I set up a CentOS desktop computer for my brother and his kids. When Firefox 3.5 came out he decided to download and install it like he would Windows (he doesn't yet understand the repository system). He's been telling me that it works fine, even though I was skeptical due to my experience with Firefox 3.5 on CentOS 5.3. Then today, he says, "Oh, by the way, the CentOS computer has been rebooting itself every now and then." What?! (This is where he is in Linux -- doesn't realize that it's not like Windows, that it's not supposed to reboot randomly.) "Does it do it when you're in Firefox?" "Yes."
He's okay, though, just a matter of uninstalling his home root version of Firefox -- I've been updating his computer with yum, so he still has the newest *repository* release of Firefox also.
At any rate, just to let everyone know, whatever the issue is with Firefox 3.5 and *some* CentOS 5.3 computers (an Xorg graphics card incompatibility issue?) -- it goes beyond the RPM package released by Michael Harris. As for myself, I'm just going to wait for the repository Firefox 3.5 upgrade.
Ron Blizzard wrote:
Firefox 3.5 and *some* CentOS 5.3 computers (an Xorg graphics card incompatibility issue?) -- it goes beyond the RPM package released by
For the record, I have been using Michael Harris' 3.5 Firefox without any issues at all and with some speed benefits. I hope Mr. Harris is not discouraged by the bug reports and will, at his convenience, roll up the latest and greatest version.
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:20 PM, John Thomasgmane-2006-04-16@jt-socal.com wrote:
Ron Blizzard wrote:
Firefox 3.5 and *some* CentOS 5.3 computers (an Xorg graphics card incompatibility issue?) -- it goes beyond the RPM package released by
For the record, I have been using Michael Harris' 3.5 Firefox without any issues at all and with some speed benefits. I hope Mr. Harris is not discouraged by the bug reports and will, at his convenience, roll up the latest and greatest version.
Yeah, I know that not everyone is having trouble with the CentOS 5.3 and Firefox 3.5 combination. That's why I'm guessing it's got something to do with specific graphic drivers in Xorg. Both my brother and I use the basic Intel graphics cards that came with our Optiplex computers (he has a GX520, I've got a GX270).
And, I definitely didn't mean to criticize Michael Harris -- I was very happy that he provided a Firefox 3.5 repository -- that's partly why I started this thread, to make sure that everyone knew that it was *not* a problem specifically tied to his package.
Ron Blizzard wrote:
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:20 PM, John Thomasgmane-2006-04-16@jt-socal.com wrote:
Ron Blizzard wrote:
Firefox 3.5 and *some* CentOS 5.3 computers (an Xorg graphics card incompatibility issue?) -- it goes beyond the RPM package released by
For the record, I have been using Michael Harris' 3.5 Firefox without any issues at all and with some speed benefits. I hope Mr. Harris is not discouraged by the bug reports and will, at his convenience, roll up the latest and greatest version.
Yeah, I know that not everyone is having trouble with the CentOS 5.3 and Firefox 3.5 combination. That's why I'm guessing it's got something to do with specific graphic drivers in Xorg. Both my brother and I use the basic Intel graphics cards that came with our Optiplex computers (he has a GX520, I've got a GX270).
And, I definitely didn't mean to criticize Michael Harris -- I was very happy that he provided a Firefox 3.5 repository -- that's partly why I started this thread, to make sure that everyone knew that it was *not* a problem specifically tied to his package.
I have Firefox 3.5 (the mozilla.com version) on CentOS 5.3 using an Intel card and it has caused X to restart on a couple of occasions.
I am shifting back to the 3.0 version in the repo.
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Johnny Hughesjohnny@centos.org wrote:
I have Firefox 3.5 (the mozilla.com version) on CentOS 5.3 using an Intel card and it has caused X to restart on a couple of occasions.
I am shifting back to the 3.0 version in the repo.
