Re: Starting firefox & thunderbird

[Jan Danielsson <jan.m.danielsson%gmail.com@localhost>]

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Johan A. van Zanten wrote:
>>    A few days ago, I performed a few updates to my packages. Now,
>> Firefox and Thunderbird are behaving flaky at startup. I'd guess about
>> half of the time I try to start them, they simply don't show up. The
>> processes are running, but I get no visual window.
[---]
>  I've noticed that (from pkgsrc) Firefox 2.0 seems less stable than 1.5
> was.  I'm running NetBSD 3.1 on i386.  Firefox doesn't crash nearly as
> much as you are describing, but 2.0 certainly crashes a lot more than 1.5
> did.

   Actually, for me, 2.0 is extremely stable -- the only problem I'm
having is since 2.0.0.4, where I am having problem launching it. It
doesn't "crash" in a traditional way, though. It's like it starts, but
the window manager has run out of window handles or something. The
process is running. I can see it in the process list (though it doesn't
show up in WindowMaker as an icon).

>   Perhaps starting gimp or firefox with ktrace might reveal something?
> 
> ktrace firefox
> 
> # then after the crash:
> kdump
> 
> 
>  You may want to make sure you have a lot of free space on the CWD of the
> file system where you start it, the ktrace may record firefox doing quite
> a lot before the crash. :)

   Yikes! :-)

   Yes, well.. That's a ... big file. :-)

   I have been recommended to run ktrace before, in relation to another
problem. But I don't really understand the output of kdump. What does it
do? Does it dump all system calls, including parameters?


   While I'm on the topic.. I learned kernel debugging through a
tutorial written my IBM (this was on OS/2). Is there any kind of
intro/tutorial to ktrace/kdump somewhere which just quickly outlines
what everything is, and some small examples?

- --
Kind regards,
Jan Danielsson

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