Browser Blues - FIXED

BLizgreat! · 2019-11-21 21:57:15

Pointless elaboration cont:

Though per usual, plenty of stuff which someone needs be aware of can come into play, in the case of streaming vids, junk like this. That being your connection and network configuration. At the moment find myself on shared wifi, a neighbor let's me ride on their connection free and it's exclusively via wireless. As such I try to show consideration and courtesy to them/others using the connection.

Tend to lower video quality on Youtube-etc. Means less bandwidth(cpu overhead and other sys resources too), thus on a somewhat crappy connection, better and smoother performance for me, taking up less of the available bandwidth for others. Besides on this old laptop the hardware(underlying software)aren't even capable of ultra-HD anyway. So trying to suck up as many resources on the connection as I can isn't going to benefit me anyway. Can obviously do the reverse in fact. Even if were the type of person who opts to be an inconsiderate/selfish turd-head. NOPE !!!

Only saying flashplayer and using outdated browsers aren't the only considerations in such a situation. Certainly are valid concerns and yep, I don need no stinkin flashplayer(s) and do need(or want)latest web browser(s)!!! Such are not the only things someone can check or do to improve things. Each their own, blahblahblah.

Last edited by BLizgreat! (2019-11-21 22:05:13)

ohnonot · 2019-11-22 08:07:28

brogild wrote:

For a couple of years now, I have been unable to use Firefox comfortably for watching livestreams (mainly Youtubes), they always start suttering badly after watching a while. I used to put this down to memory shortage, but now I have 12Gb (and conky there on the desktop) I notice that the processer, a decent one, is at around 90% usage.

brogild, if you want to fix this:

update & upgrade your system. now.
you don't need flash. Definitely not for YT. I recommend uninstalling it.

we need some hardware specs:

lscpu
lspci -k | grep -iEA5 'vga|3d|display'
firefox --version

johnraff · 2019-11-22 08:37:25

^or, for firefox, this will help to figure why you don't have the latest:

apt-cache policy firefox-esr

brogild · 2019-11-22 11:35:45

^^ Since I've discovered that chromium does not have this problem with livestreams, I'm not too concerned about fixing it on Firefox, it plays regular videos just fine. I only mentioned the Firefox thing as an introduction to the chromium password issue, which is now fixed.
I would however appreciate an answer to my seahorse question above in case I want to go back to autologins.

Regarding the version of firefox, I has assumed that my system is offering me the correct update, but looking on the Debian site the latest version is 68.2 (for esr)
apt-cache policy firefox-esr gives me:

firefox-esr:
Installed: 60.9.0esr-1~deb9u1
Candidate: 60.9.0esr-1~deb9u1
Version table:
*** 60.9.0esr-1~deb9u1 500
500 https://deb.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
60.7.1esr-1~deb9u1 500
500 https://deb.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
60.6.3esr-1~deb9u1 500
500 https://deb.debian.org/debian stretch-updates/main amd64 Packages

I'm also interested in the claim above that I "don't need flash for YT", I thought it was pretty central.

ekzotic · 2019-11-22 12:01:26

I thought youtube is html5 based now.
Did you try apt-get update?
Also you may think about upgrading to Buster.

Last edited by ekzotic (2019-11-22 12:16:26)

rbh · 2019-11-22 12:27:57

brogild wrote:

I would however appreciate an answer to my seahorse question above in case I want to go back to autologins.

This is how it looks for meo n Helium when I start seahorse:

"Lösenord" is swedish for "Password". When you start seahorse, you will ha an locked "Login. Mine is unlocked. To unlock,

right-cklick on "Login"
choose "Change password"
key in your password
leave new password blank

Now your lock will be open and you will not be asked for password when starting chrome if you have been automatic logged in.

Beforethat, you can try to start chrome with

$ google-chrome-stable --password-store=basic %U

More about that on https://www.linuxonlinehelp.de/chrome-b … -seahorse/

brogild wrote:

I'm also interested in the claim above that I "don't need flash for YT", I thought it was pretty central.

In 2015, Youtube droped flash in favor of html 5, as standard. More at https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/27/7926 … eo-default

ekzotic · 2019-11-22 13:04:29

It broke password autofill for me.
So the way I fixed it
/.config/google-chrome/Default/
remove
Login Data
Login Data-journal

brogild · 2019-11-22 13:04:43

ekzotic wrote:

I thought youtube is html5 based now.