A great test page for the bug it is right on CentOS.org. If you go to...
http://wiki.centos.org/Newsletter
...and choose one of the three "Published Issues" links of the CentOS Pulse it'll crash every time (if you've got the problem). When I had Firefox 3.5 on my computer it either rebooted (or sometimes logged out) -- but it works fine under 3.0.12. I had my brother test it, and it crashed for him, too. The only other links I had trouble when using Firefox 3.5 were on eBay.
I have no idea what's on these pages that would trigger this problem.
Ron Blizzard <rb4centos@...> writes:
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Johnny Hughes<johnny@...> wrote:
I have Firefox 3.5 (the mozilla.com version) on CentOS 5.3 using an Intel card and it has caused X to restart on a couple of occasions.
I am shifting back to the 3.0 version in the repo.
A great test page for the bug it is right on CentOS.org. If you go to...
http://wiki.centos.org/Newsletter
...and choose one of the three "Published Issues" links of the CentOS Pulse it'll crash every time (if you've got the problem). When I had Firefox 3.5 on my computer it either rebooted (or sometimes logged out) -- but it works fine under 3.0.12. I had my brother test it, and it crashed for him, too. The only other links I had trouble when using Firefox 3.5 were on eBay.
I have no idea what's on these pages that would trigger this problem.
I just checked the links with FF 3.5.2 under Fedora Core 11 and they open just fine. This would seem to narrow the problem down to FF 3.5 on CentOS 5.3. Perhaps someone with a CentOS 4.X could give it a try (assuming FF 3.5 will install on CentOS 4.x).
Cheers, Dave
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 12:06 PM, David G. Millerdave@davenjudy.org wrote:
I just checked the links with FF 3.5.2 under Fedora Core 11 and they open just fine. This would seem to narrow the problem down to FF 3.5 on CentOS 5.3. Perhaps someone with a CentOS 4.X could give it a try (assuming FF 3.5 will install on CentOS 4.x).
I've got Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.04 installed in VirtualBox on my wife's computer (since she's got plenty of room and the fastest computer). I tried these links using Fedora 11 and Firefox 3.5.2 and they worked fine for me also.
I hadn't logged into Fedora for about ten days -- which was the last time I updated it. I updated it again today and it already had 315 Megs of updates. I think Fedora is a good distribution, but I don't think I would want that kind of upkeep traffic. (Which is one of the reasons I use CentOS.)
I think it's interesting that Ubuntu 9.04 hasn't gone to Firefox 3.5.x. Its newest upgrade installed Firefox 3.0.13.
Ron Blizzard <rb4centos@...> writes:
I hadn't logged into Fedora for about ten days -- which was the last time I updated it. I updated it again today and it already had 315 Megs of updates. I think Fedora is a good distribution, but I don't think I would want that kind of upkeep traffic. (Which is one of the reasons I use CentOS.)
I think it's interesting that Ubuntu 9.04 hasn't gone to Firefox 3.5.x. Its newest upgrade installed Firefox 3.0.13.
I've been playing with Fedora and Ubuntu on my desktop and laptop since this past Spring when I took a couple of network security classes at the local community college. Seemed like almost every tool took a more recent version of something than is currently shipping with CentOS. I don't really like the instability and high change rate with Fedora but I got really tired of needing to build several libraries as well as the application under /usr/local when the same application would cleanly build or install under FC or Ubuntu.
SIGH. The choice is always bleeding edge (and take your lumps) or stability but missing the most recent versions. I'm looking at a career change (or mid-life crisis) with the network security classes. I'm not finding that I enjoy software development (what I've been doing since 1980) the way I did back when.
Cheers, Dave
David G. Miller wrote:
Ron Blizzard <rb4centos@...> writes:
I hadn't logged into Fedora for about ten days -- which was the last time I updated it. I updated it again today and it already had 315 Megs of updates. I think Fedora is a good distribution, but I don't think I would want that kind of upkeep traffic. (Which is one of the reasons I use CentOS.)
