Firefox not behaving

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Running Mint 20.3 on Dell desktop, today updated FF to 127.0.1.  A sporadic problem arose last fall when logging into a site used every day- on occasion the login failed, other times it took multiple attempts. After more-or-less behaving over the winter, that issue reappeared a couple of months ago.  The site techs tried valiantly to find a bug, but ultimately came up empty.  The same site opens as expected on Vivaldi, my backup browser.  Over the time span of this problem there have been many Mint kernel as well as FF updates, with no change in the login behavior on that site.

But a new wrinkle has emerged in the last month or so when opening FF.  Clicking the link in the tray does not open FF as it always has in the past- instead, FF briefly flashes, the desktop screen reappears, and the the tray icon gets labeled “Mozilla Firefox.”  A click to that label brings up a random page in a random tab.  From there, as far as I can tell, FF runs normally including that problem site login from earlier.

Tried the usual ploys- refreshing FF, clearing the startup cache, shutting down and restarting- no joy.  After carefully saving extensions, bookmarks, settings, etc. elsewhere, tried to uninstall FF via Synaptic, a straightforward operation, but FF was not uninstalled, and all aspects of the old install were untouched.

I had been prepared to reinstall with a package downloaded via Vivaldi, but couldn’t get the old version removed.  Officially out of ideas.

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It’s been a while since I looked at Synaptic package manager but IIRC there’s an undo feature that you could try if there was any part of FF that actually was uninstalled when you tried to have Synaptic uninstall FF. That would get you back to where you started from with 127.0.1, and although that’s admittedly not ideal, it would get you back to something FF would recognize for a future update that might fix your issue.

Alternatively – again IIRC – Synaptic has a reinstall feature that might get a clean install of FF on the chance that something got corrupted in the update to 127.0.1.

Or you could live with it and see if a future FF update fixes the problem.

It’s always good to have a backup browser (as you do). There’s a couple of sites I need to get to that just don’t work with FF. After wasting the better part of a day trying to get it to work, I gave up and moved on with my life and another browser for those sites.

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Slowpoke47

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Well, of course, the original FF install was part of the Mint OS install, both updated many times since then.  When I searched FF in Synaptic, there was a huge list, only 3 of which were shown as installed- the browser, the language pack, and a dependency called fonts-lyx.  Marked all 3 for “complete removal” and the 3 check boxes were then unchecked.  But FF was in fact intact and fully functional after that operation, version 127.0, which was what I had before doing anything today.  Meanwhile, 127.0.1 appeared in Update Mgr, so I installed that.

Can’t seem to relate this bug with a previous update, but if so would have been a while back.  Anyone else seeing FF open the way mine now does?

 

 

 

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While I’m on Mint 21.3, I’m not having any trouble with Firefox 127.0.1.

I’m no Linux guru, but given that behavior when launching from the panel icon, I would try some additional investigation/testing:

• While Firefox is not running, fire up a terminal window (Ctrl+Alt+T) and launch it from there. Watch to see if the behavior is the same. Command:
  firefox
• In a text editor, open up its desktop launcher file (found in /usr/share/applications by default), and check the Exec line. It should be:
  Exec=firefox %u
• Try creating a separate, fresh profile and setting it as the default. Then completely exit Firefox and launch it again with that new default. To manage profiles, go to the address bar and enter:
  about:profiles

If I find that the last step solves a problem, I return to the original profile, export the bookmarks, and make notes of the settings and extensions. If extensions have backup/restore or export/import features, I use those, too. Then I simply delete that profile and apply everything to a fresh one. If the trouble returns, then I know it is something I changed and I can narrow it down from there.

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Mothy, Slowpoke47

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Mozilla Connect reports the latest Firefox 127.0.1 is not rendering PDFs.  I have not installed 127.0.1 yet and just thought I’d pass this along.  My FF 127 is working just fine on Linux Mint and I do use FF to open PDF’s.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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@Charlie , do you have a link to that page on Mozilla Connect?

Since this is the LM forum, I’m presuming the rendering issue was in FF for Linux, but just wanted to make sure by reading the announcement for myself. I’ve not had any pdf rendering issues at all in FF 127.0.1 on Windows.

I’ll leave it at that since this is the Linux Mint forum and NOT a Windows forum. 

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Charlie- FWIW, In my system- Mint 20.3, FF 127.0.1- PDF’s open readily using FF.

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Charlie

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That’s good to know Slowpoke, thanks.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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For Bob99 and anyone else, here is the link which is right on Google search:

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/latest-firefox-127-0-1-not-rendering-pdfs/m-p/60608/highlight/true

 

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Bob99

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Thanks for the link!

I must admit to having a “senior moment” yesterday and not thinking to just try a query on Google!   

From what I read on the Mozilla Connect thread, it might be Linux related but it isn’t concretely stated yet because the OP hasn’t responded to the query from the thread’s leader about if he’s definitely having the issue on a FF installation of Linux or not. However, evidence presented by the thread’s leader sure points in that direction…that the issue is on a Linux installation.

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Firefox version 127.0.2 recently came out Tue. June 25:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/127.0.2/releasenotes/

should be offered to linux mint users soon

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Charlie

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As I’ve said before:  This is why I wait at least 5 days before I allow a Firefox update to install, unless it contains important security patches. Even then I usually wait at least 2 days.

My Firefox 127 is working just fine.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Regarding FF 127.0.2:

Updated FF to the above version on 4 Mint machines. Three of them give me a pop-up window Firefox Crashed warning about one to two minutes after quiting FF, with an option to send a report to Mozilla and also to quit FF or to restart FF. Other than that 127.0.2 seems to work fine.

