15.04: Firefox crashing all the time?

[Tommy Trussell]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 10:41 AM, Paul Smith <paul at mad-scientist.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 2015-06-09 at 16:09 +0100, Colin Law wrote:
> > On 9 June 2015 at 16:00, Paul Smith <paul at mad-scientist.net> wrote:
> > > Is anyone else seeing this on Ubuntu 15.04 (Ubuntu GNOME technically)
> > > with Firefox 38.0 (deb 38.0+build3-0ubuntu0.15.04.1)?
> > >
> > > I mean, it happens to me about once or twice a day: Firefox just
> > > disappears and I get the "should we report the crash" error dialog.  I
> > > haven't see this happen in years.  It doesn't happen on my system at
> > > work, that I've noticed, running the same Ubuntu.
> > >
> > > I have very few extensions: adblock plus, flashblock, lastpass.
> >
> > No problem here with standard Ubuntu 15.04, same version of firefox.
> > I use flashblock and adblock plus so it's not those.  You could try
> > disabling the others,
>
> The problem is the only other one I have is lastpass, and without that I
> can't log in to any of my accounts because all my online passwords are
> 16+ character randomized strings, that lastpass remembers for me.  I
> guess I could run chrome to get lastpass :)
>
> I don't think it's lastpass though, because it crashes on pages which
> have no login prompts, etc.
>
> > if it happens every day then you should soon
> > work out if it is that.  Is it only FF that plays up?
>
> Yes.  Well, the Spotify app also crashes my entire desktop (actually I
> think it's the X server--most likely something in one of the graphics
> drivers--that crashed: I get a black screen then X restarts and I get a
> login prompt).  But that's different :).
>


One "easy" way to check crashes like this is to create a test user account
on the machine, log out of your regular account and log in to the test
account and see what happens.

If it turns out Firefox (and Spotify and whatever) work fine on the test
account, then you can assume there's either a bad setting in the hidden
settings files or a bad plugin.

With Firefox, it's easy enough to get a "clean" profile, by opening a
terminal and running it this way:

$ firefox -P

Mozilla has some more useful information here:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles

HOWEVER... if I suspect my Firefox (or Thunderbird, or maybe even Spotify
app) has a bum setting, it's easy enough to quit the application, dig into
the hidden files in my home directory and move the settings directory
elsewhere, relaunch the app, and see what happens. If necessary I can
delete the new settings and move the original settings directory back to
where I got it.
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