piedro (2015-10-24 18:12:36)

Sanctanimus

Member

Registered: 2015-01-11

Posts: 31

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

I've had my Firefox do this to me, and I could never find a solution. It seemed to sort of resolve itself at one point, but it still randomly crashes. I ended up just switching to chromium with pepper flash, and it works perfectly fine. You could try using this as an alternative to see if it's Firefox specific. Other than that, I'm not sure.

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

No, you are right - it works with Google Chrome or Chromium... still I would like to get firefox to work because I like to match it to other my browser on Ubuntu and some other systems I regularily use...

thx anyway..,
p.

Tambalamba

Member

Registered: 2015-03-13

Posts: 45

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

Did you try freshplayerplugin?

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

"freshplayerplugin" doesn't change anything... 

an error output I get on the command line is: 

libva info: VA-API version 0.38.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: User requested driver 'vdpau'
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/vdpau_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_35
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0

Does this help?

thx, piedro

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

On using the navigation on some videos I get this crash:

(process:1252): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed
libva info: VA-API version 0.38.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: User requested driver 'vdpau'
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/vdpau_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_35
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
1437408087988   browserwindow.syncui    ERROR   mismatched onActivityStart/Stop calls: Error: active=-1 (chrome://browser/content/browser.js:10244) JS Stack trace: onActivityStop@browser.js:10244:1 < SUI_observe@browser.js:10673:9 < this.Observers.notify@observers.js:93:5 < Utils_notify/NotifyMaker/notify@util.js:142:9 < WrappedNotify@util.js:149:11 < WrappedLock@util.js:103:16 < _lockedSync@service.js:1288:12 < sync/<@service.js:1280:14 < WrappedCatch@util.js:77:16 < sync@service.js:1268:5

Any idea?
p.

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

I finally kind of solved this by overwriting the arch firefox package with the original mozilla firefox download files (replace the "/usr/lib/firefox" folder).
Now the original version has some features not needed in arch like the crash report tool ("about:crashes") but my user profiles stayed exactly the same, I use the same addons and plugins but I never had any firefox crash again.

Now the sad part is that I have to diable firefox from updating via pacman and always doing it manually. SO this is a workaround but not a real solution.

piedro

mrunion

Member

From: Jonesborough, TN

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 1,938

Website

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

As long as you know that what you've done is unsupported and may cause future problems. But that solution just doesn't sound right to me....

Last edited by mrunion (2015-08-31 12:28:23)

---

Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

Lone_Wolf

Forum Moderator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 11,966

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

I had something a bit like your problems, found it had to do with the multimedia plugins firefox uses.

Try removing gstreamer bad plugins.

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

BTW: this is firefox 40.0.3 now....

@matt: I am posting here because I am uncomfortable with the solution. What is your idea?

Obviously the arch packages are changed from stock firefox in some way that breaks multimedia stuff.

What exactly are these changes and how can I use arch firefox again without it crashing? I have used the arch firefox packages before and they kept crashing - no user here or in the firefox forums ever could provide any information nor any solution instead of using the stock firefox (as described above).

@Lone_wolf: Would you please elaborate why the gstreamer-bad-plugins would cause firefox arch package crashing but work perfectly fine with the original firefox?

Also I asked about this in the sysadmin forum - but have been shut down as offtopic, so I post it here aggain:

Hello!

After having unresolvable issues with firefox (in KDE that is) when surfing to html5 or multimedia sites - in many cases firefox just crashed using the prgogress slider of html5 video content - I switched to use the orginal linux version of firefox from the mozilla website. THis works prefectly.

This is not an issue of any of the common hints:
- delete all addons
- use clean profile
- install/reinstall java, flash, vlc or whatever else comes to mind

... I have tried these all but the issues couldn't be solved.

Now downloading the firefox package from mozilla and replacing the complete folder "/usr/lib/firefox" with the files from the unzipped download resolves all issues.
The only disadvantage is that I have to disable this package in pacman.conf to avoid autoupdating.

