Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

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hihosilver

Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by hihosilver »

edit by barbaz
A workaround for this issue has been implemented in NoScript latest development build, see viewtopic.php?p=106308#p106308
/edit


Hello. I've had a very rare issue occur over the years where Firefox would stop loading pages until I restarted it. Ok, odd but whatever. But now I've had the issue three days in a row. And I've found that if I go to addons and click the toggle to disable Noscript, the instant I do that, all the hung tabs load/process without delay.

On a hung tab, in the F12 networking is just a GET <url> entry, with no data and no result code. It's stuck processing.

This morning, FF has probably been running 28 hours, since the last time I had to bounce it for this issue. When it happened, I had just opened a car forum thread and was replying to it. There's no consistency about what I'm doing when the issue initiates.

But everything is fine, minus the benefits of Noscript, if I disable Noscript. The thing is, as soon as I reenable Noscript, everything stops working again. I would have thought disable/reenable would have been a clean restart of Noscript, as it disappears from the about:performance list. But once the issue inits, FF cannot load anything from the net with Noscript enabled (I can do open file and open a local htm file just fine; other local things like about:support work fine) until I restart FF.

FF updated to 95.0.2 back on Dec 21, '21. Noscript updated to 11.2.14 on Dec 31, '21. I would say my issue first appeared the early morning hours of Jan 2, '22. And then Jan 3 '22, and now Jan 4 '22. Around 6am this morning. So doesn't seem directly related to any update. Windows 7.

So wondering if this is a known failure mode or how to go about trying to determine what/why is going on. Nothing out of the norm going on with the PC, though I do have a high count of YouTube tabs (~40) open the past few days. But I've had that many open in the past too.
Last edited by barbaz on Fri Dec 30, 2022 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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therube
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Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by therube »

(Don't know if it's related, but...

Yesterday, I had 95.0.2 open, then, simultaneously, I opened 78.
In 78, no tabs "loaded". They all "restored" (from Session Restore), but none actually loaded.

I then closed both browsers.
78 hung in memory at that point, & I had to kill it.

I then restarted both browsers, & both loaded as expected at that point.)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball NoScript FlashGot AdblockPlus
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0 SeaMonkey/2.53.10.2
hihosilver

Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by hihosilver »

I don't run multiple versions or instances (normally). I did my post this morning, restarted FF and did some browsing, had breakfast, went to bed. Just woke up, opened a tab in my still running FF and it was hung up again.

No idea if NS is waiting on FF or FF waiting on NS. Only know that disabling and reenabling NS does not restore working condition, not until all of FF is bounced. But as soon as NS disabled, FF works perfectly fine without having to bounce it.

Restarting FF this week has been without issue. Except that I'm having to do it daily now.
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barbaz
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Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by barbaz »

If you open about:debugging > This Firefox > NoScript > Inspect, Console, when the issue occurs are you able to switch to that about:debugging tab and see if any related messages there?
*Always* check the changelogs BEFORE updating that important software!
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hihosilver

Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by hihosilver »

I'll have to leave that console open and see if something occurs at that moment. Once the issue initiates, I can disable Noscript and FF operations carry on without issue. If I enable Noscript, I do not get anything of note in the log:

(the forum anti-spam filter won't let me post the log section. It's just the normal startup lines, 0 through 22 and STARTED. There is one error, cannot collect noscript activity data, receiving end does not exist, but not sure that's a problem)

Then no new messages occur if I open a new tab, enter a URL, and then it hangs there no action until I disable Noscript again. FF has been working for quite some time this time, more than 24h, not yet 48h. I did try and compare the about:networking logging between a working (NS disabled) and hung (NS enabled) page load, but that's a whole lot of noise. I'll have to look and see if there's a more focused log config.
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Totemkropf
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Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by Totemkropf »

With current NoScript on current Firefox on Windows with excessive numbers of FF windows and tabs (many with Youtube and Reddit pages) and several other addons, I get the following behaviour:
- After startup, FF fills the available RAM within minutes under little user activity (including video output), with e.g. 30 GB for all FF processes and 20 GB in one process. The growth happens in waves that seem not to match user or website activity. This points to a breakdown of deferred loading/rendering of tab contents, i.e. NoScript might work on content that is not supposed to load without user activation of the tabs in question.
- FF becomes very slow. Delayed tabs stay blank upon opening them. Videos get stuck a lot.
- I get many XSS warnings that normally don't appear; these follow each other very slowly, because one warning takes far too much time to be fully displayed.
- Deactivation of all addons except adblocker resolves this.

