Catalina - *all* web-browsers fail to open new pages after a few hours use.

[Maddcow]

I'm so glad that I found this thread! I've been having this problem since early March with my 2019 16" MBP and it's been driving me nuts. I've been trying everything I can think of but because the issue affects ALL browsers but only when opening new tabs (i.e. tabs already open will work fine), it's been next to impossible for me to work out what's going on. I was sure it was my ISP this whole time but only realised the last couple of days that it can't be. What the heck is going on?

EDIT: I'm not using AVG or any other anti-virus software.

 

[americantechieinspain]

For now, I know that the problem is that the DNS responder stops working. Every time it happens I have open TCP connections that don't disconnect and I can connect via IP address.

@Maddcow, this is the reason your already opened tabs keep working. The browser has already resolved the dns name to IP address. However, if you open a new tab that needs to resolve a new hostname, it hangs.


I'm becoming convinced that the issue, at leat in my case, is trigged when I connect my MacBook Pro to an external display via Airplay.

I can't reproduce the problem every time I connect via airplay, but the last two or three times I've had the problem it was triggered when I connect via airplay to a Samsung TV.

 

[Maddcow]

@americantechieinspain, do you have any thoughts as to why this issue suddenly started out of the blue?

 

[ocanalix]

Been having this issue for months.

 

[Maddcow]

Ok, I've had some good results (so far) by deleting the WiFi interface in Network settings, and then re-adding it. I've now had several hours of trouble-free browsing in both Chrome and Safari, which I haven't been able to do in several months. Fingers crossed that this holds!

 

[David Reck]

I've been suffering from this problem for the past 60 days too and it seems that I managed to solve it by creating a new location profile in Network -> Locations -> Automatic, unlock the lock, click edit locations and create a new one.

 

[Maddcow]

@David Reck, I did this, too, but the issue came back. Hope the fix works for you! I've just deleted all of the files in my /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration folder (except for com.apple.Boot.plist, which can't be deleted) and hope this works.

 

[johngwheeler]

For now, I know that the problem is that the DNS responder stops working. Every time it happens I have open TCP connections that don't disconnect and I can connect via IP address.

@Maddcow, this is the reason your already opened tabs keep working. The browser has already resolved the dns name to IP address. However, if you open a new tab that needs to resolve a new hostname, it hangs.


I'm becoming convinced that the issue, at leat in my case, is trigged when I connect my MacBook Pro to an external display via Airplay.

I can't reproduce the problem every time I connect via airplay, but the last two or three times I've had the problem it was triggered when I connect via airplay to a Samsung TV.

(I'm the OP) In my case, I don't think it was related to failure to resolve DNS because command line tools like "nslookup" still work and I also couldn't access web-sites using their IP address rather than DNS name.

My current hypothesis is that it's related to a problem creating new file descriptors, which are used by many processes, such as browsers when opening new tabs and creating new TCP/IP connections. Note that it's not a problem with the file system or disk per se - I can still create and save files to the internal disk and DiskUtility or fsck doesn't show any disk or file system errors. Another clue: "lsof" (list open files) hangs and is unable to read the list of file descriptors. Something seems to be blocking it.

If only I knew what!
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I've been suffering from this problem for the past 60 days too and it seems that I managed to solve it by creating a new location profile in Network -> Locations -> Automatic, unlock the lock, click edit locations and create a new one.

That's worth a go; thanks!
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@David Reck, I did this, too, but the issue came back. Hope the fix works for you! I've just deleted all of the files in my /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration folder (except for com.apple.Boot.plist, which can't be deleted) and hope this works.

Interesting! What led you to try this?

 

[Maddcow]

Interesting! What led you to try this?

I found a couple of sources saying that deleting these files resets the network preferences. So far, it seems to be working. However, I’ll see what happens in the next 24 hours.

 

[johngwheeler]

OP here...unfortunately, I have to report that even after doing a clean install of Catalina and most of my apps (after erasing the entire internal SSD), that the problem re-occurred after about 3 weeks. I really thought I had fixed it.

My suspicion is that some video conferencing software (GoToMeeting) may be responsible, but this is far from conclusive, because I was using it for almost two weeks before the problem came back.

I don't think I have a DNS or network issue, and as mentioned above, my current hypothesis is that it's related to a problem creating new file descriptors, which are used by many processes, such as browsers when creating new TCP/IP connections. I think this is more likely to be an OS-level issues rather than a hardware problem (DiskUtility and system diagnostics report no problems)
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I found a couple of sources saying that deleting these files resets the network preferences. So far, it seems to be working. However, I’ll see what happens in the next 24 hours.

