(amd64) Strange browser problem

[Paul Goyette <paul%whooppee.com@localhost>]

(Previosuly reported on pkgsrc-users, but now I'm not so sure...)

I've recently gone through a major update, and discovered a rather nasty 
problem.

Previously, I was running a 5.99.52 kernel+userland from sources on May 
30, and all my 200+ packages were built from pkgsrc sources back in 
February.  Everything was working fine.

I am now running 5.99.55 kernel+userland from July 28, and all of my 
packages have been updated to mid-July.  With this combination, firefox5 
now fails to properly render many web pages.

All of the problem web-sites I've recorded use java-script.  The symptom 
is that some text is not displayed.  As an example, the URL

        http:http://websudoku.com/?level=4&set_id=1871518543

should display a Sudoku puzzle with the digits 7, 6, 9, and 2 entered in 
the top row, but on my machine the entire puzzle is blank.  Another 
example is the San Jose Mercury News' web-site

        http://www.mercurynews.com/

which on my system displays only the graphics but none of the story 
titles (it does, however, display the "bullets" that are associated with 
story titles).  And the final example is Yahoo's home page, on which I 
can see only the various graphics and icons, but no text.

I suspected at first that this might be a problem with firefox5, since 
my previous configuration had used firefox3.6.  So I deleted firefox5 
(and the current version of xulrunner) and installed 3.6 (with xulrunner 
192).  Still the problem persists.

I suspected that maybe there was a problem with something in my .mozilla 
folder.  So I created a brand new dummy user, with a totally empty home 
directory, and still the problem persists.

I even removed firefox completely, and installed seamonkey instead, and 
still the problem persists!

With some suggestions received from someone on pkgsrc-users, I noticed 
that his Xserver was running version 1.10.3 while mine was still at 
1.9.5, so I updated my system and userland again, to -current from 
yesterday.  And still the problem occurs.

I've run out of ideas of what could cause this type of problem.  Simple 
text pages, such as www.netbsd.org, work just fine.  And even some 
java-script pages (http://www.juniper.net for example, or Google search 
results) work fine.

Anyone got any clues on how I can debug and resolve this?


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