The Periodic Freeze is back!

[aib]

Hi folks!

Remember the periodic freeze that haunted Firefox through the late 2000s and the early 2010s? It's back again!

I'm having difficulty locating the original bug report even though I had about 150 mails about it in my inbox at one time. I don't know how to go about diagnosing it because everything else seems to have changed.

Anyway, it seems to be a regression in the latest version, because it only started happening after I agreed to participate in studies (which I did as soon as the new version was launched.) Disabled studies and telemetry just in case, let's see how it goes...

56.0 (64-bit) on KUbuntu 17.10

[therube]

the original bug report

Has no bearing on what is today, compared to what was a decade ago.

[Firefox56stinks]

Hey, its not just in Linux that the freeze is back, I'm running Windows Home Premium 7 and ever since I loaded 56 its been hanging all over the place. it doesn't matter whether you have a couple of tabs open in a single window or a dozen windows it just seems to hang on a whim. If it weren't for some of the great add-ons that people have added which I use all the time I'd ditch Firefox tomorrow. That they have never addressed the ever worsening memory leakage problem satisfactorily (they need to give each window a separate process) and now are reviving such reviled 'features' of the past such as 'the freeze' just shows the true quality of the Mozilla product these days.

[Frank Lion]

Hi folks!

Remember the periodic freeze that haunted Firefox through the late 2000s and the early 2010s?

No and I reckon I would have noticed.

Try a new additional testing profile (on Linux, just exit Firefox and rename .mozilla to .mozillagood and restart and it'll auto create it for you.)

[aib]

> Try a new additional testing profile
This is what I'm afraid of. What if the new profile doesn't have the problem? Then we know it is *somewhere* in my profile. Have any further debugging tools been developed, or will I have to gut parts of my profile in a divide-and-conquer approach?

> Disabled studies and telemetry just in case, let's see how it goes...
Did this and it remedied the problem somewhat. (Think <1s freezes instead of >1s) Then I deleted everything deletable by Ctrl+Shift+Del, after which the freeze disappeared completely and I was unable to bring it back. (Whereas earlier just browsing for 30 minutes would make it reappear.)

[aib]

Ah, I found the original bug report!

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=490122

[Frank Lion]

> Try a new additional testing profile
This is what I'm afraid of. What if the new profile doesn't have the problem? Then we know it is *somewhere* in my profile. Have any further debugging tools been developed, or will I have to gut parts of my profile in a divide-and-conquer approach?

Why ponder possible ramifications when it will take 30 seconds to try?

Ah, I found the original bug report!

Anyone can file a bug without proper foundation and many do. Usually they are full of stuff like we have on that one -

David.P

Comment 371 • 5 years ago

Benoit: sure enough that diagnosis was spot-on, and there is no hangs whatsoever after having removed LiveCLick

[aib]

> Try a new additional testing profile
This is what I'm afraid of. What if the new profile doesn't have the problem? Then we know it is *somewhere* in my profile. Have any further debugging tools been developed, or will I have to gut parts of my profile in a divide-and-conquer approach?

Why ponder possible ramifications when it will take 30 seconds to try?

30 seconds? What are you talking about? My current profile takes 2 days to reach this point. What can I possibly achieve in 30 seconds?

Ah, I found the original bug report!

Anyone can file a bug without proper foundation and many do. Usually they are full of stuff like we have on that one -

Stuff? Do you mean logs collected by frustrated users? People with different underlying causes ganging up on a single bug report because there are no clear instructions to help them trace the issue further?

David.P

Comment 371 • 5 years ago

Benoit: sure enough that diagnosis was spot-on, and there is no hangs whatsoever after having removed LiveCLick

Great, it was fixed for some people.

[aib]

the original bug report

Has no bearing on what is today, compared to what was a decade ago.

You probably mean the underlying cause. The symptom is exactly the same, as are the steps to reproduce.

[Frank Lion]

> Try a new additional testing profile
This is what I'm afraid of. What if the new profile doesn't have the problem? Then we know it is *somewhere* in my profile. Have any further debugging tools been developed, or will I have to gut parts of my profile in a divide-and-conquer approach?

Why ponder possible ramifications when it will take 30 seconds to try?

30 seconds? What are you talking about? My current profile takes 2 days to reach this point. What can I possibly achieve in 30 seconds?.

Do you have 'special needs' or something? You will have created a new profile in 30 seconds and what you do after that is up to you. You are beyond my help.

I'm out.

[RobertJ]

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Locking, the OP is hopeless.

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