Ubuntu – How to stop Firefox from freezing regularly

firefoxfreezeUbuntu

(Firefox 7.0.1 on Ubuntu 11.10 using Gnome Classic)

I had hoped my Firefox freezing issue would have been solved with the sqlite VACUUM method offered in this answer. It has helped, in that Firefox seems to freeze slightly less often.

Unfortunately, while slightly less, Firefox keeps freezing. It seems to happen if I leave it for a while without doing any tasks, but I am not 100% certain about that. In any case, at least once a day I have to force it to close:

enter image description here

I've run Firefox with the -g option to see if I get any debugging output, but it doesn't seem to report anything unusual. It looks like this around when I have to force a close:

[Thread 0xa97ffb70 (LWP 4301) exited]
[Thread 0xaddfeb70 (LWP 4287) exited]
[Thread 0xb01feb70 (LWP 4275) exited]
[Thread 0xb09ffb70 (LWP 4274) exited]
[Thread 0xb140ab70 (LWP 4272) exited]
[Thread 0xb24ffb70 (LWP 4270) exited]
[Thread 0xb2e9db70 (LWP 4266) exited]
[Thread 0xb369eb70 (LWP 4265) exited]
[Thread 0xb42ffb70 (LWP 4264) exited]
[Thread 0xac2fdb70 (LWP 4309) exited]

Program terminated with signal SIGKILL, Killed.
The program no longer exists.

I have tried removing all plugins, to no avail.

How can I get Firefox to stop freezing.

Best Answer

I would suggest using the Profile Manager to create a new profile alongside your existing one. The Profile Manager will let you choose which profile to use at startup.

In this new profile, disable all plugins. Use this new profile for a bit and see if the freezes keep happening. If they do, the problem is external to your profile; and has to do either with your Firefox installation or something else on your computer.

However, if the freezes don't happen in the new profile, you know it has something to do with the old one. You can start introducing plugins and extensions one at a time into the new profile to see if you can narrow down a culprit.

If the new profile is still running smoothly with all your plugins and extensions, try restoring data from your old profile, one piece at a time.

Through this process, you'll hopefully be able to deduce what's causing the problem, and if not, you'll have a new profile that doesn't cause the problem with most of your data in it.

Related Question