Firefox causes whole system to crash frequently, often multiple times a day
I use Firefox on Ubuntu 22.04, and my system has 16GB RAM. I have been facing this problem of frequent crashes for the past few months. By crash, I mean not Firefox alone, but the entire system. I use several apps and run several processes that require great compute resources, often simultaneously. I have narrowed the cause of frequent system crashes to Firefox alone; the system rarely crashes when I use other resource-heavy apps. Due to this, I have to restart my system several times a day.
Before this problem arose, I would use multiple tabs (including YouTube, often 10+, close to 20) and multiple windows (2+). Such usage very rarely caused crashes, which is why it is surprising that Firefox now causes the entire system to simply hang sometimes with as low as 3-4 tabs.
I have disabled Hardware Acceleration, refreshed Firefox, even tried disabling WebGL. I also tested it after removing all add-ons, but it still didn't help (I use only 2 add-ons: a simple wide-spectrum ad-blocker and an EPUB reader). Even in troubleshoot mode, Firefox will cause my system to heat up, although it takes some more effort to crash in this case. I use one of the standard themes, so it could not have been the problem.
Many people report Firefox crashes, but in my case, Firefox causes my entire system to crash. How do I fix this issue? Thank you in advance.
Modified by DrunkenDefenestrator
All Replies (2)
We're sorry to hear that Firefox is crashing. In order to assist you better, please follow the steps below to provide us crash IDs to help us learn more about your crash.
The crash report is several pages of data. We need the report numbers to see the whole report.
- Enter about:crashes in the Firefox address bar and press Enter. A list of Submitted/Unsubmitted Crash Reports will appear, similar to the one shown below.
- Copy the 5 most recent Submitted Report IDs that start with bp- and then go back to your forum question and paste those IDs into the "Post a Reply" box.
Note: If a recent Report ID does not start with bp- click on it to submit the report.
(Please don't take a screenshot of your crashes, just copy and paste the IDs. The below image is just an example of what your Firefox screen should look like.)
Thank you for your help!
More information and further troubleshooting steps can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox crashes (closing or quitting unexpectedly) article.
Sorry for the long delay.
Firstly, the about:crashes page doesn't show any crash reports at all. I feel it likely means that there were no Firefox crashes. Rather, Firefox probably hogged system resources, leading to a crash.
Secondly, I managed to solve the problem with a fix suggested in another forum. I enabled a system daemon named systemd-oomd (which should ideally have been enabled by default, but anyways), using the systemctl CLI. This solved the problem immediately. No overheatings, nor system-wide freezes, in spite of multiple windows and multiple tabs open. I suggest anybody having a similar problem to try out this solution.
Modified by DrunkenDefenestrator