firefox starts a new client and blocks its network connections
Hi, I have been looking for some info on this in the forums but I cannot find it. I am using Ubuntu 11.04. After some recent upgrades, Firefox has started to fail. It starts alright and works for a little while, then its network connections get blocked (not the other connections, such as ping or ssh): the existing pages can no longer be refreshed, and no new pages can be open. When I look at the running processes with 'ps ax', I see that a new instance of firefox is running (although there is no new window). After killing this latter process, the original firefox client goes back to work for a while, until it freezes again. It could be related to the libflashplayer plugin, since I always see it running also, but I am not sure. This all started happening after an upgrade to Firefox 11, but I downgraded to 4.0 and it still happens.
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You shouldn't use such an old Firefox 4 version.
Did you try to disable all extensions and plugins?
Hi, thanks for the quick answer, but unfortunately it does not help. I have disabled all plugins and extensions but the problem is still there. After a short while a new firefox process appears and the connections are blocked. Here is a sample of the output given by 'ps ax': .............
3276 ? S 0:00 [kworker/0:2] 3284 ? S 0:00 [kworker/1:1] 3577 ? S 0:00 [kworker/0:1] 3592 ? S 0:00 [kworker/1:0] 3680 ? Sl 0:20 /usr/lib/firefox-4.0/firefox-bin 3820 ? S 0:00 /usr/lib/firefox-4.0/firefox-bin 3838 pts/0 R+ 0:00 ps ax
Simply killing the last process (3820) solves the problem for one minute or two, then another process is launched and everything starts again.
By the way, my version is not so old. It's the 4.0 version for Ubuntu canonical, I guess the numbering follows a different sequence. In fact, it looks quite similar to the 11.0 version downloaded directly from mozilla.
Regards,
Juan
Actually Firefox 4.0 is rather old as it was released by Mozilla last year in March 2011. It is rather behind on security fixes.
OK, so it's old. But the main point is that the newest Firefox 11 version does the same thing. So I guess it must be some parameter in the configuration files that is shared by all these versions of Firefox that launches this second process and blocks the connections. Somehow the configuration must have been changed during the update to Firefox 11 causing the problem, and downgrading just did not help.
That version is installed in /usr/lib/, so I assume that you installed it via the repositories of your Linux distribution.
You can try to install a regular Firefox version to see if that works better.
You can find the latest Firefox release in all languages and for all Operating Systems here:
- Firefox 12.0.x: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all.html
OK, I did it. I have already upgraded to Firefox 12.0, and the problem continues. After all, it started happening with Firefox 11, that's why I downgraded it in the first place.
So, my question is still the same: why/how does the second Firefox process get launched? It must be something in the configuration, since it kept happening even with all extensions and complements switched off, but I cannot figure out what. In any case, everything works fine again after I manually kill that second process, but only for a few minutes until the next one appears.
Regards,
You can try to create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.
See "Basic Troubleshooting: Make a new profile":
There may be extensions and plugins installed by default in a new profile, so check that in "Tools > Add-ons > Extensions & Plugins" in case there are still problems.
If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from the old profile to that new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.
See: