F11: Firefox v3.5.2-2 causes daily system lockouts.

[Daniel B. Thurman]

On 09/06/09 23:51, Terry Barnaby wrote:
> On 09/06/2009 10:11 PM, Tony Nelson wrote:
>> On 09-09-06 13:20:31, Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
>>>
>>> Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090803
>>> Fedora/3.5.2-2.fc11 Firefox/3.5.2
>>>
>>> After extensive testing with the divide&  conquer
>>> method, I have discovered that FireFox is causing
>>> all sorts of hissy-fits, the worst, being a complete
>>> system lockout, once per day, requiring a hard-reboot.
>>> This is cause during inactivity, and no, it is NOT the
>>> Gnome screen-saver.  As long as FF is NOT running,
>>> I used my system for 1 week, gnome screen-saver w/
>>> random - not a single lockout, no problems.
>>>
>>> The second worse part about FF is the rendering of
>>> the graphics are horrible - extra black lines vertically,
>>> horizontally, both on forums with tables, and some
>>> weird characters every now and then.
>>
>> I also see font rendering artifacts, mostly in Firefox, but in other
>> apps as well.  I blame the video driver, possibly the EXA acceleration,
>> though I haven't tried XAA yet (per `man radeon`).  I have an old ATI
>> Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE] rev 0.  It could be that your lockups
>> have the same cause.
>>
> I also had quite a lot of lock-ups with a system using an ATI R200 
> based graphics chip (and issues with a R300 ATI stsrem). I suspect 
> that the
> fact that you use Firefox a lot leads you to suspect Firefox although the
> problem affects many other apps ...
> In my case compiling and using the latest freedesktop 
> drm/mesa/xf86-video-ati
> graphics driver code from git sources fixed the issues.
> Unfortunately there have been no drm/mesa/xf86-video-ati updates for
> Fedora 11 yet ...
>
I don't use Firefox alot.  The point of all of this is
that if you leave firefox running, the very moment
that your system idles and goes into screenlock, it's
all over. You cannot get back in. You are forced to
reboot.

Likewise if you kill Firefox for the day or night,
the system will idle, go in screenlock, and you
can get back in after typing your password.

I have tested Thunderbird, and it does not cause
lockouts.  I have tested other browsers, same thing,
no lockouts.

The culprit is Firefox v3.5.2-2, or so I think.

I am going to downgrade FF to 3.4, if that does not work,
3.0 or just throw it away completely,  Firefox has changed
many things including the API (XULRunner) and has not
tested this release fully, IMO, at least with the 945G/GZ
graphics chip, anyway.

I have F10 (Multi-boot) and do not have these kind of problems.

I have a feeling F10/11 is deja-vue all over again... get it out and
let the end-users test & troubleshoot our problems! Oy veh!