Help to diagnose intermittent page load error

alan9990

Apologies for a wordy post but I've learned that it's often better to learn to ask the right question than simply fire off a bunch of shorter snippets, none of which work.

Context for the question to follow:

I've been running Vivaldi on Manjaro linux for a while now. Overall happy with the browser and its features. But every now and again (an annoyingly regular experience) I find that I'll fire up Vivaldi only to wait while the sight of a completely blank tab and a loading animation spin idly before me. Either the page then decides to load, or we get the variety of "destination unreachable" or other related type of message. It's quite common for me to watch the page load in the url window, only to see it stall on 35/36 or however many parts of the page it's trying to load. Sometimes this behaviour is the result of an update. Sometimes I'm able to dig around and edit some setting or other.

I'll add here that I HAVE READ all the posts here I could find on the subject, and did try both creating a new profile and disabling extensions but the problem persists. The past two days it has been constant and acute.

I must have spent weeks of my life by now reading documentation on Linux networking. I run Vivaldi on a single, static desktop, which itself is the sole client of a nearby wifi access point. No other congestion or users in the area. I don't switch networks. I have removed NetworkManager completely and load my connection with systemd - as far as I can tell the simplest and most reliable way for a single static connection.

I've taken all the steps I know how to ameliorate router issues: I've switched off the 5Ghz band. I've disabled wifi-n on the card. I've turned off IGM snooping and multicast.

My issue is this: sometimes, pages load quickly and without problem. At other times - which can be the next search query or can be five or ten minutes later - the entire connectivity disappears. And it looks as if the click to open a hyperlink is what actually triggers a wifi disconnect. I can't be sure on that, but it looks mighty coincidental. It reconnects within 5 - 10 seconds, but disconnects can be frequent when using the browser.

What I'd love to know is: is there a command line tool or a script that I can use that will expose the chain of events from clicking in the search field, or clicking on a search result or bookmark to open a tab... right through to that page loading completely? What I want to do is establish once and for all if the delays are caused at the browser, or whether the delays are network bottlenecks - and which means it's not Vivaldi at fault but either my config or my ISP.

Note that I have run a curl script designed to print out the access times to a chosen website. All the metrics I've been able to test show that within a terminal script the time to download a chosen web page fall around the 5 millisecond mark! Ping and RTT times are in the tens of milliseconds, so I don't believe my network is slow. But I would LOVE to know how to test the events triggered by a click in the browser through to loaded page.

Does anyone have any helpful suggestions?

lamarca

Hello there,

@alan9990 said in Help to diagnose intermittent page load error:

I find that I'll fire up Vivaldi only to wait while the sight of a completely blank tab

The lack of UI happens during the Vivaldi start-up or while ~~with~~ loading a website? I am asking you just in case.

@alan9990 said in Help to diagnose intermittent page load error:

Either the page then decides to load, or we get the variety of "destination unreachable" or other related type of message.

Ever tried to ping the page? We know pinging is not a prerequisite lo load a page. Any http error number?

@alan9990 said in Help to diagnose intermittent page load error:

. It's quite common for me to watch the page load in the url window, only to see it stall on 35/36

Frequently I got it - "non stop loading" - F5 sometimes leads you to the same 34/35. I don't know how to fix.

@alan9990 said in Help to diagnose intermittent page load error:

is there a command line tool or a script that I can use that will expose the chain of events from clicking in the search field, or clicking on a search result or bookmark to open a tab.

The Dev Tool (Ctrl+Shift+I) can do that - Network tab

Here is my suggestion: open the terminal, and issue the following command:

$ /usr/bin/vivaldi-snapshot --user-data-dir="/tmp/VIV-TST" &

It's a temp install, won't messed up your Vivaldi. In case you are not able to repro the network problem, then the issue lies on your profile folder.

Edited: Typo