# Firefox crashes with signal 11 (segmentation fault)



## wrathchildtoo (Aug 2, 2010)

There is a problem with firefox 3.6.4 and 3.6.8 (i didn't try other versions).
After starting it works fine, I could serf web. But when I click on some menu item it crashes with signal 11 (segmentation fault).

```
uname -v
FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE #0: Mon Jul 19 02:55:53 UTC 2010     root@almeida.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
```
I've tied to follow this thred, but it didn't help me, all fonts works fine.
I've also tried to recompile firefox.


----------



## SirDice (Aug 2, 2010)

Try removing/renaming ~/.mozilla/. See if that helps.


----------



## wrathchildtoo (Aug 3, 2010)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Try removing/renaming ~/.mozilla/. See if that helps.



I've tried it too but with no positive result.


----------



## teckk (Aug 4, 2010)

Did you know about this.

/usr/ports/UPDATING


```
20090628:
  AFFECTS: users of www/firefox3-devel
  AUTHOR: gecko@FreeBSD.org

  If your Firefox crashes with the following message while viewing a
  HTML5 page: "Bad system call (core dumped)" you need to load the sem
  module (kldload sem).

  To load sem module on every boot, put the following into your
  /boot/loader.conf:

	sem_load="YES"
```


----------



## wrathchildtoo (Aug 5, 2010)

```
To load sem module on every boot, put the following into your
  /boot/loader.conf:

	sem_load="YES"
```

FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE with general kernel has sem module compiled in.


----------



## Draad (Oct 15, 2010)

Have you managed to solve this problem? 

My native firefox also crashes when I click on an item from a menu. Actually I can open one menu once. And after that clicking on something in the menu or opening another menu crashes my firefox.

This is quite annoying because I can't get flash to work with linux-firefox on amd64.


```
[FreeBSD sander.nl 8.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE #3: Sun Jul 25 23:26:36 CEST 2010     sander@sander.nl:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SKERNEL8  amd64

firefox-3.6.10,1    Web browser based on the browser portion of Mozilla
```


----------



## wrathchildtoo (Oct 17, 2010)

I had to reinstall the system and that was the solution.


----------



## Draad (Oct 18, 2010)

Not what I wanted to hear, but thanks anyway

Why is this thread tagged solved, since when is reinstalling your entire system a solution when running FreeBSD.



			
				wrathchildtoo said:
			
		

> I had to reinstall the system and that was the solution.


----------



## DutchDaemon (Oct 18, 2010)

It's solved for the OP. You can simply carry on posting in this thread. It's not closed.


----------



## trev (Dec 22, 2010)

```
kldload sem
```

fixed Firefox 3.6.13 crashing with "Bad system call (core dumped)" as soon as I tried to use a drop down menu. (ie no HTML5 involved.)


----------



## psmith (Dec 31, 2010)

I have the sameish problem, but on a different version


```
firefox3 -v
Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13, Copyright (c) 1998 - 2010 mozilla.or

uname -v
FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE #0: Sat Nov 21 15:02:08 UTC 2009     [email]root@mason.cse.buffalo.edu[/email]:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
```

It's a little frustrating ... and I'm not that keen to do a complete reinstall.

The problem began after a (long overdue) [cmd=]portupgrade -ar[/cmd]

Any help would be much appreciated.


----------



## Draad (Jan 3, 2011)

I still have the problem even though I have upgraded all the major ports on my system at least twice since I first got the problem. I have the semaphores in my kernel (They are by default nowadays). None of my other programs seem to have any problems and I use Thunderbird every day.

I have been using opera for a while now, native firefox is still broken and I can't get flash to work in the linux one (which doesn't crashes). But I still miss all the add-ons that Firefox has and some pages don't render correctly in opera (some flat out don't work). 

I am hoping this will magically disappear when I upgrade to 8.2 otherwise I may have to do a complete reinstall. Which until up to now I only have had to do due to hard drive problems since starting running FreeBSD in 1999 (twice).


----------



## psmith (Jan 4, 2011)

I finally managed to get round this by reinstalling all of my ports; i.e., `portupgrade -arRfc`

Most odd.


----------



## teckk (Jan 4, 2011)

That was good thinking.

```
man portupgrade
....................
     -c
     --config               Run ``make config-conditional'' before everything
     
     -f
     --force                Force the upgrade of a package even if it is to be
                            a downgrade or just a reinstall of the same ver-
                            sion, or the port is held by user using the
                            HOLD_PKGS variable in pkgtools.conf.
                            for all tasks.
     -r
     --recursive            Act on all those packages depending on the given
                            packages as well.

     -R
     --upward-recursive     Act on all those packages required by the given
                            packages as well. (When specified with -F, fetch
                            recursively, including the brand new, uninstalled
                            ports that an upgraded port requires)
```
I have had to do similar before. But only after I did a portupgrade in pieces and got dependencies all messed up.

For example you wait a year to upgrade the ports tree because you don't need to install anything, then try to install a port you probably will run into that.

`# portupgrade -r gedit` will indeed upgrade gedit but may break something else that was depending on an older version of gtk, png, etc.

The way around that is to keep the ports tree and ports up to date all the time.

I don't particularly like having to do that. Not being able to simply upgrade a single app without having to upgrade the whole machine, or at least all of the apps of it's kind. It's because *.nix does not necessarily keep multiple versions of the same libraries and environments mapped to each app.

If it did though the install would be much bigger and more bloated. I can see the philosophy behind it. And it's been talked about before on this forum and others.

I will say this. You were able to find out the problem and repair it without reinstalling the whole machine. And that's because the information, tools, and resources are available to anyone to use. And you got an education in the process.
Had it been a closed source OS and apps.....there is nothing that you can do but start over.

Long live open source and open standards.


----------



## Draad (Mar 19, 2011)

I have finally managed to solve this issue. Upgrading to 8.2 didn't solve anything. But after I installed *ccache* I decided to recompile all my installed ports in the hope that it solved my problems. After recompiling all my ports (1000 ports, including openoffice). The problem still persisted.

But after reading another thread I removed pulse audio support from libcanberra and this solved the problem. I first removed gstreamer support as well but this does not cause the problem.


----------



## AzTeK (Jul 24, 2012)

After a *portmaster -a* I made yesterday I had the "same" issue.

Using top menus, righ-click menu, or menus from folders in Personal Bar causes directly a "segmentation fault" from Firefox and Thunderbird without anymore detailed error.


Your solution works great, I uninstalled *libcanberra* and reinstalled it without pulse support and all works fine now.


Thanks a lot dude


----------

