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#1 2004-08-13 04:26:54

Iolo
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Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 38

Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

I've noticed that the firefox-mozilla 0.93 for linux (installed through pacman) seems to be slower  than its win32 counterpart. In particular, it seems to take firefox (when running on archlinux) a long time to  resolve webservers and load webpages. Are there settings within firefox, or archlinux I should check?

I'm running archlinx 0.7 on a IBM T23, with an integrated intel networking card.  The computer is attached to a linksys BEFSR41 router running dhcp.

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#2 2004-08-13 05:23:23

sarah31
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From: Middle of Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 2,975
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Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

i hav ethe exact opposite problem. firefox is slow in windows on a faster processor and fast in arch tongue


AKA uknowme

I am not your friend

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#3 2004-08-13 05:30:48

colnago
Member
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2004-03-25
Posts: 438

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

I have not noticed this myself, but there is a lot of talk about it in some other threads.  One of the theories was ipv6 timeouts.  See if removing it works for you...

in /etc/modprobe.conf (I don't know if this will even work, but it was in the previous posts)
alias net-pf-10 off
alias ipv6 off

Then do an ifconfig | grep inet6 and find your ipv6 addr and:
ifconfig eth0 del <ipv6 addr>

There is also a setting in firefox.  Put about:config in the address bar and go down to network.dns.disableIPv6 and right click and modify to true.

If any of this works a post back would be helpful as I seem to remember the other thread was unresolved.

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#4 2004-08-13 06:53:33

IceRAM
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From: Bucharest, Romania
Registered: 2004-03-04
Posts: 772
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Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

Check this thread (I know, it's very long):
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic … 15&start=0

Basically, what I've done to speed up my firefox (slow computer P3 450MHz, 384RAM, slow connection: 256kbps (which has 128kbps I think outside the country most of the times)) was to decrease the number of simultaneous connections, disable IPv6 in about:config (I didn't notice an improvement when doing this, but I still did it) and use a Caching-only DNS server (bind running on localhost - also for the internal network).

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#5 2004-08-13 10:33:04

Iolo
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Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 38

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

Thanks for the replies. I'll try the ivp6 thing tonight. . . but isn't ivp6 a firewall setup to isolate default arch installs from the outside? Wouldn't it be a bad thing to disable it? (Yes I know my router has a firewall to block incomming connections, but I was just curious.)

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#6 2004-08-13 11:57:00

i3839
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Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

IPv6 is the successor to IPv4, but it will take a lot more years before IPv4 is replaced (I guess 8 or so). I have honestly no idea why Arch enables IPv6 by default, IPv6 is still rather experimental.

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#7 2004-08-13 18:55:36

Iolo
Member
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 38

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

Well... looks like this will have to wait a bit, work calls  sad 

I'll post back when I try the suggested fixes.

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#8 2004-08-14 00:13:51

speedster
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From: Stanley, NC
Registered: 2004-02-21
Posts: 20
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Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

Hi there.  This tip will improve your performance.

1. type    about:config          as the url in firefox
2. look for (or create an integer if it's not there) nglayout.initialpaint.delay and make sure it is set to 0
3. Restart browser

Firefox should render pages quite a bit faster now.

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#9 2004-08-14 00:18:42

seratne
Member
Registered: 2004-02-06
Posts: 21

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

1. type about:config as the url in firefox
2. look for (or create an integer if it's not there) nglayout.initialpaint.delay and make sure it is set to 0
3. Restart browser

and turning off ipv6 in about:config actually made a big difference.  Now I don't have to use epiphany anymore.  Thank you all.

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#10 2004-08-16 20:43:14

Iolo
Member
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 38

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

Speedster's glayout.initialpaint.delay tip, combined with turning off ipv6  in firefox result in some big speed gains in terms of rendering. However, there is still a pretty big delay when firefox tries to resolve website addresses. I suppose this could be the result of a improperly configured network setup; however, I am not sure what could be wrong since I have rc.conf setup for dhcp.

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#11 2004-08-16 21:12:31

i3839
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Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

Firefox doesn't seem to cache DNS addresses, so using a DNS cache when you have a relative slow connection can speed things up a lot. Personally I use dnsmasq, easy to configure and run.

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#12 2004-08-17 15:19:43

Echo1
Member
From: BC, Canada
Registered: 2004-03-02
Posts: 19

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

This is not much help but may fill in some of the pieces to this puzzle
I have done two load of Arch 0.7 wombat via AMLUG HD-install.
In the first install Firefox and mozilla crawled and much like yours and seemed to take forever to resolve website addresses. When I tried to get Quicktime running through crossover office I recieved an error that Quicktime was having a problem resolving MY address  :shock: . I messed with my rc.conf, I messed with /etc/hosts but mozilla/firefox remained painfully slow.
I did a reload of Arch 0.7, during the install I kept all the config files generic, my box is localhost etc. HWD was used to set up the config files. Well for what ever reason on this load Mozilla and firefox are fast. I am loading some of my modules and daemon in a diffrent order, and I now get a messsage at shutdown that network is not running, "try network start" which I did not get before but my browsers are fast.
Does everything in /etc/dhcpc/dhcpcd-eth0.info look right for your system?

