Iceweasel crashing and a cure

[Don <debuser@noark.net>]

I have been plagued by my Iceweasel browser crashing consistently on
some webpages for some time now and the other day I researched the
problem on this and other lists to try to find a solution.

I'm using "sid" on my system, kept updated/upgraded. One of the web
pages it crashes on every time is http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/ (as an
example).

I find two things:

1. Past postings gave a hint to use MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 and trying this
it works for me!  No crashing in several days now and displays the above
mentioned website fine.

2. Without the MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1, starting iceweasel from command line
(or a KDE link to iceweasel) brings up the browser and it crashes by
completely killing itself every time on that web page URL (and some
others), but more importantly the following error message comes after
the crash using the command line:

> don@kali:~$ iceweasel
> /usr/lib/iceweasel/firefox-bin: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libpangocairo-1.0.so.0: undefined symbol: pango_font_describe_with_absolute_size
> don@kali:~$
> 

Even though my immediate problem is "solved", can anyone tell me what
the "real" problem is and what I can do about it?  I just have a feeling
from the error message that something else is wrong.

Hints, pointers, appreciated.

Don