Solved frequent random tab crashes

Nandalee

Hi all,

I keep getting tab crashes in Vivaldi, the ones with the dead bird thingy.
I found some other posts describing crashes, but I'm not sure it's the same, so better safe than sorry, I guess ^.^

I have no extensions installed, the newest version as far as I know and I use Manjaro. I do have a second pc running the exact same Manjaro and Vivaldi setup just fine, so I guess it's some setting I can't find.

The most reliable sites it's occuring on are youtube and twitch, but it randomly happens on websites without videos as well and sometimes I'm lucky and after some refreshing it works for a few minutes and crashes again. So it's not like I can't play videos at all, they are just instable. Happens on a simple google search sometimes, too. Firefox doesn't have any issues in that regard, so it's a Vivaldi-only thing.

I did find something about checking vivaldi://gpu and there are following problems listet:

Accelerated video encode has been disabled, either via blocklist, about:flags or the command line.
Disabled Features: video_encode
Accelerated video decode has been disabled, either via blocklist, about:flags or the command line.
Disabled Features: video_decode
Gpu compositing has been disabled, either via blocklist, about:flags or the command line. The browser will fall back to software compositing and hardware acceleration will be unavailable.
Disabled Features: gpu_compositing

I might be completely wrong here, totally out of my comfort zone, but I thought that this are all optional things? I wouldn't know how to fix that, anyway.

What happens

I open a new tab (or a new window, doesn't matter)
I try to open youtube (for example)
Vivaldi does try to connect for a split second
Now there are a few options:

Tab immediately crashes to dead bird logo
Youtube startpage for a second, I can even interact with it if I'm quick, then dead bird
Everything works as normal

There are no suspicious workloads on cpu and gpu, either, as far as I can tell.
It does sometimes work if I simply wait half an hour and try exactly the same again without even restarting vivaldi, just letting it sit and evetually reload the tab. I also encoutered this problem by simply scrolling down, not even loading a new website, but that's rather uncommon and I'm not sure if it's just option 2, since I can't really reproduce that.

I am aware of the rather complicated crash report option (https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/troubleshoot/reporting-crashes-on-linux/) I could do, but I thought maybe someone has a few quick ideas I can try before that.

Nandalee

After a lot of switching hardware and testing between this and another system the culprit seems indeed to be two of the four RAM sticks, hadn't had any issues for over a week now. The mem tests simply did not catch this, I guess.
So, thank you all for help this far, even if it was such a banality as tests not catching issues in the end

guigirl

@nandalee said in frequent random tab crashes:

the newest version as far as I know

From the vagueness of this, would i be correct to assume you use Stable not Snapshot versions?

The first step i would take is to try to replicate the misbehaviour in a clean new test profile. If it also deadbirds for you there, it's some systemic problem, otherwise it's some damage in your current Default profile.

I don't know if this will reveal anything diagnostically useful, but next i would try running V from your terminal, not your usual MJ menu launcher. Then, if/when the next deadbird arises, immediately toggle back from V to the terminal & inspect all the recent entries, to see if anything suspicious arose.

Oh, also, what is your equivalent setting?

Fwiw

Nandalee

@guigirl I swear, I would have never found Hardware Acc under "webpages" :D.
It is enabled, though and since it's not a problem for you, I guess, I was right in that's irrelevant for this problem. I have pretty much the standard settings anyway, didn't play with it much, yet.

I use stable, yes.

I will report back with the new profile testing!

I did start vivaldi form terminal in the past, I didn't pay attention that much but I can't say there was much output, if I recall correctly. I will test that further, too.

Nandalee

@guigirl Forum is blocking the terminal log as text as spam, sorry for the messy pics ._.

These are made immediately after opening vivaldi and it was first opened on the youtube tab that crashed. It did reload the tab after refresh, though, so might be something different. I will post additional terminal logs when I encounter the total meldown I mentioned above again... there are good days and bad days for all of us, I guess...

I do see that chrome-extension problem there, is that also something everyone has? Or could that be the problem? Again, totally out of my zone here. I vaguely know whta chrome is :D.