AMLUG 5.1 on a  Qbic 3401 with integrated 8139too attached to a linksys RT314 router running dhcp

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#13 2004-08-17 23:43:43

Iolo
Member
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 38

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

Yes everything under /etc/dhcpc/dhcpcd-eth0.info looks correct. The ip address and gateway match the ones listed by my router's dhcp tables. Similarly, the two name servers listed in the dhcpcd-eth0.info also match the ones listed on my windows box (which is also on the same network, and subsequently sends dns requests to the same isp dns servers).

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#14 2004-08-19 05:33:43

arDAWG
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From: Arkansas
Registered: 2004-08-19
Posts: 16

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

Have you tried any of the settings (advanced config & performance) from this guide???
http://www.tweakfactor.com/articles/twe … eak/3.html
The values can be entered via the about:config dealy & if the suggested setting is not present, simply right click & create a new boolean or integer value. It seemed to help w/ Firefox on my system (2100 TBred @ 2.2ghz / 2mb/sec cable internet). I didn't install Firefox via pacman tho....I dl'ed the install file from Mozilla.org, extracted & ran the install proggy (installed into /usr/lib/firefox. This is the standard procedure for me since going thru the Stanton Finley FC2 setup guide. Pacman -Su didn't return any hits for firefox (didn't think to try mozilla-firefox), so I just dl'ed and installed. Works fine for me so far, other than crappy fonts, which I fixed by checking "Use My Fonts." wink

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#15 2004-08-20 18:13:46

Iolo
Member
Registered: 2004-06-03
Posts: 38

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

Yes I've tried tweaks listed in the Mozillazine thread. Again, they do much to increase rendering speed, but they do not seem to fix the resolving of web addresses. I've loaded dnsmasq as well, and it appears to have autoconfiged itself (eg, resolv.conf already points to my isp's name servers, and the host file is bound to 127.0.0.1). I'll need to test it awhile before I can conclude that it did anything.

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#16 2004-08-21 06:16:19

arDAWG
Member
From: Arkansas
Registered: 2004-08-19
Posts: 16

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

I tried dnsmasq as well, back when I was in the infancy of getting Arch installed---but w/ my Fedora Core2 install. It seemed to make things worse w/ that distro & firefox, it slowed things to a crawl---so I used Synaptic to kill it... wink ...& things were back to normal. Have you tried setting up a static IP address vs. dhcp? I recall reading a thread once wherein this sped up browsing w/ WinXP / 2K (can't recall any mention of Linux based systems tho).

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#17 2004-08-21 14:01:56

i3839
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Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

I'm using dnsmasq with static IPs, so not the dhcp features, and it speed up dns resolving in Firefox a lot because of the caching. Only way it can be slower is when you use bad and other dns servers than normally, or perhaps when configuring it wrong so that it does weird dhcp things. Or it was a buggy version..

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#18 2004-08-21 21:36:19

arDAWG
Member
From: Arkansas
Registered: 2004-08-19
Posts: 16

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

i3839 wrote:

I'm using dnsmasq with static IPs, so not the dhcp features, and it speed up dns resolving in Firefox a lot because of the caching. Only way it can be slower is when you use bad and other dns servers than normally, or perhaps when configuring it wrong so that it does weird dhcp things. Or it was a buggy version..

Yeah that's true & I didn't give it much of a chance b/c Firefox was doing fine w/ FC2 before I installed it, so I didn't tweak it much...just looking for that extra bit of speed... wink I might give it a try in Arch b/c it seems, for some odd reason, I can find things easier & stuff works more as it should w/ Arch vs. FC2 (perhaps that's b/c so much has not already been done for me).

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#19 2004-08-22 13:00:52

punkrockguy318
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From: New Jersey
Registered: 2004-02-15
Posts: 711
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Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

My problem isn't rendering speeds, its loading time.  Thunderbird and firefox take ages to initially load!  Its much quicker in winblows.  Any ideas?


If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.   1 Corinthians 13:2

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#20 2004-08-22 14:53:04

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

Yes, use prelink. Elf libraries don't play well together with C++, so linking C++ libraries can be very slow.