Thanks; let us know how you get on!

 

[Maddcow]

So, it's been about 24 hours now and I haven't had any browser issues in that time. In addition to deleting the network config files mentioned a few posts previously, I also added a new location and deleted the old "Automatic" location. I have no idea if these two steps together - or separately - have made the difference but something seems to be making a difference (thus far). I'll continue to report on how things go.

EDIT: The files I deleted in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration are auto-generated but I played it safe and backed them up before deleting.

 

[Maddcow]

It's back

 

[johngwheeler]

It's back

Bummer...this has been my experience as well. I would go 12-48 hours without an issue and then without any obvious cause (new applications, excessive load etc.), things would stop working.

I generally noticed this first in the web browsers (Safari, Chrome & Firefox were all affected) not being able to open new tabs. Others apps seemed to continue working,but sometimes only partially, .e.g. I could receive new mail (in the Mail app) but not view the message bodies!

OS-level network utilities form the terminal continued to work, so "ping", "netstat", "nslookup" (DNS lookup), "netcat" (network concatenate) and "curl" or "wget" (HTTP clients) would all work. So I could do my web-browsing if I was happy with reading un-rendered HTML .

Interestingly "lsof" (list open files), which shows how files are used by system processes, hangs, which to me indicated a problem with how the OS handles files. These are not just your data files - Unix systems use files for all sorts of things, including I/O and network connections. My assumption is that a new browser tab will initiate a TCP/IP connection, which creates a file descriptor for a "virtual" file it uses to communicate (these are almost certainly in memory, not created on the actual disk). So if something stops being able to write or read to these file descriptors, then lots of things will fail.

I found that after the browser, all sorts of apps would slowly stop working - which makes sense because they would be work until they had to use some os-level file access, which pretty much every application will. At that point it's just a case of doing a hard reboot.

 

[Maddcow]

Interestingly, I haven't had any issues since I last posted a few days ago.

 

[Maddcow]

I've had a great run without issues until today, and I've got serious issues again. I've just deleted the files as per post 32 and the problem stopped...at least for now. Will post back when it starts again.

 

[Maddcow]

24 hours later and after deleting those network preference files, everything has been working perfectly so far. There was an instant improvement after deleting those files and rebooting, whereas I'd been struggling for a few hours beforehand with both Chrome and Safari taking forever to load anything.

 

[manny88]

I have a problem where I leave my 12" 2017 Macbook on for several day, going in and out of sleep. And then sometimes the web browser stops working completely. This just happened right now.

After I restarted my Macbook, booting the icons and everything took so long to load. I also suffer from an Apple ID login bug, which puts a 1 notification on my system preferences and asks me to sign in again. After that long bootload, I finally signed into my Apple ID again, and then rebooted my Macbook, and this time everything loaded at the normal fast speed.

So my macbook seems to suffer from:

1. Randomly not being able to conntect to the internet via Safari or Chrome
2. Apple ID login loop bug
3. Sometimes when I boot it's stupidly long, as if my hard disk needed first aid to fix things, but a second boot fixes things (possibly due to signing in Apple ID again).

 

[johngwheeler]

Oh crap - it's back! I had my MBP16 with Catalina running nicely for almost 3 weeks, and then had to reboot after a software installation yesterday. I left it sleeping overnight, and this morning during my Google Meet video call, I noticed that I couldn't run a Google search in Safari....

(The software installation was for a DisplayLink driver BTW - seems unlikely that it would affect the system networking / file system)

These problems are most noticeable after using video conferencing apps, but this may be entirely co-incidental. Like many of us now, I'm using far more video conferencing these days, with a variety of systems (Google Meet, MS Teams, Slack, Zoom, Amazon Chime, Facetime.....

I'd really love to know what the underlying cause is!

 

[dependsupon]

I've had this problem recently as well--rebooting fixes it for a while, then it slows down again, etc. I think I've fixed it now by uninstalling Flash--Adobe's website says Flash will reach its end of life by December, and evidently it's causing problems for users with newer OS's.

 

[dei79]

Hi, i have this issue now after updating from 10.15.5 to 10.15.6 but no flash is installed and I tried all from this thread. Any further ideas how to move forward?

 

[chaindev]

Hi friends, this problems is making me crazy.. all my web browsers are not working after around 12-48 hours. I know a lot about networks, and this problems is not related to it. I can ping everywhere, with or without hostname. Only the browsers is not working, even if you put there the exact ip address. Everything else have internet (email, slack, twitter-app and more). It is not possible to browse to your own internal ip's, like your router. The system itself is unresponsive. Some apps won't shutdown and hard shutdown (by holding the button) is the only solution to reboot.

