Firefox freezes when opening NoScript options menu

[patstuart]

OS: Ubuntu 14.04 64
Firefox version: 31.0, 64-bit
NoScript version: 2.6.8.39

Every time I try to open NoScript options, the browser freezes entirely. It happens whether I access the options through right click->NoScript->options... or through the Firefox add-ons menu.

Any help would be appreciated; I'd like to keep my current NoScript preferences without a reinstallation.

[Thrawn]

Something sounds very wrong with your browser profile. At the very least, you'll need to export your NoScript options to a file, then try those options in a new profile - but you say you can't reach the options dialog to do that, so you'll need to go into your profile and back up the prefs.js file.

[barbaz]

I'll give this a try myself with Lubuntu 14.04 64 / SeaMonkey 2.28 later, but as a suggestion from personal experience, try an official Mozilla build of Firefox instead of the Ubuntu modified distribution build
https://www.mozilla.org/firefox

[barbaz]

I'll give this a try myself with Lubuntu 14.04 64 / SeaMonkey 2.28

WFM. If simply switching to the official build doesn't solve it, try Standard Diagnostic, and if necessary, copy only those files in your current profile that contain data you care about over to a new, clean profile.

BTW, what panel was NS Options trying to open to?

[Giorgio Maone]

I suspect an hypertrophic whitelist combined with some performance regression in XUL's listboxes.
Could you please email me your prefs.js file, as found inside your profile directory?

[patstuart]

Thanks everyone for the reply. I will try to install Firefox from the official builds shortly.

Your readings are correct; my Firefox profile has been in action since 2008, and has been ported across multiple machines and even once from Windows to Linux (back in 2009). I am not surprised it has bugs.

@Giorgio: thanks for your time; I think I will try the reinstall option and let you know if that doesn't work. But I will tell you already that my prefs.js file is 2004 entries long and 271KB in size. Is this normal? I see a bunch of options for old printers and service which I no longer use which I could remove if you think it might help.

[barbaz]

my Firefox profile has [...] been ported [...] from Windows to Linux

If you just copied the entire profile, rather than reconfiguring everything manually, that's likely contributing to your problem. Back when I was a Firefox user, copying my Firefox profile from my OS X machine to an Ubuntu distribution build of Firefox repeatedly resulted in lots of weird issues for me until I found the official Mozilla Fx builds for Linux.
(Well really, my Fx profile was originally created on an ancient Windows machine, then copied onto my Mac, so my browser profiles on Linux were kinda copied to different OS twice not once. But still, I'm amazed you got it working as well as you seem to have )

my prefs.js file is 2004 entries long and 271KB in size. Is this normal? I see a bunch of options for old printers and service which I no longer use which I could remove if you think it might help.

No I don't think it's normal to have a 271KB prefs.js. I'm a bit of a power user, and in my highly customized profile with over 30 extensions, my prefs.js (directly copied from Firefox to SeaMonkey) is 63KB, but that's only because I audit my config and remove useless prefs from time to time. Without that, I'd guess maybe, it would be ~80KB? Certainly under 100KB.
Anyway, getting rid of those old entries is worth doing IMO. See if you can get your prefs.js < 100KB.

[patstuart]

OK that did it. Problem was my whitelist was thousands of entries long.

Clearing out my prefs.js is already speeding up Firefox for me.

Thanks.

[LunaEros]

I am having this exact same problem with my installation.
I'm on Windows 7 Ultimate
with Firefox 27.0.1
running NoScript 2.6.8.43..

I did a search for that 'pref.js' file but can't find any in the Mozilla directory.
I can only find 'prefs.js' in backups. Mine is also big apparently because those backups are in the vicinity of 204k.

I can't find the original to delete entries like he did and wouldn't know what to delete to begin with.

I don't want to lose any of my settings for NoScript. I've been tweeking what I want allowed and not allowed for a long time and don't want to start over with it.

Can anyone help?

[Thrawn]

barbaz recently submitted a patch to improve performance on large whitelists; if you wait a few more days, it will probably turn up in a development build.

[barbaz]

barbaz recently submitted a patch to improve performance on large whitelists;

( viewtopic.php?f=10&t=20109 )

[LunaEros]

barbaz recently submitted a patch to improve performance on large whitelists; if you wait a few more days, it will probably turn up in a development build.

When it shows up in a build, if I try it and it's worse or breaks something with FF, would I be able to uninstall and reinstall the old build?

[barbaz]

Yes. Disable auto-update, then go to
https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/noscript/versions
*or*
http://noscript.net/feed?t=a
and download the NoScript version you want.
Please report the bug here afterwards though.

[LunaEros]

Is the new one there now?
All I see is 2.6.8.43 which is what I have now.

[Giorgio Maone]

Please check latest development build 2.6.9rc1, thank you.