As a side note, on my pc by the time that Win2K fully booted I can be in Linux browsing with Firefox (after manually logging in). I really have no idea why people say that Windows boots faster, perhaps they use Gnome or KDE? ;-)

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#21 2004-08-22 15:11:37

arDAWG
Member
From: Arkansas
Registered: 2004-08-19
Posts: 16

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

(OT) Arch boots very fast I think...much faster than FC2 or any of the other distros I've tinkered w/. It's the only distro so far that can match or exceed Windows as far as boot up time goes & yes I do use gnome....a a newb it's strikes me as the best balance between excessive fluff (kde) & the spartan (fluxbox?). Xfce4 is nice as well, but the question remains, why did I spend all this money on fast hardware (& I overclock as well) if not for the power to run, @ least a little bloatage???? And gnome loads fairly fast...the time between post & the gdm login screen is the longest, whether it's to the console or the gdm login screeny. (/OT)

Back to the topic--->I installed dnsmasq to give it a try w/ Arch & it helped a ton. Idk wtf was up w/ it & FC2, but they didn't get along well together. Perhaps, FC2 uses some propreitary scheme for dns lookup & they conflicted...but it's helped a lot...I would try pacman -S dnsmasq. As a sidenote, I applied all the about:config tweaks to Mozilla a moment ago & it's actually fairly snappy now. wink I use it occasionally for streaming stuff w/ Realplayer10, as firefox has some kinda problem w/ RP10 & it crashes when trying to view a real stream (such as the vids @ Fox news or cnn, etc).

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#22 2004-08-22 16:55:09

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

I start dnsmasq with the following in rc.local:

dnsmasq -f -r /etc/ppp/resolv.conf -I ppp0 
-A /googlesyndication.com/127.0.0.1 
-A /doubleclick.net/127.0.0.1 
-A /valueclick.com/127.0.0.1

The -f is because this pc does NAT and DNS for a win2k pc, it seemed a good idea after reading the manpage. The interesting part are the -A options, that way you can redirect whole domains, something that's not possible with hosts as far as I know, because the subdomain is different everytime and bypasses the hosts file. If you want to get rid of all Google adds at once then use -A /googlesyndication.com/127.0.0.1, the same for all other (although more) annoying ad sites.

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#23 2004-08-24 01:25:08

FoPref
Member
From: Erlangen / Germany
Registered: 2004-03-24
Posts: 96
Website

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

Just to clearify: ipv6 is *not* experimental. It works very fine. It really _is_ a successor of ipv4 with many great features, not only with a bigger address space - which doesn't bother people in the US, I know.

Why ipv6 is enabled per default in archlinux? Well, this is a "on the edge" distro and not a "new stuff, I don't need, so people who need it, who cares" distro.

There are people out there (like me) that heavily rely on ipv6 and for those disabling ipv6 is not a workaround, it's just like plugging off the ethernet cable to speed everything up.


I understand it is a useful workaround for people without ipv6, but I blame the mozilla people for that problem. You perhaps wonder, but these long timeouts also occur on a ipv6 capable system + connection. They occur on every damn host that can't deal with ipv6 (and there are many). Cool apps like SSH don't have that problem and still are able to prefer ipv6 connections if they are possible. Sadly Mozilla Firefox doesn't :-/


cu
Ford Prefect

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#24 2004-08-24 12:01:49

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

The IPv6 stacks aren't finished yet. Sure, normal internet works fine, but that's not everything. There is no big IPv6 netwerk yet, in general it's tunnelled where needed so that you can reach IPv4 hosts. IPv6 is the future, but not all IPv4 features/extensions are fully supported in practice now, so expecting widespread IPv6 support within some years is IMHO naive. Just think about all those IPv4 specific hardware, replacing that with IPv6 capable stuff will take years. The push to IPv6 won't come from the US, they gave themselves plenty of IPs compared with the rest of the world (can't blame them that really). I can't wait till IPv6 is the standard because decent multicast support is mandatory then instead of an extension.

As far as I know DNS resolving was slightly different with IPv6, so it could be that Mozilla does it wrong when using IPv6, or right and there's no valid IPv6 capable DNS server configured.

If Arch was really an on the edge distro it would already use Linux 2.6, udev and unicode/utf-8 everywhere by default.

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#25 2004-08-24 14:32:52

FoPref
Member
From: Erlangen / Germany
Registered: 2004-03-24
Posts: 96
Website

Re: Sluggish Firefox 0.93 in arch?

I'm working in a native ipv6 network across whole Germany, provided by the DFN (Deutsches Forschungsnetz).

On of the biggest german ISPs, T-Online, is planing ipv6 support in near future.

> As far as I know DNS resolving was slightly different with IPv6, so it could
> be that Mozilla does it wrong when using IPv6, or right and there's no valid
> IPv6 capable DNS server configured.

Mozilla does it wrong. Mozilla also has a problem with automatic proxy configuration files. Mozilla also is not able to use proxys for ipv4 but not for ipv6...

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