Firefox crashes constantly on my poor hobbled system

Support and Help
,
1

Ubuntu Version:

24.04.2 LTS

Desktop Environment (if applicable):

Gnome

Problem Description:

After three months’ struggle upgrading system to 24.04.2 LTS from 22.04, about a week in to the new system, Firefox suddenly started crashing every few minutes. Until yesterday this was not a problem.

Relevant System Information:

Lenovo Thinkpad P16 Gen 2
nVidia RTX 3500 Ada Gen GPU

Screenshots or Error Messages:

Firefox Crash Report

What I find interesting in the crash report and why I’m posting it here rather than on Mozilla site is that while the crash report identifies the OS as 24.04.2 LTS (correct) under “App Notes” it says “Ubuntu Core 22FP”

Ubuntu Core 22 is described here as

Ubuntu Core 22 (UC22) is built on the foundations of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish).

This page goes on to say that the latest version of Ubuntu Core is Ubuntu Core 24.

I’m looking for answers to

  1. What the heck IS Ubuntu Core?
  2. Is the upgrade I painstakingly completed last week to 24.04 compromised by this mismatch between “core” and installed version?
  3. Could this be the cause of Firefox repeatedly crashing (and why did this problem suddenly occur)?
  4. Is there anything else in the crash report that anyone thinks is useful?

What I’ve Tried:

I haven’t tried anything yet, other than switching to Chrome temporarily.
I am considering reinstalling Firefox but wanted to run this by you all first.

2

I should add that I’m running Firefox now and it isn’t causing this problem but there is at least one page I can link to that seems to trigger the problem every time I go there. I can’t provide a link since it points to my account page with AT&T. There are probably others, but I’m not sure what they are now.

11

Ubuntu Core is an OS using the coreXX snaps as its root filesystem (i.e. core22 is the base for the Ubuntu Core 22 release)

Snap packages use these core snaps as their runtime environment for their sandbox. Firefox in the stable channel is running on top of core22 since a while, the version in the edge channel which is currently being tested has moved to core24 recently (and should eventually hit the stable channel)

Since core is used as an actual OS base it ships its own /etc/os-release file … A snapped app that reads this file will find that itself runs on top of “Ubuntu Core 22” (or whatever version the base for that application snap is), this is why snap packages report their OS that way.

To overcome your issue you could try to temporarily switch your Firefox snap to the edge channel with:

sudo snap refresh --channel=edge firefox

To switch back again just call the same command but replace “edge” with “stable”

12

Thanks for the explanation! It seems that this discrepancy is innocent.

Not sure I want to try any more bleeding-edge stuff here now :wink: :wink:.

I guess I’m looking for a “reinstall” option at this point.

Or just stick with Chrome now (until it shivs me).

13

You could try launching a brand new profile in Firefox. Might help in bypassing your current profile.

run

firefox -P

15

You may try to delete Cookies and Site Data of crashing website within firefox.

Open Settings > Privacy. In section Cookies and Site Data you should see a button Manage Data …. This opens a window where you can search your crashing site and delete cached data (session, login, …).

[Edit]
Sorry @dragonfly41 - I obviously hit the wrong ‘Reply’ button …

16

No issue. I’m just glad you didn’t hit the Flag button as I have experienced … twice. Part of the learning process.

17

This seems to have worked for now. I had other problems, but as of now don’t seem to have them. So I can start using Firefox again and see what happens. Chrome in back pocket.