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MP 1,1-5,1 Firefox causing Mojave to freeze intermittently other than mouse pointer. Any ideas?

N

nigel1210

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 24, 2009
53
2
I've got an issue with Firefox freezing Mojave intermittently. The machine freezes but you can still move the mouse pointer around, then after a while it springs back to life and you can carry on as before.

Really annoying as I use Firefox a lot for web design.

I've tried several different builds of Firefox 9 (Dev, nightly etc), disabled all add ons, done a clean install and the issue still occurs.

My machine is a 4,1 > 5,1, Dual CPU, RX580 running on 10.14.6.

Anyone else have the same issue or know of a solution?
 
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Yes, I have the same issue on Mohave. There is nothing in the system logs that point to a problem that I can see; indeed, the logs seem to freeze at the same time that Firefox freezes the system. It must be one of the recent FF updates that did it. I just stopped using Firefox for now; Safari working very well under Mohave but can't use it on my older macines so lose the syncing with them.
 
+1 I have the same problem too!

It doesn't happen all the time. For me, it sometimes happen when I launch Firefox, the thing hangs as described. After the hanging episode, it works fine as if nothing was ever wrong. Other times Firefox would launch and run normally.
 
Try installing an old version to check if it's indeed one of the updates? E.g. I'm running 66.0.5 on Mojave, no hangs there as far as I can see.

There's also a config setting or two to disable hardware acceleration inside the browser. Long time since I poked around in there but you have to go through about:config to reach those. Google will know more.
 
I have also seen this behavior many times and it’s extremely bothersome. The mouse pointer usually continues to work and any in-progress audio or video also continues normally, but I’ve also seen the entire system lock up (mouse pointer and all) for up to a minute before unfreezing.
 
Could also be the system swapping, perhaps caused by excessive resource usage by open browser tabs?

I'm not sure how you can check in macos these days if the OS is swapping around. I recall in the old days this was logged into kernel.log. Now with the new system I can't seem to find anything anymore in the logs.
 
+1

Have the same issue on Mojave. Always happens when trying to play embedded video.
I just use FF as a backup browser so no big deal for me, but it is strange.
 
th0masp said:
Could also be the system swapping, perhaps caused by excessive resource usage by open browser tabs?

I'm not sure how you can check in macos these days if the OS is swapping around. I recall in the old days this was logged into kernel.log. Now with the new system I can't seem to find anything anymore in the logs.
Click to expand...
No, it's not resources. I have plenty and I see no swapping in activity monitor. But even if it were swapping it would be to a very fast NVMe in my case.
 
I have this issue as well with my 2010 5.1 in Mojave when using Firefox...no luck yet in figuring it out.
 
msh said:
No, it's not resources. I have plenty and I see no swapping in activity monitor. But even if it were swapping it would be to a very fast NVMe in my case.
Click to expand...
When it happened to me I also never saw anything in activity monitor but it was the exact same behaviour. I only discovered it in the log file when it was swapping out. System had a Sata-SSD which should have had no trouble moving a bit of data around and yet it locked up.
 
I wonder if this has anything to do with the security gubbins added to Mojave. Just updated my Firefox with it's auto-updater, and got a real bad freeze. After Firefox recovered, I quit and restart it, and the second start worked perfectly.
 
Has anyone on this thread seen this problem recently? This freeze was a frustrating nuisance for months, but I have not seen a freeze now for several weeks. I'm wondering if something was fixed in Firefox 83 or perhaps in the most recent Mojave security update.

Anyone else?
 
After installing Security Update 2020-007 and Firefox 84 this morning, I am seeing this problem again with very similar behavior as before. It seems to occur more often while a Time Machine backup is running, and nearly always occurs when the "Preparing Backup" operation first starts. This was the same behavior I saw previously, which seemed to be fixed with Security update 2020-006 (or perhaps a Firefox release from around that time). I'll continue to test to see if it's still triggered periodically by video content on web pages.

I now wish I hadn't installed both updates at the same time since it complicates troubleshooting!

@nigel1210 @msh @mckyvlle @MacGarage @cpnotebook80 Sorry to ping you all, but I'm wondering if you also saw this problem disappear for a while (and if you see it reappear after installing 2020-007 and/or Firefox 84, assuming you've done so).
 
I’m back at El Capitan and FireFox locks my machine up accept the mouse and no keyboard clicks for force quit work only restart works and a pop up square of bad shutdown and send report appears.
 
taph2o said:
I’m back at El Capitan and FireFox locks my machine up accept the mouse and no keyboard clicks for force quit work only restart works and a pop up square of bad shutdown and send report appears.
Click to expand...
I never saw a permanent lockup, but I did sometimes see lockups lasting 1–2 minutes. The system always came back to life on its own with no restart.
 
Happens while using google meet in fire fox rather than Chrome because the other person in Chrome Meet can’t see me. Not a problem if your using a chrombook, the tool Portland Public Schools is using for pandemic and beyond, but the screen is to small and I set my wife up with one of my 4 out of date imacs that can only update to El Capitan because of the larger picture and desktop less eye and neck strain. Trouble is that a recommended solution for camera troubles from google Meet help is to access the privacy settings under OS 14 that has Camera sectionn that allows apps to access the built in Camera. That option isn’t there in OS 10.11.6.
So the original problem started with running Chrome Meet on a imac at Elcapitan and blossomed into a frozen imac trying to work around with Firefox runnning Meet. Everyone can see everyone but Firefox locks up the imac and nothing accept mouse curser works and only if hard wired not bluetooth.
thanks all did a reinstall and Firefox refresh and firefox safe-mode restart.
 
Soba said:
After installing Security Update 2020-007 and Firefox 84 this morning, I am seeing this problem again with very similar behavior as before. It seems to occur more often while a Time Machine backup is running, and nearly always occurs when the "Preparing Backup" operation first starts. This was the same behavior I saw previously, which seemed to be fixed with Security update 2020-006 (or perhaps a Firefox release from around that time). I'll continue to test to see if it's still triggered periodically by video content on web pages.

I now wish I hadn't installed both updates at the same time since it complicates troubleshooting!

@nigel1210 @msh @mckyvlle @MacGarage @cpnotebook80 Sorry to ping you all, but I'm wondering if you also saw this problem disappear for a while (and if you see it reappear after installing 2020-007 and/or Firefox 84, assuming you've done so).
Click to expand...
I started using Firefox dev again after a recent update and it didn't seem to crash anymore, but tbh I didn't do extensive testing and I've moved to Big Sur now and it seems to run fine on that.
 
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