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kerravonsenWhen I upgraded to Firefox 12, certain background images wouldn't display properly, while others wouldn't display at all. But it only happened on one of my computers. All the others were fine. The one where things weren't working was my desktop computer with the nice monitor, so it was rather important that things work. The symptoms were that (a) for some background images, rather than display the image, it would display the first line of the image, and repeat it over and over, in one long bleeding stripe (b) if one did "view image", the image itself did display correctly (c) for some semi-transparent images, they didn't display at all.
So I tried to track down what the problem was, doing the standard things that one does in order to narrow down the possibilities.
I disabled all addons, plugins and themes. No difference.
I copied the .mozilla directory from one of the machines where Firefox was working properly. No difference.
I uninstalled firefox, moved my .mozilla directory to .mozilla-bak, re-installed Firefox with a completely empty config. No difference.
I installed Firefox 13 beta. No difference.
I did a remote login to one of my laptops with ssh, shut down Firefox on both systems, and then ran Firefox from the ssh session so that it displayed on the desktop machine. Same symptoms.
Aha! I thought. If the only difference is what system the Firefox is displayed on, then perhaps the problem is not Firefox at all, but something to do with the desktop machine, with its display, or with its image libraries.
So I made a list of the packages installed on the laptop, and the packages on the desktop (they are using the same Linux distro, and were both up to date) and checked the differences between them. I removed and installed various packages on the desktop... but there wasn't any change.
But I did notice one difference that it occurred to me might be significant: the desktop had the xf86-video-nouveau package installed, and the laptop didn't.
Ah, I thought. Yes, the desktop has an NVIDIA graphics card, while the laptops have Intel graphics cards, don't they? The nouveau driver is my preferred driver for NVIDIA graphics cards, because it is compatible with the framebuffer, while the NVIDIA driver isn't. However, the nouveau driver can be buggy because it has to be reverse engineered... and there were a bunch of X11 package upgrades at the same time as the Firefox upgrade. Could it be that there was a bug in the nouveau driver?
So I removed the nouveau driver and installed the NVIDIA driver. And the Firefox symptoms disappeared. Problem solved!
But if I hadn't persevered, I would have assumed that the problem was with Firefox and never found the real problem.
So I tried to track down what the problem was, doing the standard things that one does in order to narrow down the possibilities.
I disabled all addons, plugins and themes. No difference.
I copied the .mozilla directory from one of the machines where Firefox was working properly. No difference.
I uninstalled firefox, moved my .mozilla directory to .mozilla-bak, re-installed Firefox with a completely empty config. No difference.
I installed Firefox 13 beta. No difference.
I did a remote login to one of my laptops with ssh, shut down Firefox on both systems, and then ran Firefox from the ssh session so that it displayed on the desktop machine. Same symptoms.
Aha! I thought. If the only difference is what system the Firefox is displayed on, then perhaps the problem is not Firefox at all, but something to do with the desktop machine, with its display, or with its image libraries.
So I made a list of the packages installed on the laptop, and the packages on the desktop (they are using the same Linux distro, and were both up to date) and checked the differences between them. I removed and installed various packages on the desktop... but there wasn't any change.
But I did notice one difference that it occurred to me might be significant: the desktop had the xf86-video-nouveau package installed, and the laptop didn't.
Ah, I thought. Yes, the desktop has an NVIDIA graphics card, while the laptops have Intel graphics cards, don't they? The nouveau driver is my preferred driver for NVIDIA graphics cards, because it is compatible with the framebuffer, while the NVIDIA driver isn't. However, the nouveau driver can be buggy because it has to be reverse engineered... and there were a bunch of X11 package upgrades at the same time as the Firefox upgrade. Could it be that there was a bug in the nouveau driver?
So I removed the nouveau driver and installed the NVIDIA driver. And the Firefox symptoms disappeared. Problem solved!
But if I hadn't persevered, I would have assumed that the problem was with Firefox and never found the real problem.
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Date: 2012-06-06 03:22 pm (UTC)Dixiebell was getting pink line syndrome. Her card was going.
I run mozilla nad IE. Because mozilla can be a PITA with certain sites like LJ, where I run IE. But I love mozilla for no script.
You may want to go to CNET and get the free ware DO NOT TRACK plus.
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Date: 2012-06-06 10:30 pm (UTC)Thus speaks the engineer! (grin)
Would it be a monitor problem if the behaviour was different with different drivers, though?
Also, it only happens on some sites, and only with Firefox. I haven't had any problems with other programs.
The other wierd thing is that if I do "view background image" on Firefox, the background image does display correctly.
I hope it isn't a monitor problem - my monitor is pretty new, I only bought it last year!