The three machines are:
1) 2009 HP laptop with amd Athlon processor running Mint 21.1 Cinnamon
2) 2009 Gateway laptop with Intel Atom processor running Mint 21.1 Xfce
3) 2009 Acer laptop with Intel Celeron processor runningMint 20.3 Cinnamon

None are in daily use but used as test machines. Believe it or not they are all serviceable machines with Mint.

My daily driver is a 2016 Dell Inspiron laptop with 5th gen Intel core i3 running Mint 20.3 Cinnamon which took the 127.0.2 update flawlessly.

I haven’t investigated the the three problematic machines aother than to reboot and restart FF a couple times, all to no apparent effect. In any case the flaw seems inconsequential.

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Charlie, Slowpoke47

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FF on my desktop still needs help- no time to investigate yet.  Currently on 127.0.1

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I updated my 4 Mint machines – same 4 as the ones above in post #2684025 – to FF 128.0 last night. No issues on any of the computers. So whatever was causing the innocuous crash reports on 3 of the computers has apparently been fixed.

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Slowpoke47, Charlie

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OP here- finally a chance to chase this problem.  Attempted to use suggestions from Susan Bradley’s newsletter piece https://www.askwoody.com/2024/debug-your-browser/ and the companion forum thread https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/debug-your-browser/ and reached dead ends.  Unable to open the Fiddler download or decipher the Progress Telerik links.  To recap, the erratic FF behavior happens only on this machine.

So a basic question to forum members running Firefox on Linux- what happens when you click the FF tray icon?  Does it open a consistent full page?

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I always open FF from the tray icon and always get a “New Tab” page.

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Slowpoke47

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Dr. Bonzo-  When you shut down, or close FF, do you leave any tabs?  If yes, when you see the new tab, are your other tabs still there?  Going to hamburger> general> startup, have you checked the box for “open previous windows and tabs”?

I have always left that option checked- for years opening FF displayed the leftmost tab by default.  Now, opening FF via the tray icon shows a momentary flash of part of that page (I think), then reverts to the desktop screen, and the label on the FF icon is “Mozilla Firefox.”  Up until a month or two ago, the label would be that leftmost tab, the one that opened.  If I then click on the icon, a random page on a random tab opens- sometimes not even the “first” page of the tabbed site.   As yet unable to connect the start of this behavior with any added extension or suchlike.

Closing and reopening FF displays the previous full page, as always.  Troubleshoot mode does the same thing, so no help there.

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Answers to your first 3 questions, in order, are No, N/A, and No. So it seems that my way is working the way I want it to work, but your way is different than my way and is not working the way you want it to.

If I have some spare time I’ll check the “open previous windows and tabs” box and see how it works (might be a few days).

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Slowpoke47

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The following are how a test machine running Mint 20.3 Cinnamon and FF 128.0 perform.

Answers to your three questions above in order are yes, yes, and yes. In Settings I also have the box “Open links in tabs instead of new windows” checked.

Before quiting FF I had 4 tabs open; from left to right they were Wikipedia, Ask Woody, Amazon, and Google search page – home pages for all. No matter which tab I was looking at (in other words viewing at full screen size on the monitor), that tab is what I saw (full screen) when I started FF the next time. The other 3 tabs were all there as well – I saw literally just the small tabs which then open to full screen when I clicked on any one of them.

If I minimized FF and then hovered over the FF tray icon I saw a small (roughly a 1.5 by 2 inch rectangle on a 14 inch laptop screen) version of the tab I had been viewing immediately prior to minimizing FF. And, no matter what tab I was viewing, if I hovered over the FF tray icon I saw the small version of that tab.

So FF is behaving just as I expect it to given the Settings boxes I checked.

BTW I have NO extensions of any kind enabled; it’s a totally “stock” installation of FF.

Don’t know whether this helps at all, but at least you have data point of a Mint machine running FF that appears to be working as expected.

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Slowpoke47

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I always use the tray (Panel in Linux Mint) icon and have not had any problem.  I have not, however allowed the FF 128 update to install yet.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Slowpoke47

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Thanks, Charlie, I’m still on 127.0.1 to avoid introducing another ingredient to the stew.

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DrBonzo wrote:

So FF is behaving just as I expect it to given the Settings boxes I checked.

Your description mirrors the normal performance of FF on our machines, up until some weeks ago.  While FF on our laptop still performs as expected, on the desktop, FF now has some sort of glitch, the reason for this thread.

Previous efforts, including a restart in Troubleshoot Mode, have not corrected this glitch.  My next move will be a complete removal of FF via CLI, then a new install from the Mozilla site.  Need to be sure I have saved my many bookmarks, and my best choice is probably to save them on a stick and import them to the new FF install.

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DrBonzo

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FWIW, I would probably do what you’re proposing, unless you can show one of your extensions is causing problems. If I was really concerned about losing bookmarks I would save them to 1) the HDD/SSD on the computer in question, 2) a usb stick, and 3) copy the bookmarks from the usb stick to the HDD/SSD of another computer. Then I would start the uninstallation/installation of FF.

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Slowpoke47

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As part of the uninstall, also (judiciously) purge all links, etc. Be sure, however, to record their locations and how they were created.
After the new installation of FF, before you crank up ‘your’ Profile, do as SB9K recommends: create a new Profile. Test with that thoroughly.

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DrBonzo, Slowpoke47

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