Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 19:38:20 -0700 From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> To: Kevin Oberman <rkoberman@gmail.com>, gecko@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Firefox chokes up for several seconds... frequently Message-ID: <34171.1401763100@server1.tristatelogic.com>
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Firefox has, for me 9and on FreeBSD) always exhibited some amount of quirky behavior... occasionally freezing for several second or more, for no apparently good reason, during which time, clicking on *anything* within any of the open firefox windows simply produces no response whatsoever. Since I last updated my ports a couple of weeks ago, the problem has gotten DRAMATICALLY worse. Now Firefox is choking up frequently, and for perhaps 10-20 second each time, on virutally every web site that I visit. This is slowly driving me insane. I suspect that this may perhaps have something to do with my attempt to update the flash plugin, and related things like the associated wrapper. Can anyone (please) help to to unsnarl this mess? To begin with, here are some things that seem to be present on my system at the present time, and I do believe there is something that just isn't right here: % cd /usr/local/lib % find . -name libflashplayer.so | xargs ls -l lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 60 Feb 19 2013 ./browser_plugins/libflashplayer.so -> /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so -r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 17422820 May 16 08:50 ./browser_plugins/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 49 May 16 08:50 ./browser_plugins/symlinks/linux-firefox/libflashplayer.so -> /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins//libflashplayer.so lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 49 May 16 08:50 ./browser_plugins/symlinks/linux-opera-devel/libflashplayer.so -> /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins//libflashplayer.so lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 49 May 16 08:50 ./browser_plugins/symlinks/linux-opera/libflashplayer.so -> /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins//libflashplayer.so lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 49 May 16 08:50 ./browser_plugins/symlinks/linux-seamonkey/libflashplayer.so -> /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins//libflashplayer.so To begin with, my system does not seem to have any such directory as /usr/local/lib/npapi/ even though this handbook page make clear reference to such a thing, as does one of the symlinks mentioned above: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/desktop-browsers.html So what is the story, please? Should I indeed have a directory called /usr/local/lib/npapi/ on my system? If so, how did I manage to install all of this stuff *without* such a directory having been created, you know, as part of the install process? Do the rest of you have such a directory on YOUR systems? If so, what does it contain, exactly? In section 7.2.1.2. (Firefox and Adobe® Flash® Plugin) of the above Handbook page, Step #3 says: # ln -s /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so \ /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins/ This clearly indicates to me that the file libflashplayer.so is really *supposed* to be located in the /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/ directory, and that the libflashplayer.so that is contained within the /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins/ directory should really only be a symlink to that. Is that correct? If so, I will make it so, but I am still utterly baffled by how my system came to be like it is, with this file actually having been installed in what appears to be the Wrong Place. If anybody can explain to me how that happened, I sure would appreciate it. Anyway, in the xterm window where I've started Firefrox I have noticed that during those times when it appears to be choked up, I am getting errors like these: (process:33557): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library. Using the fallback 'C' locale. *** NSPlugin Wrapper *** ERROR: failed to initialize plugin-side RPC client connection NOTE: child process received `Goodbye', closing down I Think that the one about the unsupported locale has always been generated, ad infinitum, by Firefox, and that this is just another bug that nobody actually wants to fix. But the error relating to NSPlugin Wrapper seems to be new, and I guess this is being caused by the fact that my libflashplayer.so is in the Wrong Place. Humm... Well, I created the following (previously non-existant) directories: /usr/local/lib/npapi/ /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/ and I moved my libflashplayer.so file to the latter directory. Then, I found that I needed to re-run this command from the handbook: nspluginwrapper -v -a -i in order to get *something* to show up in my ~/.mozilla/plugins/ directory. (Now that contains a file npwrapper.libflashplayer.so.) so after all of the above, I ran firefox. It *did* come up, but in the xterm window where it was started, I got these errors immediately: (process:34140): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion `sys_page_size == 0' failed LoadPlugin: failed to initialize shared library /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so [/usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so: unsupported file layout] My guess is that the "GLib-CRITICAL" error is, contrary, to its ominous sound, actually unimportant, however the LoadPlugin: error looks very very bad indeed. Apparently, I'm not the first person to have received that cryptic error message: https://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?&t=13294 So, what the bleep does it mean?? "unsupported file layout" ?? And perhaps more to the point, I ask again... Is there *anybody* who is taking rsponsibility for the care and feeding of the FreeBSD Firefox port these days? If nobody is going to take responsibility for it, then perhaps it should be removed from the ports tree.
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