Changes on the loaded pages cannot be excluded as the cause, but NoScript's latest update matches the appearance of these problems, except Reddit was quite slow before this anyway.
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barbaz
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Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by barbaz »

So does downgrading NoScript fix the problem? If so what is the last working rc version?

Old NoScript @ https://noscript.net/feed?quantum&c=150&t=a
*Always* check the changelogs BEFORE updating that important software!
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Totemkropf
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Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by Totemkropf »

As it turns out, my problems are caused by Ant Video Download (its current version 4.12, published on 6th of January). I have no indication that NoScript plays a role in this.
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barbaz
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Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by barbaz »

@Totemkropf Thanks for reporting back.

@hihosilver do you also have Ant Video Download?
*Always* check the changelogs BEFORE updating that important software!
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steevm
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Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by steevm »

I have exactly the same issue. Latest version of FireFox and NoScript. Every now and then, Firefox loses the ability to load pages. The internet connection is fine (other applications can access it, I can perform a traceroute etc.). Websites that were previously loaded maintain their connection - so if I'm watching a video on YouTube, I can continue watching it, but cannot refresh existing tabs or load new pages.

Restarting FireFox solves the issue and I can load websites again. Disabling NoScript (temporarily) fixes the issue. Temporarily, because every time I refresh a stalled page, NoScript reactivates itself (I can see the switch change in the Extensions page in FF of its own accord). So if I disable NoScript, I can load one web page, but then need to go and disable NoScript again to load another.

I do not have Ant Video Download. My other extensions are:
- Ad Block Pro
- DownThemAll
- Ecosia search engine
- HTML Content Blocker
- LastPass
- Remove HTML Elements
- Video DownloadHelper
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barbaz
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Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by barbaz »

steevm wrote: Tue May 03, 2022 4:35 pm every time I refresh a stalled page, NoScript reactivates itself (I can see the switch change in the Extensions page in FF of its own accord).
That is really not right. No extension can do this on its own.

Does this behavior persist if you disable all extensions other than NoScript?
If so, you may have a corrupted Firefox profile: try following instructions at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/re ... ld-profile to transfer only your important data to a new, clean Firefox profile.
*Always* check the changelogs BEFORE updating that important software!
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steevm
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Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by steevm »

I've noticed that the auto-toggling of extensions also happens with other extensions when the internet connection is lost. So you might be onto something with this not being a NoScript error. And turning any random extension off seems to fix the problem. So it looks like there's more to it than just "re-enabling NoScript" fixes the issue. At any rate, there's something strange going on... I don't know if it's the profile - this was a fresh install of Windows. But I'll give fixing it a shot.
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raynebc
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Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by raynebc »

I've used NoScript for years, but this problem began to happen so often during the past several months I finally disabled NoScript the other day and haven't had any problems since. Sometimes this bug would occur even after just a few hours of browser use.
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Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by therube »

#1, disabled, page loads
#2, re-enabled, & refreshed the page. page is still there "from cache", but there is no "i/o". it does not load, nor any other page.
#3, browser console

Image

When things go wonky, the on/off toggle may take multiple attempts to enable/disable, & at the same time, its' "displayed" state may or may not reflect the actual state of NoScript.

Likewise, you may see messages about "privileged" pages & that is because no pages are actually loading, instead what you are gettings is "about:blank", which is a "privileged" page.
.
Image


FF 100, some beta version.
No extensions except for NoScript, 11.4.6rc2 (though this is not the first time I've run into similar, IOW, this issue is not exclusive to 11.4.6.rc2).
I believe a "clean" Profile, except that I've turned the spyware off.
DoH is off.

(I wonder if other extensions are similarly affected?)
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steevm
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Re: Firefox stops loading pages until NoScript disabled or Firefox restarted

Post by steevm »

Had this happen again, and this time I noticed that Firefox had a pending update. Seems like other users are reporting similar connection issues after FF downloads an update. Now this is the first time I've noticed an update coinciding with FF losing connection to the internet, so it *could* be a coincidence, but maybe there's a connection here.
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