Arch Linux

heisserberg

Member

Registered: 2015-05-25

Posts: 9

Firefox not starting after update

Hi,

I've updated my Arch installation today. Firefox is now version 41.0.2, glibc is 2.22-3.

All I get when starting firefox is the following error message:

GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed
out of memory
out of memory
Segmentation fault (memory dump written)

The easiest way is probably to roll back to the last revision.

But how do I figure out what exactly the problem is?
Where do I find the memory dump?

Thx in advance.

heisserberg

mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,675

Website

Re: Firefox not starting after update

Backup files in "~/.mozilla", because running safe mode may damage your profile.

Does running Fx in the safe mode helps?

$ firefox -safe-mode

If yes, most probably one of the extensions is to blame. If no, does running a clean profile helps? Run (note the letter case!)

$ firefox -ProfileManager

Then add a new profile (don't delete the old one) and run it. If this helps, then most probably your configuration is screwed up. After the test you may delete the new profile and switch back to the old one. If neither of the above helped, check up your graphics drivers: were they updated lately? Possibly a downgrade may help.

Just for comparison:

• firefox 41.0.2-1

• xf86-video-nouveau 1.0.11-3

• mesa 11.0.3-1

• mesa-vdpau 11.0.3-1

Works fine.

Last edited by mpan (2015-10-17 21:44:34)

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heisserberg

Member

Registered: 2015-05-25

Posts: 9

Re: Firefox not starting after update

Hi

running ff in save mode works.

First time it took "for ever" to update my add-ons. I cancelled that and tried to disable them all. Upon closure I get the following message:

###!!! ABORT: file resource://gre/modules/AddonManager.jsm, line 852

Running the ProfileManager doesn|t help. It crashes with the same error message as ff without any option.

I've downgraded ff to the last version. No change.

What now? Delete the entire profile and re-install it?

thx

heisserberg

mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,675

Website

Re: Firefox not starting after update

Just restore "~/.mozilla" from the backup — this is why I've emphasized creating one.

There are already some open bugs on Fx bugzilla, related to AddonManager.jsm, many of which wait for confirmation. Possibly check if one of them doesn't match your case and provide feedback.

However, I doubt that that particular thing is causng the orignal problem. Unfortunely I have no further ideas except temporarily downgrading Fx and wait for the new version. Happily 41.0.2 was a minor security fix release: a bug in CORS handling. Since CORS is not yet widely adopted, it doesn't look like a big issue in a short run.

One more thought: jemalloc was updated lately. Maybe try to downgrade it and run the latest Fx. But if this doesn't help, I'm out of ideas.

If you have some time, you may want to investigate the problem with valgrind.

Keep in mind to always have a backup of "~/.mozilla" when performing these tests and restore it before every test.

Last edited by mpan (2015-10-18 17:26:40)

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Paperclips in avatars?

heisserberg

Member

Registered: 2015-05-25

Posts: 9

Re: Firefox not starting after update

Hi,

looks like I've messed up my firefox playing around with grsec and pax. I've tried to change the pax flags issueing

 paxctl -PEMRS /usr/bin/firefox 

As a result ff works when I boot the vanilla kernel and doesn't under grsec + pax.

Any idea how to get it back to work?

Thx.

heisserberg

mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,675

Website

Re: Firefox not starting after update

I have never used grsecurity, but documentation suggests that you can disable the flags:

paxctl -pemrs "$(which firefox)"

Have you tried that already?

Also: setting anything related to NX bit or memory protection on a piece of software that uses JIT was not the wisest idea .

Last edited by mpan (2015-10-24 16:52:03)

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Paperclips in avatars?

heisserberg

Member

Registered: 2015-05-25

Posts: 9

Re: Firefox not starting after update

Well, I was not aware of the JIT issue...

Thank you for the hint.

However, I'm not sure that I can or should use paxctl to modify flags of a script file. If at all, I guess that I need to set the flags for the executable, right?

Heisserberg

Last edited by heisserberg (2015-10-25 11:37:06)