Re: I think Firefox is crashing my system
On Fri, 15 Aug 2025 at 23:09, Van Snyder <van.snyder@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I have Debian 12 on one computer and Debian 12 and 13 on another. The
> first one is an old backup I rarely use. The new one was crashing in both
> Debian 12 and 13 so I sent the MB back to MSI. I started using the backup
> computer and it's crashing too, so MSI will probably send the MB back and
> ask "Why did you send this to us? There's nothing wrong with it."
> I usually run with an XTerm window, Evolution, Firefox, and occasional
> NEdit or Okular windows. The entire system (not just one app) was
> crashing, usually when I was reading mail and then reading stuff linked
> in mail messages using Firefox 128.13.0esr. I think Evolution wasn't to
> blame because I started having it not running, opening it only
> occasionally, and I got a crash while Firefox was running. By "crash"
> I mean that the mouse cursor stops working, the graphs in GKrellM stop
> moving, Alt-Ctrl-F12 doesn't switch, Alt-Ctrl-Del doesn't do anything,
> tapping the power button doesn't offer me a "what do you want to do"
> overlay, ….
Hello, on Debian 12 I have seen the same lockup symptoms that you describe
that seem to be related to Firefox 128.13.0esr, and I have found it seems
to not occur if I disable the "Use hardware acceleration when available"
setting in Firefox.
In my case, I suspect that this might be because my older graphics card
(AMD "OLAND") is slightly unsupported by the available driver, at least
that is how I understand this message in the kernel log:
kfd kfd: amdgpu: OLAND not supported in kfd
In some situations I see possible indications of this, for example when
mousing over the timeline on a youtube video, Firefox renders the video
thumbnail preview as just a pattern of lines, which is suggestive of a
direct memory access problem. Which of course is not a good thing.
When the lockup occurs, I guess that is because the graphics hardware is
scrambled and needs reset. It is possible to ssh into the machine when it
is locked up, and everything except X-Window graphics seems to be running
ok. And the only way I have found to reset the graphics hardware is
a hardware reboot. But I'm pretty clueless about display graphics, if
anyone knows a better way or has other advice.
But currently all the essential things I need do work, so I will contine
with this situation until that is no longer true.
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