So it seems the firefox arch package is different (buggy) from the original mozilla one.
Why? What exactly is changed and is there a "pure" package to use with pacman?

I am not sure whether I am missing something obvious here but I would be really happy to include a working firefox package in my pacman system.

Any ideas how to do that?

Thx, piedro

Last edited by piedro (2015-09-03 11:29:09)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,805

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

Uninstall gst-vaapi and libva-vdpau-driver they aren't exactly known for their stability. Other than that it could be numerous things different compiler/compilation options (maybe vaapi is explicitly disabled on the official mozilla packages because of its instability)

mrunion

Member

From: Jonesborough, TN

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 1,938

Website

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

If this problem were wide-spread, I think the Arch community would have fixed the issue -- or at least known about it -- by now. The point I am making is that is seems to be environment-specific. Have you tried to use ABS to build Firefox locally on your own machine? (If you've answered this, I missed it.) Have you tried something besides KDE5? It's new and may be contributory. Have you looked at the Mozilla repository and compared it to Arch's repo? What patches/changes were applied?

Oh, and in case I was unclear -- I am NOT trying to be pedantic, or trying to attack you on installing upstream Firefox. I am just calling attention to the fact that installing the software in this way is unsupported, and any future problems down the road (and there may be none), could be harder to find/fix because users here will assume you have installed Firefox via pacman. And when it's discovered you haven't installed via pacman, that will be one of the first things you are asked to do.

FWIW, I don't use KDE5 primarily, but when I do and use Firefox, it does just fine. My system is obviously set up differently than yours, but I've never experienced this problem with Firefox or Chromium for that matter. So I don't think that Arch's package is "buggy" per se as you've stated. But there is definitely something amiss somewhere.

---

Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

Thx for your answers.

This is not KDE5 related - I lived with these crashes for over a year now and users in the mozilla forums confirmed this on the arch build for example on: http://24hoursofhappy.com/

"Uninstall gst-vaapi and libva-vdpau-driver" - well if I do that don't I loose all hardware acceleration on video content? Like in Dragonplayer, VLC other browsers and so forth...?
I will give it a shot though...

just a moment...

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,805

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

what's your graphics card? if anything not intel you should be using VDPAU directly anyway, vlc is completely independent of gst and does have a native VDPAU backend (and actually gst has a vdpau plugin in the -bad packages as well, don't know why vaapi is in general higher on the priority list).

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

Thx for your answer.

Well I do not really know what you mean by using VDPAU directly. I have a Nvidia GTX 750 TI card and it runs nicely.

Which packages exactly are you talking about?

ATM I have the following (following the WIKI): 

libva-vdpau-driver
libvdpau
libvdpau-va-gl
mesa-vdpau

nvidia
nvidia-libgl
nvidia-utils

thx for looking ito that.
p.

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,450

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

VDPAU with the nvidia driver you do not need libvdpau-va-gl or mesa-vdpau support should be supplied by the nvidia-utils package that you also have installed.

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

I removed libvdpau-va-gl and mesa-vdpau.
Firefox does not seem to crash on streaming video anymore though I haven't had the time to test thoroughly yet... 
Thank you very much!

What exactly do I have to install to have an nvidia driven KDE desktop with hardware accelerated video support for streaming media and video files?
Is there a guide somewhere of what to install and how to clean up a desktop like that?

thx, p.

Last edited by piedro (2015-09-24 11:33:17)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,805

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

Nothing, just libvdpau and nvidia-utils and configure your video programs to use vdpau (which should happen automatically most of the time)

piedro

Member

Registered: 2013-04-11

Posts: 218

Re: [Solved] Firefox keeps crashing on youtube and other sites

Now it took me some time to check whether I still have problems with the initial issue of firefox, the arch build that is, would crash on some sites using different video and visual media types. Sry for that.

But now I did and I haven't found any more issues at all. I am very happy and thankful for all your help.

@V1del: I removed any references of anything else video acceleration related than libvdpau and nvidia-utils as you suggested and there have been no issues with video acceleration on my desktop. And less packages is always a good thing.... so cheers for that! :-)