I've been playing with Fedora and Ubuntu on my desktop and laptop since this past Spring when I took a couple of network security classes at the local community college. Seemed like almost every tool took a more recent version of something than is currently shipping with CentOS. I don't really like the instability and high change rate with Fedora but I got really tired of needing to build several libraries as well as the application under /usr/local when the same application would cleanly build or install under FC or Ubuntu.
SIGH. The choice is always bleeding edge (and take your lumps) or stability but missing the most recent versions. I'm looking at a career change (or mid-life crisis) with the network security classes. I'm not finding that I enjoy software development (what I've been doing since 1980) the way I did back when.
Cheers, Dave
The CentOS (RHEL) vs. Fedora decision is easier when the RHEL version is relatively new. Unfortunately, RHEL 5 is getting a bit stagnant in library versions, APIs, etc. so it's frustrating to try to run newer applications on it. It's this reason that makes me all the more eager for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Last I heard, it would supposedly be based on Fedora 10 or 11... Has anyone heard rumors of a RHEL 6 schedule?
-Greg
On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 11:56 AM, David G. Millerdave@davenjudy.org wrote:
SIGH. The choice is always bleeding edge (and take your lumps) or stability but missing the most recent versions. I'm looking at a career change (or mid-life crisis) with the network security classes. I'm not finding that I enjoy software development (what I've been doing since 1980) the way I did back when.
For me it's just trying to keep up with what is going on in the world of Linux. I don't mind the time-lag with CentOS, because stability is more important to me than is cutting edge.
Hi,
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 13:06, David G. Millerdave@davenjudy.org wrote:
I just checked the links with FF 3.5.2 under Fedora Core 11 and they open just fine. This would seem to narrow the problem down to FF 3.5 on CentOS 5.3. Perhaps someone with a CentOS 4.X could give it a try (assuming FF 3.5 will install on CentOS 4.x).
I managed to run FF 3.5 in CentOS 4.x but I can tell you right away that it's ugly...
I am using the binary install from the website, however it looks for libdbus-1.so.3 and libdbus-glib-1.so.2 which are not present on C4 (only libdbus-1.so.0 and libdbus-glib-1.so.0 there). To work around that, I created symbolic links pointing to the old versions... (Yes, I know that it's really ugly, but I just had to get it running and it worked sort of...).
I tried to rebuild it in C4 but had many build errors, it seems that it will not build without a recent Xorg and fontconfig packages (among maybe others). I am planning to build a Firefox 3.5 in C5 but disabling DBUS support, which will at least alleviate the problem with the libraries that are not present in C4...
Anyway, I tested those webpages with my FF 3.5 (binary) in C4 and they work just fine... I have a couple of users that are using 3.5 all the time, and they did not report any crashes or anything like that. I only have a problem with one specific user, sometimes when she starts it it complains about DBUS, then if I run it with -fail-safe parameter it opens just fine, if right after that I close it and open it again (without safe mode) it works. But the following day the same issue will happen again... Anyway, she was having some display issues with FF 3, so it's quite probable that she has something weird in her dot files that is causing the issue just for her.
Cheers, Filipe
On 8/10/09, Johnny Hughes johnny@centos.org wrote:
Ron Blizzard wrote:
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:20 PM, John Thomasgmane-2006-04-16@jt-socal.com wrote:
Ron Blizzard wrote:
Firefox 3.5 and *some* CentOS 5.3 computers (an Xorg graphics card incompatibility issue?) -- it goes beyond the RPM package released by
For the record, I have been using Michael Harris' 3.5 Firefox without any issues at all and with some speed benefits. I hope Mr. Harris is not discouraged by the bug reports and will, at his convenience, roll up the latest and greatest version.
I have Firefox 3.5 (the mozilla.com version) on CentOS 5.3 using an Intel card and it has caused X to restart on a couple of occasions.
I am shifting back to the 3.0 version in the repo.
