Menus, dropdown, awesome bar, etc. closing immediately
Sometimes, whatever kind of menu I try to open in Firefox immediately closes. It's so fast to close that one could think it has never opened at all, but there's always at least some flashing showing that it actually opened and closed.
Impacted menus include (but are not limited to):
- contextual menu (on right click); - top menus (File, Edit…), but /not/ the buttons to get that menus; - menus that open when clicking on buttons (eg. the hamburger button); - any dropdown list in a HTML page; - awesome bar completion; - search field completion; - autocompletion in HTML text input fields.
For the last three (ie. completion), every single letter typed in these contexts results in the completion menu flashing and vanishing immediately.
This is an issue I'm having for years, which appears every few weeks, and disappears after a few hours or sometimes a couple of days.
Things that do *not* fix the issue:
- restarting Firefox; - rebooting the computer; - using safe mode; - removing extensions; - changing the user profile; - using an empty new profile; - crossing fingers very hard.
Things that are *not* necessary for the issue to disappear:
- all of the above (including restarting Firefox).
I'm always using whatever version of Firefox is shipped with the last LTS version of Ubuntu, so I've had the issue with quite a few different versions of Firefox (20? 30 versions? I don't know. A lot of them for sure.) My window manager is Awesome WM. No other program has the same issue (including Thunderbird, Pidgin, LibreOffice…).
I've thought for a long time this was a side effect of whatever update Puppet had been doing on the machine (eg. GTK), but having looked at /var/log/dpkg.log the three or four last times I've had the issue, I've ruled out this hypothesis.
I'm not sure whether the issue comes from Firefox or not, but I only have the issue with it. If anyone has any idea about what I could test, that would be very much appreciated, as I'm running out of ideas.
Thanks!
Modified by Arkanosis
All Replies (9)
(merged this reply in the original question)
Modified by Arkanosis
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/update-firefox-latest-version?cache=no Update Firefox to the latest version 55.0.3
Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link} by holding down the <Shift> (Mac=Options) key, and then starting Firefox.
A small dialog should appear. Click Start In Safe Mode (not Refresh). Is the problem still there?
Hi Fred, thank you for your kind answer.
Unfortunately, Firefox 55.0.2 is currently the last version of Firefox packaged for Ubuntu Xenial, I'll let you know when I get Firefox 55.0.3. I don't think, though, it'll make any difference: as I said, the issue is present for maybe 20 or 30 major versions already.
Safe mode makes no difference, neither does creating a new empty user profile.
Thanks again!
Modified by Arkanosis
I've updated the question above to indicate that restarting Firefox is not necessary for the problem to vanish.
Indeed, mine has disappeared between Friday evening (it didn't work) and this Monday morning (it does work), without having Firefox restarted (uptime of the computer is 102 days, uptime of Firefox is 5 days).
I've been with non-working menus for ~20 days, the computer has never been restarted, Firefox has been restarted more that 10 times without any improvement, the problem has gone without even restarting it.
I can't make any sense of this… :'(
PS: I'm still on 55.0.2 as Ubuntu Xenial doesn't seem to ship 55.0.3 (the only change between 55.0.2 and 55.0.3 seems Windows-specific, so that makes sense).
Well, whatever works, works.
Please flag your last post as Solved Problem so others will know.
FredMcD a écrit
Well, whatever works, works.
I'd agree for a lot of things, but not for this issue, as it's more “for years, it alternatively works for a few weeks then doesn't work for a few days, with no obvious reason for the working status to change,” than “it doesn't work right now”.
I wouldn't have opened this issue if I wasn't sure waiting while it works is not enough :'(
(Then, sure, I'd have a better chance to catch the bug the days it's not working, I agree.)
You will have to wait for another Linux user to help out.
You can try the Firefox version from the official Mozilla server if you currently use a version from the repositories of your Linux distribution.
You can find the full version of the current Firefox release (55.0.3) in all languages and all operating systems here:
cor-el a écrit
You can try the Firefox version from the official Mozilla server if you currently use a version from the repositories of your Linux distribution.
Thanks for the suggestion, the problem is present with the upstream version as well.
I'm currently experiencing the issue again, using Firefox 58.0.1.