Possibly it is and I could then get rid of Flash, the player looks the same though and has the same functions.
This would still leave the unexplained difference in behaviour between Firefox and Chromium

Did you try apt-get update?
Also you may think about upgrading to Buster.

I've been lazy and this has done the trick. I've also been lazy and been using the bl-welcome script for updates, assuming that it first refeshes the package lists, obviously it doesn't. Someone here thought it was odd that I used this for updates, but If I find something that works once, I'll keep using it.
I'm a bit paranoid with updates and disconnect one of my RAID drives to use as a backup if anything fails, so I won't be updating just yet. From past experience though, I doubt if it will solve the streaming issue - that goes quite a way back now.

Regarding Buster, I'll wait till Lithium and then start with a fresh install.

ekzotic · 2019-11-22 13:25:13

I think the difference between Chrome and Firefox in Youtube is codec used (but it may be the same) and hardware acceleration which relies on your gpu. You may check your gpu usage in nvidia settings/gpu utilization while playing youtube video. For me fullscreen 1080p video uses around 20% gpu and 20% cpu.

brogild · 2019-11-22 13:26:33

rbh wrote:

"Lösenord" is swedish for "Password". When you start seahorse, you will ha an locked "Login. Mine is unlocked. To unlock,
right-cklick on "Login"
choose "Change password"
key in your password
leave new password blank
Now your lock will be open and you will not be asked for password when starting chrome if you have been automatic logged in.
Beforethat, you can try to start chrome with
$ google-chrome-stable --password-store=basic %U
More about that on https://www.linuxonlinehelp.de/chrome-b … -seahorse/

Thanks for this, autologin isn't greatly important for me but sometimes I go out whilst it is updating and it's nice to come back to a system that is up and running - also, on my last update, a grub dialogue got in the way of it completing.

rbh wrote:

brogild wrote:
I'm also interested in the claim above that I "don't need flash for YT", I thought it was pretty central.
In 2015, Youtube droped flash in favor of html 5, as standard. More at https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/27/7926 … eo-default

Looks like I can get rid of flash then, although now and again I use other sites such as bitchute or dlive, I don't know if these use it.
The livestream behaviour of firefox vs chromium is still a mystery. It's harder to test though because it only happens after watching for a while - and it has to be live. It's not just like firing up a standard video.

brogild · 2019-11-22 13:42:39

ekzotic wrote:

I think the difference between Chrome and Firefox in Youtube is codec used (but it may be the same) and hardware acceleration which relies on your gpu. You may check your gpu usage in nvidia settings/gpu utilization while playing youtube video. For me fullscreen 1080p video uses around 20% gpu and 20% cpu.

I'm not using nvidia.
lspci -k | grep -iEA5 'vga|3d|display' gives me:

VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller
	Kernel driver in use: i915
	Kernel modules: i915
PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
Kernel driver in use: pcieport

.. and I don't know how to view GPU usage. However, I believe my processor (Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2120) is integated with the graphics somehow, so I don't expect any shortcomings, unless the Linux driver doesn't use that facilty.
Again though, this doesn't really explain why firefox stutters badly and chromium doesn't, unless it is my installation of flash (which I installed for Firefox on when using bl-welcome) which I'm led to believe I don't actually need.

ETA: I don't know why 'Hewlett Packard' is mentioned in the hardware unless there is something proprietry added. This would not matter though, I've had the same problem on several different systems

Last edited by brogild (2019-11-22 13:46:55)

ekzotic · 2019-11-22 13:53:31

You should update your Firefox for sure and disable flash plugin.
If you are worried about losing your data backup it. It's also nice to have separate partitions/disks for data and systems. And have 2 systems installed just in case. (How I do it and it always worked)

Last edited by ekzotic (2019-11-22 13:58:27)

brogild · 2019-11-22 16:06:13

ekzotic wrote:

You should update your Firefox for sure and disable flash plugin.
If you are worried about losing your data backup it. It's also nice to have separate partitions/disks for data and systems. And have 2 systems installed just in case. (How I do it and it always worked)

I'm fully up to date now and have disabled flash. The plugin was set to "ask to activate", and this never came up, so I assume it was never needed whichever site I went on.

