Mozilla will (make me suffer and) crash during long Sessions

[perixx]

Good evening!

I've been using Puppy (2.12) for a few months now and regularly encounter Mozilla crashes by a 100% chance in certain situations.

First, when surfing over a longer time (about 1 hour and over), which I'm forced to do pretty often, and I have many Tabs opened - say, over 6 - Mozilla will crash, that's for sure. The time isn't so much of importance as the number of visited sites is; Mozilla always tends to get slower in response time rather fast, if a certain 'overflow' level is reached. Closing Tabs won't improve the situation or avert a browser crash when I open more sites or keep on surfing, then. Cleaning browser cache and history won't too. Even if the 'Free Memory' is cleared out due to this, Mozilla will stay unstable from this point on.

Only sticking to the already opened Tabs and not opening new links or sites will prevent it from crashing. I can only bookmark the important pages and restart Mozilla in order not to lose the current 'surfing state' and to continue the work. I also had this problem in earlier versions of Puppy.

What is the cause of this annoyance? And how can I avoid it?


The second issue is that Mozilla will crash after several (small) movie clips have been played in a row; even more pesky: emptying the browser cache seems to suspend a breakdown, but not with certainty.
Maybe it's linked with Gxine not clearing its media cache or a memory overflow? Clearing the media playback list of Gxine also seems to delay a crash - but I'm not perfectly sure about this.

Who knows a remedy?


greetings

perixx

[Flash]

The problems you report seem to have gone away with Puppy version 2.14. Give it a try, and let us know if it solved your problems.

[perixx]

Ok thanks for the info, I will.

Originally I intended to wait till puppy 2.16 release, since I'm gonna upgrade my hardware - do you have any idea how long this might be away?


perixx

[SimplyFlower]

As far as Mozilla crashes, there is an extension called 'Crash Recovery' that works very nicely. When you reopen the browser, it opens to where you were when the crash occured, even all the tabs you had open. It works in the background. Nothing to configure.

[Lobster]

Ok thanks for the info, I will.

Originally I intended to wait till puppy 2.16 release, since I'm gonna upgrade my hardware - do you have any idea how long this might be away?
perixx

Barry works on a 6 week release schedule. We even managed this for 2.15

I would suggest you get the hardware. 2.16 should be released in late May. These are aprox and barry is on holiday (with his laptop) so may come back with a surprise beta in the next two weeks. I am using 2.16 Alpha at the moment incidently . . .

New hardware eh? I think I would get a graphic card with a two monitor option or a large monitor. I think a 6 monitor option would be about right - until we get Puppy Holodeck version.

What are your hardware plans?

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy216

[perixx]

Thanks for the hint @ SimplyFlowers!

@Lobster:

First I wanted to have an onboard solution with a Geforce 6150 chipset and upgrade with an ATI X1950XTX later, when they're affordable.

But now I changed my mind: there are X1950Pro or X1950 GT cards (with 512MB DDR3) out now, for under 130€! Now that's what I call a bargain!
So I'll head for a Crossfire-PEG board, based on S939 socket system.

The 939 and not AM2? Yes, because the platform's very reasonable priced atm and 2GB of fast RAM won't cost you a packet. Additionally, I can have a rather energy efficient and fast machine with an X2 dual core on cheap. And I don't have 'virtualization techniques' or TPM's in my hardware - at least not in the CPU and on the mainboard (if I select carefully). Graphic card will definitely have 'HDCP' - too bad.

Maybe most important: a new monitor! I haven't got straight yet, about what to buy; 19" at 1280x1024 is most interesting, of course. TN+film will be fast, but has a small visual angle and colors will be bright but not accurate. That's why I'm in favour of an MVA or PVA panel with overdrive but without polarization filter. I want to have decent color specs for photo processing and rendering and also be able to play fast games/watch movies.

Of course a 20" panel with 1600x1200 would mayhaps be the best choice, but they'll cost at least 100-150€ more than 'non-standard' widescreens. With a 1600x1200 panel you'd have a well dimensioned panel for working with graphics.

Less of an advantage here is the necessary interpolation when playing retro games for instance, which will mostly cause terrible results, the lower you go - I don't want to miss this though, so I might be forced to buy a 19" monitor instead, one that has good interpolation capabilities. And suffice to say, that, for this reason 'cheap' non-standard widescreens are out of the question for me.

So far I could narrow down my choice to a 'handful' of TFT's:

Viewsonic VP 930 or 922
*Siemens Scenic View P19-2
Philips 190P7ES
Belinea 101920 or 101935
*Benq FP91GP or GX+(b)
LG L2000C or CN
*Hyundai L90D+
Samsung 971P

While the *-marked are the most interesting, because being the cheapest availible ones. Naturally an Eizo would be better, but my budget is limited

greetings


perixx

[skomes]

I haven't used puppy 2.14, but I can't imagine that the problem is fixed. I use puppy 2.12 and I've tried using seamonkey 1.1.1 instead of the 1.0.4 that comes with 2.12, and that hasn't fixed the issue. It still crashes.

[SimplyFlower]

Thanks for the hint @ SimplyFlowers!

perixx

You are quite welcome.

[Sage]

Seamonkey is a seamonster at consuming memory. What you describe has all the hallmarks of memory limitations. Linux is supposed not to suffer the shocking deficiencies of bad programming associated with 'doze apps that do not return memory to the pool, but this may not be true in all cases? Many Puppy users (most), including yours truly, have expressed a dislike of Seamonkey. There are issues of openness, embedded email client, etc, but there can be little doubt that Seamonkey drags down Puppy very considerably. Many of us like Opera, but maybe the smarte kids could port Konq. as a reasonable compromise? Probably Nathan & MU would have a view. Otherwise, MeanPup still has great potential if only John can find time to pursue it.

[skomes]

Blah blah blah, there is a "best browser for puppy" thread in here somewhere, if you want to discuss the topic than that is probably the best place.
It isn't just memory limitations, even after just starting up seamonkey will crash consistently sometimes.

[perixx]

@ skomes:

I cannot confirm of Seamonkey crashing right away from the start. But I suppose I can confirm the memory issue:

After I installed Prefbar of late, and after I was annyoed often enough, I searched in the Prefbar options a little bit.
Bingo - 'ClearMemCache'.
Put it on the Seamonkey bar and used it regularly since (actually I have to push the 3 buttons ClearMemCache, ClearCache and ClearHistory from time to time manually) - no more crashes, even after about 6 hours of high intensity surfing


perixx