I am staying with the 3.0 version in the repo too. The *only* problem I see with it is that (frequently or always) the web pages load twice, which is annoying. Other than that, it works fine. :-)
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John Thomas wrote:
Ron Blizzard wrote:
Firefox 3.5 and *some* CentOS 5.3 computers (an Xorg graphics card incompatibility issue?) -- it goes beyond the RPM package released by
For the record, I have been using Michael Harris' 3.5 Firefox without any issues at all and with some speed benefits. I hope Mr. Harris is not discouraged by the bug reports and will, at his convenience, roll up the latest and greatest version.
Heh, no, I'm not discouraged by that, as it is not a firefox bug. ;o)
I have the latest xulrunner-1.9.1.2 and firefox-3.5.2 SRPMs in my repo, however for the time being at least I am no longer providing binary rpm packages.
The Mozilla trademark guidelines used to have a clause in them that permitted unmodified rebuilds of the firefox source which only differ in build options or similar, but that clause expired in April 2009 as I found out recently. After talking with a few knowledgeable people, it seems that I need to either contact the right people at mozilla.org to show them my builds and ask for permission to use the firefox trademarks on rebuilt binaries, or I need to remove the trademarks and rename the package to something else (similar to how Debian renamed it to iceweasel).
For the time being at least, either approach is way more effort than I really want to put into firefox right now, so I am just uploading my SRPMs for people to rebuild for themselves, which I believe is ok to do as I'm not modifying the firefox sources at all, but rather just providing src.rpms that contain a modified spec file and alternative .mozconfig for building with EL5.
People who would like to rebuild my src.rpms, can download them directly from my EL5 repo, or can install the repo config files and use yumdownloader to get the xulrunner and firefox src.rpm packages. Then just rebuild them with rpmbuild or mock. I've just sync'd the latest src.rpm of xulrunner and firefox tonight:
http://mharris.ca/pub/el/5/SRPMS/xulrunner-1.9.1.2-0.mh.1.src.rpm http://mharris.ca/pub/el/5/SRPMS/firefox-3.5.2-0.mh.2.src.rpm http://mharris.ca/pub/el/5/SRPMS/mozilla-filesystem-1.9-4.src.rpm
http://www.linux.org.uk/~mharris/pub/el/5/SRPMS/xulrunner-1.9.1.2-0.mh.1.src... http://www.linux.org.uk/~mharris/pub/el/5/SRPMS/firefox-3.5.2-0.mh.2.src.rpm http://www.linux.org.uk/~mharris/pub/el/5/SRPMS/mozilla-filesystem-1.9-4.src...
The new rpms *should* build with rpmbuild now without having to manually define 'rhel' or 'dist'.
For the time being at least, I'll be trying to update to any new mozilla.org releases of xulrunner+firefox that come down the pipe ASAP, and also resync the spec files with any relevant changes that occur in the Fedora packaging as well.
Hopefully it wont be *too* much longer until Red Hat includes Firefox 3.5 as an official EL5 update. I suspect it'll probably come along for RHEL 5.5 or thereabouts.
Please note that if you need to modify the spec files for any reason and decide to bump the release number - do not bump the "0." at the beginning of the Release field. Add a '.1' or whatever to the end instead. This is to ensure that any "official" packages that might get released in the future by Red Hat/CentOS proper, will upgrade over my custom packages cleanly without interference.
Enjoy.
- -- Mike A. Harris http://mharris.ca | https://twitter.com/mikeaharris
Mike A. Harris wrote:
http://mharris.ca/pub/el/5/SRPMS/xulrunner-1.9.1.2-0.mh.1.src.rpm http://mharris.ca/pub/el/5/SRPMS/firefox-3.5.2-0.mh.2.src.rpm http://mharris.ca/pub/el/5/SRPMS/mozilla-filesystem-1.9-4.src.rpm
Mike, thanks! They all built and seem to run well for me.
I did have to install nspr-devel in order to get the Firefox rpm to build.
Thanks again!
On 8/10/09, Ron Blizzard rb4centos@gmail.com wrote:
I set up a CentOS desktop computer for my brother and his kids. When Firefox 3.5 came out he decided to download and install it like he would Windows (he doesn't yet understand the repository system). He's been telling me that it works fine, even though I was skeptical due to my experience with Firefox 3.5 on CentOS 5.3. Then today, he says, "Oh, by the way, the CentOS computer has been rebooting itself every now and then." What?! (This is where he is in Linux -- doesn't realize that it's not like Windows, that it's not supposed to reboot randomly.) "Does it do it when you're in Firefox?" "Yes."
He's okay, though, just a matter of uninstalling his home root version of Firefox -- I've been updating his computer with yum, so he still has the newest *repository* release of Firefox also.
At any rate, just to let everyone know, whatever the issue is with Firefox 3.5 and *some* CentOS 5.3 computers (an Xorg graphics card incompatibility issue?) -- it goes beyond the RPM package released by Michael Harris. As for myself, I'm just going to wait for the repository Firefox 3.5 upgrade.
Ron: My Desktop is dual boot. M$ WinXP Home and CentOS 5.3 (32 bit). I rarely use M$ Windows, but yesterday I needed to use it, and I was offered an Update for Mozilla Firefox. What was offered was not 3.5. It was 3.0.13 as I recall. I updated to 3.0.13. Like you, I will wait until yum update finds Firefox 3.5. And, on the Windows side, I will wait until they offer it to me. Having the "latest and greatest" is not always the best idea. My 2 Pesos.... Lanny
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:36 PM, Lanny Marcuslmmailinglists@gmail.com wrote:
Ron: My Desktop is dual boot. M$ WinXP Home and CentOS 5.3 (32 bit). I rarely use M$ Windows, but yesterday I needed to use it, and I was offered an Update for Mozilla Firefox. What was offered was not 3.5. It was 3.0.13 as I recall. I updated to 3.0.13. Like you, I will wait until yum update finds Firefox 3.5. And, on the Windows side, I will wait until they offer it to me. Having the "latest and greatest" is not always the best idea. My 2 Pesos.... Lanny
I'm running Windows 2000 in VirtualBox -- I use "Movie Magic Screenwriter," "Visual dBASE," "NetObjects Fusion" and a couple other specialty programs. I also noticed that the two lines of Firefox (3.0.x and 3.5.x) were treated as separate products. I had tried Firefox 3.5 beta and ran the updater (it went to 3.5.1) -- then realized that I still had the old Firefox, ran the updater and got 3.0.11 (from 3.0.8). I ended up uninstalling the older "line." Wonder how long Firefox is going to support both "versions?"
As for Firefox 3.5 on CentOS -- it did seem to be faster, but if I have to chose between speed and reliable, I'll go with reliable.
Lanny Marcus wrote:
On 8/10/09, Ron Blizzard rb4centos@gmail.com wrote:
I set up a CentOS desktop computer for my brother and his kids. When Firefox 3.5 came out he decided to download and install it like he would Windows (he doesn't yet understand the repository system). He's been telling me that it works fine, even though I was skeptical due to my experience with Firefox 3.5 on CentOS 5.3. Then today, he says, "Oh, by the way, the CentOS computer has been rebooting itself every now and then." What?! (This is where he is in Linux -- doesn't realize that it's not like Windows, that it's not supposed to reboot randomly.) "Does it do it when you're in Firefox?" "Yes."
He's okay, though, just a matter of uninstalling his home root version of Firefox -- I've been updating his computer with yum, so he still has the newest *repository* release of Firefox also.
At any rate, just to let everyone know, whatever the issue is with Firefox 3.5 and *some* CentOS 5.3 computers (an Xorg graphics card incompatibility issue?) -- it goes beyond the RPM package released by Michael Harris. As for myself, I'm just going to wait for the repository Firefox 3.5 upgrade.
