web browser problems

[bruce_m]

I'm running Kubuntu 11.10, KDE 4.7.2. I also have the latest Adobe Flash installed. I'm having some problems with all my web browsers. At first I thought it was just Firefox, but each one is acting up.

Firefox (7.0.1)

• sometimes when I switch to it only the titlebar shows, window is transparent
• youtube video appears, but the play button doesn't start the video
• generally becoming unresponsive

Rekonq (0.8 )

• crashes sometimes when changing tabs
• scrolling sometimes unresponsive

Chrome (15)

• sound, but video not playing
• video screen is showing but rest of page transparent (from previous tab
• taking minutes to change tabs

Generally, they all become unresponsive. I open one until it gives me hassles, then open another which works for awhile, then onto the third one.

Any suggestions?

[doctordruidphd]

Re: web browser problems

Not sure what the problem is, but a few things to try:

1. Is this happening only with web browsers, or other programs as well, like libreoffice and gimp?

2. It does sound a bit like a video problem. As an experiment, try disabling screen effects. Unless you have changed it in the menus, it would be ALT-SHIFT-F12 .

3. Try running top from a konsole window, and start one of your borwsers while it is running. Top will tell you if something is grabbing your cpu.

4. Run sudo iftop (you may need to install the iftop program). This will tell you what, if anything, is hogging your network connection.

[bubblecruntz]

Re: web browser problems

While I don't suffer from all the issues of the OP I have had the scroll problem with rekonq. It actually doesn't load the scroll bars on the side at all. and the mouse wheel won't scroll it either. However I haven no issues with FF or Chromium other then a little flash issues with some animation. The only reason I mention this is, the scroll might not be linked to the same issues as the transparent firefox issue.

[Penguinclaw]

Re: web browser problems

I seem to recall from somewhere there being an issue with the Linux version of flash and Proprietary Nvidia driver. You could try reverting to the Nouveau driver using jockey, reboot and go back into your browser. If this works then I guess it's an Adobe issue.....

[bruce_m]

Re: web browser problems

Thanks for your replies!

I do have Nouveau installed, so no proprietary drivers. Interesting, I found Adobe in a lost and found section in my System Settings.

Doctordruidphd:
1. Gimp and Libreoffice are operating as normal. The only other thing I've noticed is that KMail is sometimes slow in drag & drop.
2. Screen effects are off.
4. Network connection is fine.
3. When a browser is struggling (slow) Xorg is up around 63% and plugin-containe 14%, Firefox 28%. When the video is playing sound, but no image: Xorg 63%, plugin 45%, firefox 9. Firefox acts funny sometimes even when I'm using other browsers, like when battling with a scroll button in rekonq: firefox 55%, Xorg23, plugin-containe 47. But I've also seen rekonq up at 70%, but on its own its 5%. Chrome is around 11%.

Rekonq has always had a scrolling problem, but it is much better with the latest release. When the video plays with just sound, it comes right after a few minutes. Ah, sometimes when typing this the letters don't appear for a little bit then all come on at once. Not sure if it is relevant. Kworker sometimes goes up to 20%.

Thanks.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: web browser problems

Only other suggestion I have is, following on Penguinclaw's idea, try disabling the flash plugin temporarily.

locate libflashplayer.so

There will probably be a bunch of symbolic links. When you find the real libflashplayer.so, move it to libflashplayer.soNOT . That will keep it from loading. then see how your browsers behave (you will not be able to view flash, of course). But if the browsers run peroperly, then you've got it narrowed down. If they don't, then it;s some kind of video rendering problem.

[bruce_m]

Re: web browser problems

Funny, I can't seem to find libflashplayer.so. Good news is that after I updated to KDE 4.7.3 browsers are working supersmooth and fast, so I think it has been sorted. BAD news: kdeinit4 crashes on startup everytime. Looking for a fix... bug 284862.

Thanks for your suggestions.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: web browser problems

Sometimes, but not always, the kdeinit4 problem is the result of some program that gets restarted every time kde starts up. I often see it on my system after a kde upgrade. One thing you might try:

SystemSettings > Startup and Shutdown > Session Management

and check "Start with an empty system". Note that this will prevent things like kopete and kontact from starting on their own, so after the experiment, you may want to set this back where it was. Exit system settings, open a konsole, and

ps -e | grep kdeinit4

This will return one or more lines starting with a process number. For each line,

sudo kill -9 #### where #### is the number that begins each line from the ps command.

Kde might become very unstable after doing this. Then reboot. You should only have to do this once, if it is going to work. As I said, sometimes this works, sometimes not, but easy enough to try.

[bruce_m]

Re: web browser problems

Thanks for the suggestion.

ps -e | grep kdeinit4 returns #### ? 00:00:00 kdeinit4,
when I kill it, I get a message from 'xmessage': could not start ksmserver, check your installation

any ideas would be appreciated.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: web browser problems

just reboot at that point.


Edit: you may need to wither CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to restart kde, or CTRL-ALT-F1 to get to a test console, from which you can reboot.

[bruce_m]

Re: web browser problems

That didn't work, but I noticed the developer tab on the crash handler and had a look at the detail. One of the first lines had the network manager in it. I remember I changed it to Wicd when I was trying to sort out the browser problem, so I changed it back to Networkmanager 0.9 and my desktop came back. But now the web browser sluggishness is back. It gradually becomes more sluggish until it crashes.

I find it interesting that when kdeinit4 crashed everything seemed to be much faster...

[doctordruidphd]

Re: web browser problems

wicd vs. network-manager issues are pretty much out of my area, others here know much more about that. You might do a search on the forum here for threads on that, as I know it has been discussed extensively. But that does sound like a reasonable cause of the problems.

[bruce_m]

Re: web browser problems

Thanks for all your help. I'm going to try KDE support to see if anyone has any ideas. The thread I'm going on now is that when kdeinit4 crashed everything went fantastically fast. I no longer think it is a browser problem, it more likely something to do with KDE.

[The Liquidator]

Re: web browser problems

WICD and network manager never play nicely together. If you have gone to WICD you should not have any program with network-manager in it's title.

When you install WICD the system does not always completely remove network-manager.

Open muon and type network-manager in the search bar and select By status/installed. There will be a number of packages shown but I'm betting that a couple wil be tied to network-manager. Remove them then reboot.