HACKER Q&A
📣 JonathanBeuys

Since yesterday, Firefox and Thunderbird take 30s to start. Why?


Both FF and Thunderbird suddenly take 30s to start on my linux machine.

"firefox -safe-mode" does no speed it up.

When I run "strace firefox", the first time it hangs after this line:

restart_syscall(<... resuming interrupted poll ...>

Then it hangs multiple times after lines after lines that all contain the word "poll" in one form or another.

What does the combined Linux expertise of HN say? How do I debug this situation?

  👤 Grimburger Accepted Answer ✓
There's crash reports in the .mozilla folder but I'm not sure how verbose they are.

You can also try starting from cli and set the logging level

    firefox -MOZ_LOG=all:1
Looking at my versions I'm behind on firefox but thunderbird is up to date. Both start in under a second. Are you using the snap distributions? Also try disabling any extensions first before delving deeper.
👤 JonathanBeuys
Update:

It seems Firefox contacts . and that hangs.

Why does FF do that? Can I disable it?

For now, I put this into /etc/hosts:

0.0.0.0 .

Now Firefox and Thunderbird start fast again.

👤 huhtenberg
Sounds like a timeout with a DNS lookup or a TCP handshake.

Try tcpdump, see what happens around that time?

👤 hulitu
> Ask HN: Since yesterday, Firefox and Thunderbird take 30s to start. Why?

Your computer is too slow.