# When opening whatever web broswer, black screen appears and computer freezes.



## R6exe (Jun 14, 2020)

Hi, I'm new in FreeBSD, I like the OS and I'm installing it on many computers.
But unfortunately in this case I have a problem with this computer that I'm using.
The computer specs are these:
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Nvidia FX 5700
x2 512 MB DDR RAM
40GB IDE.
Using FreeBSD 12.1 Release-p6 and updated with freebsd-update fetch and freebsd-update install.
LXDE Desktop installed.
Yes, it's an old computer, but I think FreeBSD can give a second life to old computers.
So the problem is when I install Firefox last version, and then try to run it, the screen suddenly goes black, with the monitors led in orange (I mean like if the computer is not power on), and I need to press the power button to be able to shut it down, because even the reset button doesn't work.
Could this be a graphics problem ?
With Linux this didn't happened to me.
I think maybe it could be the power supply, but I'm not sure how to check this, or maybe could be the Hardware acceleration, but I'm not sure how to know if that's the problem.
Thank you for your possible solutions, cheers.


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## PMc (Jun 14, 2020)

How much paging space do You have configured?


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## R6exe (Jun 14, 2020)

PMc said:


> How much paging space do You have configured?


Hi 
It has 2GB
I think that it could be the power supply because the USB ports are detected but when I plug in an USB drive is not detected. 
But when I plug in a USB mouse it works perfectly. 

What do you think? 
Regards.


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## PMc (Jun 15, 2020)

R6exe said:


> Hi
> It has 2GB



That should do for a beginning.



> What do you think?
> Regards.



I don't know. It is seven years that I have run X with limited memory (that is, less than 4G). I don't know how that does behave today.

I would do some differential analysis, that is, try different things and draw logical conclusions. 

For instance, when I am on the X graphics screen, and the system gets some kind of hiccup (e.g kernel panic), it is often just the behaviour You describe: screen goes dark or off, and nothing else happens. So, that appears to be rather normal.

What You can do, is switch back to the text console, while the X still runs, and then, as the user who is logged into the X, run the firefox from the commandline, with `DISPLAY=:0`.
It will then open up in the X. You don't see that. But what You then might see is some error message or kernel panic or such. And that might give a hint on where to look further.


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## sko (Jun 15, 2020)

Is any SWAP space configured? I've had tons of crashes and freezes with Firefox on a system where swap had been disabled after a HDD swap, even if there was plenty of memory available. That being said: running any halfway modern browser with 2GB RAM won't give you much joy. Todays browsers are fat, bloated atrocities that oftentimes consume more resources than a triple-A game did ~10-15 years ago...


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## R6exe (Jun 15, 2020)

sko said:


> Is any SWAP space configured? I've had tons of crashes and freezes with Firefox on a system where swap had been disabled after a HDD swap, even if there was plenty of memory available. That being said: running any halfway modern browser with 2GB RAM won't give you much joy. Todays browsers are fat, bloated atrocities that oftentimes consume more resources than a triple-A game did ~10-15 years ago...


Thank you for your answer, but this only doesn't happens to firefox, I tried to install a lightweight browser and does the same.


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## jmos (Jun 15, 2020)

sko said:


> That being said: running any halfway modern browser with 2GB RAM won't give you much joy. Todays browsers are fat, bloated atrocities that oftentimes consume more resources than a triple-A game did ~10-15 years ago...


Uptime 11h35m, and this computer was heavily stressed today. I'm writing with a Firefox on FreeBSD. Okay, at the moment there isn't much more in usage (desktop with ~dozen apps, and Apache, MariaDB as well as some xterms), but: only 856 MB memory is active. I've never understand that "you'll need more memory". And even in my case: The OS can occupy free memory, but as far I know that doesn't mean that it is also really needed (means: having less than that 800 MB wouldn't result in swapping). And in the OPs case we're talking about "starting a browser", not opening the 20th tab in it…

My thoughts are more related to the graphics than to "low powered hardware".


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## R6exe (Jun 17, 2020)

Yeah maybe that's right.
Well thank you anyway.


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