annoying random Firefox crash - how to debug?

[SilverNodashi]

Hi,

My firefox (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091216 Fedora/3.5.6-1.fc11 Firefox/3.5.6) on Gnome 2.26.3 will randomly crash, without any errors. /var/log/messages & /var/log/Xorg.0.log doesn't show anything that caused any errors. And it doesn't matter on which website(s) I'm busy with, it will just crash.

Does anyone know how to check for a problem?

My PC has:

Intel Pentium(R) Dual-Core E5200 CPU
4GB DDRII Corsair RAM
3x 160GB SATAII HDD
Asus Nvidia 8800GT graphics card.


I have updated to the latest nVidia drivers

[root@Rudi-PC ~]# dmesg | grep nvidia
nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
nvidia 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
nvidia-config-d[1399]: segfault at 7f0888000000 ip 0000003ff107bf54 sp 00007ffff39d1898 error 4 in libc-2.10.2.so[3ff1000000+164000]


[root@Rudi-PC ~]# dmesg | grep nvidia
nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
nvidia 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
nvidia-config-d[1399]: segfault at 7f0888000000 ip 0000003ff107bf54 sp 00007ffff39d1898 error 4 in libc-2.10.2.so[3ff1000000+164000]

[root@Rudi-PC ~]# uname -a
Linux Rudi-PC 2.6.30.10-105.2.23.fc11.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Feb 11 07:06:34 UTC 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux



This is on Fedora Core 12 x86


I have disabled the only 3 Firefox plug-ins that I installed yesterday, but this problem has been looming for a long time.

Something interesting that I picked up is that Thunderbird will close randomly (very seldom though) as well, so I don't know if it's Firefox specific though.

I have picked up that it happens more often when my PC's memory usage is above 2GB RAM, and memtest86+ didn't indicate any memory problems. If I have less tabs open, it happens less often, but the more tabs I have open, the more often it happens.


At the same time, on the same PC, when I'm in Windows XP SP3 (dual boot), I can have many more tabs open as well as Thunderbird, Quickbooks, Photoshop CS3 and some other applications, and it doesn't cash.

 

[ir32001]

Well, i have the same problem too, I am running Windows tho and what i figured it is the antivirus - Avira. So when I open some doggie page, especially on Divxturka site then it crashes.

 

[SilverNodashi]

Well, i have the same problem too, I am running Windows tho and what i figured it is the antivirus - Avira. So when I open some doggie page, especially on Divxturka site then it crashes.

Please don't hijack a thread, and no offence, but you don't have the "same problem too", you have a different problem. Update your AV, or it's more likely a buggy installation of JRE. Update both and see if it resolves the problem

 

[MickZA]

I had random crash problems with Firefox & gedit on Fedora 10 64 bit both of which run 24/7 on my dev system - very frustrating. I eventually determined it was a gnome problem and upgraded to Fedora 12 64 bit , no problems since.

The system involved is a AMD 64 X2 with nvidia geforce 6100 onboard.

(Current Firefox = Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20100107 Fedora/3.5.6-1.fc12 Firefox/3.5.6)

 

[SilverNodashi]

Thanx MickZA

I have already upgraded everything on the PC that is to be updated, but I see now that I'm still on Fedora 11 (thought that yum upgrade would push it to Fedora 12), so lemme try upgrading to Fedora 12 and see if that helps.

 

[graviti]

before you do that, it may just be a broken library that needs a re-install. run firefox from a terminal, and it may give more feedback as to what is wrong when it crashes. Assume it crashes quite frequently, as opposed to every other day!

 

[MickZA]

I suggest you do a fresh install as opposed to a upgrade to ensure that the various gnome settings in the /home folders are recreated (if /home is a partition make sure you format it on install).

Under Fedora 10 I tried creating a new user and running under that but had the same problems.

I virtually live in gedit & it would crash about 3 times in 10 hours on average, Firefox maybe once a day.