Ron: My Desktop is dual boot. M$ WinXP Home and CentOS 5.3 (32 bit). I rarely use M$ Windows, but yesterday I needed to use it, and I was offered an Update for Mozilla Firefox. What was offered was not 3.5. It was 3.0.13 as I recall. I updated to 3.0.13. Like you, I will wait until yum update finds Firefox 3.5. And, on the Windows side, I will wait until they offer it to me. Having the "latest and greatest" is not always the best idea. My 2 Pesos.... Lanny _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
firefox won't release 3.5 via auto upgrade you'll have to do that leap yourself.
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Ron Blizzard wrote:
I set up a CentOS desktop computer for my brother and his kids. When Firefox 3.5 came out he decided to download and install it like he would Windows (he doesn't yet understand the repository system). He's been telling me that it works fine, even though I was skeptical due to my experience with Firefox 3.5 on CentOS 5.3. Then today, he says, "Oh, by the way, the CentOS computer has been rebooting itself every now and then." What?! (This is where he is in Linux -- doesn't realize that it's not like Windows, that it's not supposed to reboot randomly.) "Does it do it when you're in Firefox?" "Yes."
He's okay, though, just a matter of uninstalling his home root version of Firefox -- I've been updating his computer with yum, so he still has the newest *repository* release of Firefox also.
At any rate, just to let everyone know, whatever the issue is with Firefox 3.5 and *some* CentOS 5.3 computers (an Xorg graphics card incompatibility issue?) -- it goes beyond the RPM package released by Michael Harris. As for myself, I'm just going to wait for the repository Firefox 3.5 upgrade.
If you run any unprivileged userland software, which includes most software on the system including firefox, and your computer reboots, then you either have broken video drivers, a buggy kernel (possibly DRM), or if you're using 3rd party video drivers or other 3rd party kernel modules, they are likely culprits as well. Alternatively it could be system overheating (unlikely for the firefox triggered issue described), hardware incompatibility, or some other hardware issue, possibly even a bad BIOS or something.
Unpriviledged userland applications like firefox do not have any rights whatsoever to execute anything that can directly crash the computer. As such, if anyone ever runs firefox or any other userland application, and their computer reboots or crashes, forget about the application that you ran that appears to have triggered something, and look in /var/log/messages and /var/log/Xorg*.log looking for clues as to what might have failed. In many cases you will not find any evidence left behind in the logs from the failures, and must resort to other forms of troubleshooting.
Quite often, the culprit is the video driver, either the Xorg driver, the 3D driver, or the kernel portion (DRM, or equivalent proprietary alternative), and so that's where I'd start looking. Disable 3D acceleration in your xorg.conf, try again. Disable 2D acceleration if need be. Experiment with other video driver options (read the docs for the driver you're using), etc.
Now, someone might say "yes, but firefox 3 doesn't reboot the computer, but 3.5 does, so it must be firefox". Which of course is flawed logic, because we already know unprivileged userland code such as firefox does not have permission to access anything that can directly lock up the hardware or reboot the computer. If someone is having this problem, the obvious cause is that firefox 3.5 most likely has new functionality that does not exist in firefox 3, which triggers a video driver bug that older firefox didn't trigger because it didn't try to use the video driver in that manner.
I'm focusing on the video driver being the problem because that is the case 99.9% of the time, however if you try the troubleshooting I suggest above and can't narrow the problem down, you might need to try using another video driver (nouveau, radeon, radeonhd, vesa, etc.) - just to see if it makes any difference. If you use a different driver and the problem goes away, then you can most likely conclude the video driver is buggy. Another possibility is triggering an X server bug, but that's less likely.
Anyway, I hope this helps narrow down the true problem for anyone experiencing this. Look for the problem, not the trigger (firefox).
Hope this helps.
- -- Mike A. Harris http://mharris.ca | https://twitter.com/mikeaharris
-
David G. Miller -
Filipe Brandenburger -
Greg Bailey -
John Thomas -
Johnny Hughes -
Lanny Marcus -
Mike A. Harris -
Ron Blizzard -
William Warren