I used to have two partitions like you say, but now I have a RAID1 array this doesn't really help me as I couldn't find any software to look into the RAID partition to make changes or use as part of a re-installation.
I started to use the 'disconnect disk' method because a few years back an update to a buggy version of mdadm meant that a single disk would not start up alone - this was not apparent until I had a disk failure. It took me a while to work out how to rescue the system by converting the partition back to a regular one, which turned out to be trickier than I thought. Having a spare disk with the old system is much less stressful.

Regarding the firefox/chromium thing. I'm presently testing this on a laptop and fully updated system with a livestream. After 1/2 hour with firefox the CPU usage shot up to 100%, with chromium it remains at 31% after 2 hrs

damo · 2019-11-22 16:56:01

brogild wrote:

.. Someone here thought it was odd that I used this for updates, but If I find something that works once, I'll keep using it.
I'm a bit paranoid with updates and disconnect one of my RAID drives to use as a backup if anything fails, so I won't be updating just yet....

someone wrote:

If the tool you use is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail

Use the appropriate tool for the job! And if you are nervous about updating then use the --simulate switch.

Remember that Debian is adamant that "Stable" should be "stable" when updating, and breakages should never occur.

brogild · 2019-11-22 17:13:54

The mdadm issue I described above was on a Mint system, so I suppose we can blame Ubuntu for that.

Still though, it's hard to account for all scenarios and combinations when offering updates. The RAID array ran absolutely fine until a disk failed further down the line, I suppose we're all testers in a way.

ekzotic · 2019-11-22 17:27:32

Only livestreams? Do you have addons installed? Maybe the webpage itself with chat overloading firefox. Or cache problem..

brogild · 2019-11-22 17:38:49

ekzotic wrote:

Only livestreams? Do you have addons installed? Maybe the webpage itself with chat overloading firefox. Or cache problem..

Yeah, it's strange isn't it. It happens when there is no chat there though.

Funnily enough, something has changed since I last took a close look at this. Previously the RAM filled up and the swap started being used (hence the stuttering), which made it look like a cache problem. Now though, the RAM seems stable and the processor is overloading.

When I discovered it didn't happen with chromium, I stopped trying to solve it (and assumed it was a flash thing). I have downloadhelper, at one time I suspected that this was causing problems as it monitors video content, I think I'll experiment with turning this off,

Last edited by brogild (2019-11-22 17:42:11)

ekzotic · 2019-11-22 17:58:57

also you may try
layers.acceleration.force-enabled=true
in
about:config

brogild · 2019-11-22 18:53:37

^ Turning off downloadhelper has made a significant difference to the CPU usage, so it looks like I've nailed it.
This made me suspicious of what it is actually doing with all that headroom, but just watching a normal video brought this CPU usage down to chromium levels, so I'm guessing that when it is monitoring live content it goes into overdrive because it's not made for that (it takes a while to get there though).
I'm not going to be getting rid of it though, but I might turn it off now and again. It's become synonymous with firefox for me (the chrome version doesn't work) and I've built up a nice library of videos because of it.

Thanks to all here who have encouraged me to re-focus on this, I'd actually given up on it.

ekzotic wrote:

also you may try
layers.acceleration.force-enabled=true
in
about:config

That's some real Firefox deep-lore there, I'll probably try this. I've experimented with some of these settings, but to quote one from memory like this is quite impressive!

Last edited by brogild (2019-11-22 18:54:04)

ekzotic · 2019-11-22 19:15:33

From the memory lol.
Anyway glad it helped. There are other ways to dl YouTube videos like webpages, so you don't have to use broken (incompatible) add-on.

Last edited by ekzotic (2019-11-22 19:17:05)

#21 2019-11-21 21:57:15

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#22 2019-11-22 08:07:28

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#23 2019-11-22 08:37:25

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#24 2019-11-22 11:35:45

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#25 2019-11-22 12:01:26

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#26 2019-11-22 12:27:57

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#27 2019-11-22 13:04:29

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#28 2019-11-22 13:04:43

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#29 2019-11-22 13:25:13

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#30 2019-11-22 13:26:33

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#31 2019-11-22 13:42:39

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#32 2019-11-22 13:53:31

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#33 2019-11-22 16:06:13

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#34 2019-11-22 16:56:01

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#35 2019-11-22 17:13:54

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#36 2019-11-22 17:27:32

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#37 2019-11-22 17:38:49

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#38 2019-11-22 17:58:57

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#39 2019-11-22 18:53:37

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

#40 2019-11-22 19:15:33

Re: Browser Blues - FIXED

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