I have also littlesnitch running. The apps shows that my input of an URLis reaching the server, only for my own eyes it keeps given me a loading (blank) screen ?.

I followed the trail of 'lsof'. For me also it cant load lsof in the terminal. As if there are to much files to open. I think there is something with 'file discriptor' as mention before in this thread. So I found this:

• https://synthomat.de/blog/2020/01/increasing-the-file-descriptor-limit-on-macos/
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions...-files-with-mariadb-10-4-13-on-macos-catalina

They suggest in Catalina, Apple had set the limit of open file descriptor to a very low level.

To check: type in your terminal:

• launchctl limit maxfiles

Gives:
maxfiles 256 Unlimited

With this command you can increase this value (reboot, reset the value back):

• sudo launchctl limit maxfiles <soft limit> <hard limit>

I have set it to 65000 and 65000. I hope my problem will be solved.

You can also increase it permanently, but it might not necessary bc you can automate the command here above with every reboot. It makes sense that this might be the problem. Because I also keep the system in a sleep/hibernate mode for long periods and it then bounce to that low value.

Anyhow I will keep you people in line if this is the solution to the problem.

 

[Maddcow]

Hmm, interesting. I’ve found that the problem keeps coming and going. I mightn’t have issues for a week or two and then suddenly I have 2 days straight of frustration.

I’ll try your suggestion and see how it goes. How would you make this a permanent solution?

 

[chaindev]

@Maddcow yeah I will keep this post up to date. So far it ok!
I think this one:

• https://synthomat.de/blog/2020/01/increasing-the-file-descriptor-limit-on-macos/

You can make it permanent solution. But I think you need to disable some restriction (system integrity) on mac. First I gonna try this.. and also hoping that the next big update Big Sur could fix it also.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Hi friends, this problems is making me crazy.. all my web browsers are not working after around 12-48 hours. I know a lot about networks, and this problems is not related to it. I can ping everywhere, with or without hostname. Only the browsers is not working, even if you put there the exact ip address. Everything else have internet (email, slack, twitter-app and more). It is not possible to browse to your own internal ip's, like your router. The system itself is unresponsive. Some apps won't shutdown and hard shutdown (by holding the button) is the only solution to reboot.

I have also littlesnitch running. The apps shows that my input of an URLis reaching the server, only for my own eyes it keeps given me a loading (blank) screen ?.

I followed the trail of 'lsof'. For me also it cant load lsof in the terminal. As if there are to much files to open. I think there is something with 'file discriptor' as mention before in this thread. So I found this:

• https://synthomat.de/blog/2020/01/increasing-the-file-descriptor-limit-on-macos/
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions...-files-with-mariadb-10-4-13-on-macos-catalina

They suggest in Catalina, Apple had set the limit of open file descriptor to a very low level.

To check: type in your terminal:

• launchctl limit maxfiles

Gives:
maxfiles 256 Unlimited

With this command you can increase this value (reboot, reset the value back):

• sudo launchctl limit maxfiles <soft limit> <hard limit>

I have set it to 65000 and 65000. I hope my problem will be solved.

You can also increase it permanently, but it might not necessary bc you can automate the command here above with every reboot. It makes sense that this might be the problem. Because I also keep the system in a sleep/hibernate mode for long periods and it then bounce to that low value.

Anyhow I will keep you people in line if this is the solution to the problem.

I'm the OP, and I took the same route that you did.

For several weeks I monitored file handle usage with: "lsof -n | wc -l" to get the number of open files bypassing DNS lookups.

You can get more detailed usage of which processes are using most file handles with:

lsof -n | awk '{print $1}' | uniq -c | sort -rn | head

I found that "lsof" itself would fail (hang) when the browser problem surfaced, so running the "lsof -n | wc -l" during the day would give me an idea if file descriptor usage was increasing and at the approximate number in use before it failed. I typically get about 20,000-28,000 as a result.

I initially thought that setting the maxfiles with "sudo launchctl limit maxfiles 64000 524288" had fixed it, but the problem hasn't re-occurred even after rebooting a couple of time (and losing the setting), so I'm really not sure whether this actually was the solution.

It may well have been fixed by some Catalina upgrade. In any case, fingers crossed, the problem has gone away.

Are you on the latest version of Catalina?

 

[dei79]

After weeks and months without the issue, I had it during the last week. I realized that I disabled Time Machine during exactly the time the issue was gone. Eventually, Time Machine to a Synology NAS has something to do with it?