Firefox and/or the forums

[Ole Juul]

I often have to wait 20 or 30 seconds for the Kubuntu forums to respond, but today I'm getting something more. It times out with the following message which I've never seen before.

XML Parsing Error: undefined entity
Location: jar:file:///usr/lib/firefox-3.6.13/chrome/toolkit.jar!/content/global/netError.xhtml
Line Number 60, Column 12: <title>&loadError.label;</title>
-----------^

Has anybody else gotten this? Is this a problem stemming from a recent FF update, or is it an artefact of Simple Machines?

Edit: This is with FF 3.6.13 version 1.0 for Canonical.

[toad]

Re: Firefox and/or the forums

Hm, I've never had that problem (am on vanilla 3.6.15). Can you reproduce this with other browsers or is it just FF?

[Ole Juul]

Re: Firefox and/or the forums

I'll try in Galleon where I just opened another window for that. Perhaps I can compare at the same time.

My browsing experience in general is a pretty miserable one. Sometimes sites will load sometimes they wont. I'm never sure what is a bad internet, a bad ISP, a bad browser, a bad connection, a bad domain name server, or a bad mood. It's hard to sort it all out and I spend quite a lot of time pinging and running traceroutes just to make sure it's not my fault.

However, this forum is consistent in having long waits. The longest waits are when I click "Show new replies to your posts" and also waiting for a preview. Usually it's just a few seconds, which normal happens once in a while on a database based site, but quite often it is a minute - which is not normal. Perhaps it is Firefox, but then I would think it would be consistent. I posted this thread because now I get that wierd error message, which I didn't get before.

[toad]

Re: Firefox and/or the forums

Hm, have you tried disabling IPv6? I remember that that always gave me unacceptable lags.

http://thedaneshproject.com/posts/di...-in-firefox-3/

[Ole Juul]

Re: Firefox and/or the forums

Thanks toad but I'm quite familiar with that one. ... Hey, waitaminnit! I just checked and it was set to false. I wonder how that happened. Does one have to re-set all these things every time there is an update?

Anyway, that's fixed and we'll see how that goes. I guess nobody else has gotten the XML parsing error message. It's just been numerous times earlier today, and never before that.

[toad]

Re: Firefox and/or the forums

The IPv4 vs IPv6 issue can be dealt with in a variety of ways. I just quickly googled it and pointed you to the first hit :P When I did it I remember editing some /etc/ file which would probably negate the need to do it separately in FF. How did you do it, do you remember?

My browsing experience, apart from my excruciatingly slow line (48 kb/s download max), is fine. See how it goes, compare strange behaviour with other browsers and report back is all I can suggest at the mo - but then I know next to nothing about networks and network traffic... Detonate comes to mind.

Anyway, fingers crossed

[Detonate]

Re: Firefox and/or the forums

I really don't have anything to add. I'm running FF 4 and FF 3 and Chromium and the forum works fine on all of them. I do have ipv6 disabled in FF.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Firefox and/or the forums

I really don't have anything to add.

First time? Just kidding !

Add to /etc/sysctl.conf:

#disable ipv6
net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1

EDIT: Or, this in /etc/default/grub

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="ipv6.disable=1"



After reboot to check your status

cat /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/disable_ipv6

0 = ipv6 enabled
1 = disabled

[Ole Juul]

Re: Firefox and/or the forums

Thanks oshunluvr. I put your suggestions in /etc/sysctl.conf, and of course set it in FF itself as mentioned above. We'll see how it goes. It's not bad today and there has been no untoward delays on this forum.

I think there are several problems with browsing on my end. One is that FF is extremely variable and not consistent from week to week or patch to patch. Part of this is that the Ubuntu version of FF is not compatible with the noscript or flashblock plugins. I expect that Cannonical is not playing Microsoft type games and pushing people to upgrade, but they only offer FF3.6.13 in the repository. I plan to try a version from FF themselves when I get a few minutes. That's probably a better idea anyway.

The other problem I have here is that some servers are variable in performance. Sometimes long periods go by when I cant get stuff like Paypal, Craigslist, or other big sites. I can only assume that there is some kind of filtering or faulty domain name server along the line. I don't trust, even the big guys, to do a professional job.

[Detonate]

Re: Firefox and/or the forums

Flashblock works in FF 4. One of the things I've had problems with in both FF3 and FF4 is, when I click on a link in a page, it sometimes does not want to open, but if I middle click to open it in a new tab it opens right away. So I've gotten in the habit of opening everything in a new tab.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Firefox and/or the forums

I'm using Minefield (FF 4.0 beta). Google wants us all to switch to chrome, but until they have as many features (Sync is pure genius) and I stop worrying about the Google Global Takeover I'll stick to FF...

[Ole Juul]

Re: Firefox and/or the forums

Hm, I've never had that problem (am on vanilla 3.6.15). Can you reproduce this with other browsers or is it just FF?

I just got some updates and FF went to the same as yours - 3.6.15. Do you have the flashblock or noscript plugins? Mine still says they are not available for my version of FF.

The reason I'm so interested in that is because I suspect that when FF goes slow (cursor only moves or responds after 2 or more seconds) I think it is because of some misbehaving page. The trouble is I can't find which one.

[toad]

Re: Firefox and/or the forums

I've got ghostery, https everywhere and noscript for security - all available!??