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What Freezes the System: Firefox or ext3?The system freeze bug will be patched in FF 3.0.1 |
By Daniel Voicu, Linux Editor
22nd of May 2008, 10:19 GMT
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A few days ago, the first Release Candidate for Firefox 3 was launched but some problems still remained unfixed, like the one that caused the browser (and sometimes the entire system) to freeze. Some persons blamed Firefox for the freeze, while others the ext3 filesystem and
sqlite.
The problem seems to be related to fsync (), a function that synchronizes changes to a file, transferring the data to a storage device. In a bug report, someone described the way in which the excessive usage of fsync () occurred. For every new page opened, Firefox would use the function approximately eight times, bringing the browser to an unresponsive state until the fsyncs completed. This problem seemed to be "contagious", as it affected other opened applications as well, freezing them. I had this problem with Ubuntu 8.04, which comes with the development version of Firefox, 3.0 Beta 5 (the developers switched from the stable 2.0.0.14 to this one).
The developers from Mozilla will make a patch for this bug in Firefox 3.0.1, and will make sure that the Linux distributors take the patch if their users are using ext3 filesystems. Jason D. Clinton, a Games module maintainer for GNOME, wrote on his blog about this issue, and a few maintainers from Mozilla began responding to his post, trying to explain the problem and how it was going to be fixed. It seems that a partial solution would be to reduce the number of fsyncs produced by Firefox. As I said, this is only a partial fix, because we would still have the problem, but only of a smaller size.
I could add to this the large amount of hard disk activity I discovered on my home computer, on which I'm running Xubuntu 8.04, when it comes to opening even two or three tabs in Firefox 3.0 RC1. I'm not a developer, but I think the problem should be searched in the Gecko engine too, as it seems to affect other applications that use it (one good example is the feed reader Liferea that sometimes has the same issue as Firefox).
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Very Good (4.2/5) |
8 vote(s) so far |
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User opinions: |
| Comment #1 by: Jerry William on 22 May 2008, 16:04 GMT |  reply to this comment | I don't know the reason, but I've had apparently this same issue running every Firefox 2 release using OpenSUSE 10.3 under KDE with the ext3 filesystem. Others in the office using the same combination are having the same problems. |
| Comment #2 by: firefox user on 22 May 2008, 16:50 GMT | reply to this comment | Firefox 2.0.0.14 also locks up on me - sometimes fro 30-60 seconds. The firefox process starts taking 100% of the cpu (both cores). Have had to kill it through remote login. Kernel 2.6.24, but using xfs for the file systems not ext3. |
| Comment #3 by: Daniel Devine on 23 May 2008, 09:43 GMT | reply to this comment | I am running Xubuntu 8.04 and Firefox 3.0 B5 locked up on me. I have not seen the problem since I went back to Firefox 2. This is on a Thinkpad T23 (1.0ghz, 256mb RAM).
I am also Ubuntu 8.04, with Firefox 3 b5 - I haven't had a lockup yet. SQLite works fine too - Amarok handles my collection fine.
I do however have problems with Gecko in Steam (in WINE obviously). It lagggggs up - something like 42% processor power on my AMD X2 machine. |
| Comment #4 by: jymmi on 24 May 2008, 03:06 GMT | reply to this comment | I have notice this problem before, and for that reason I have stayed away from using Firefox with any Linux OS.
I found that Seamonkey is more stable with Mandriva 2008. It is a Mozilla product but seems to be more compatible with Mandriva.
I was using or tried serveral versions of Ubuntu, and noticed that Firefox was always causing my system to lock up. |
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