Nandalee

Well, you shall not wait long, I guess:

That is this exact forum page he is trying (and failing) to load, so no videos or anything overly fancy.

guigirl

@nandalee said in frequent random tab crashes:

Forum is blocking the terminal log as text as spam

What do you mean? Can't you paste the terminal transcript into a codeblock? Eg, i created the following [unrelated] codeblock by pasting in the transcript, highlighting it, then clicking the codeblock icon in the toolbar, per the accompanying pic. Does this not work for you?

guigirl@archlinuxTower[~] 12:43:13 Fri Mar 11 $> chk
liblouis 3.20.0-2 -> 3.21.0-1
libtpms 0.9.2-1 -> 0.9.3-1
linux 5.16.12.arch1-1 -> 5.16.13.arch1-1
linux-headers 5.16.12.arch1-1 -> 5.16.13.arch1-1
linux-lts 5.15.26-1 -> 5.15.27-1
linux-lts-headers 5.15.26-1 -> 5.15.27-1
linux-zen 5.16.12.zen1-1 -> 5.16.13.zen1-1
linux-zen-headers 5.16.12.zen1-1 -> 5.16.13.zen1-1
luajit 2.1.0.beta3.r389.gaa0550e3-1 -> 2.1.0.beta3.r391.g8b8304f1-1
nodejs 17.6.0-1 -> 17.7.1-1
patchelf 0.14.3-1 -> 0.14.5-1
polkit 0.120-4 -> 0.120-5
python-more-itertools 8.10.0-4 -> 8.12.0-1
python-py7zr 0.17.4-1 -> 0.18.0-1
shaderc 2022.1-1 -> 2022.1-2
signond 8.60-3 -> 8.61-1
swtpm 0.7.1-1 -> 0.7.2-1
thunderbird 91.6.2-1 -> 91.7.0-1
thunderbird-i18n-en-gb 91.6.2-1 -> 91.7.0-1
upower 0.99.16-2 -> 0.99.17-1
guigirl@archlinuxTower[~] 12:43:22 Fri Mar 11 $>

How-To pic

@nandalee said in frequent random tab crashes:

That is this exact forum page he is trying (and failing) to load

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying that you could not access this thread in V because the tab crashed? How then did you create these last two posts -- in another browser?

Your pics are hard to read, but i tried ... however i am not sufficiently skilled in the interpretation. I suggest you create a formal bug report & include all the evidence ... including ideally codeblocks not pics, unless you really have no alternative.

Oh, i just remembered... i recommended that you retest in a clean new profile, & you said that you would. Are these pics taken in this new clean profile, or in your original profile? If original only, then i repeat my suggestion.

Nandalee

@guigirl Nope, didn't work for me in a code block either, I tried that first, ofc. But I can read that very clearly if I reopen the pics by clicking on them? You just can't copy out of pics which is annoying and due to size I had to split them into smaller sections. I guess the spam warning is due to me being new on the forum.

These are indeed taken in my normal profile, I will add new ones if I encounter it in the test profile but it doesn't happen every time I start vivaldi, might take a while.
Mind these are two different occurrences, first post and second post, might be half an hour inbetween.
The first post was created after I reloaded the tab. It is rather lucky one reload did fix it, that's really uncommon and that's why I thought a second example could be needed. Let's call the first one yt-case and the second forum-case since that are the sites that crashed.

yt-case:
I open vivaldi via terminal
yt-tab is open on start
tab immediately crashes
I copy all text out of the terminal
I switch to forum tab that didn't crash (only yt crashed!)
forum doesn't accept my text so I make pics from the exact lines I previously copied.
forum-case:
I open vivaldi via terminal
forum-tab is open on start
tab immediately crashes
try to reload, crashes again and again
I make my pics, save them and restart vivaldi and evenually the whole system
Afterwards, forum-tab behaves again so I can write my second post

I do realize I should have checked if other tabs would have worked in the forum-case, but I didn't think of it then.

There are quite a few mentions of gpu related errors in there but my graphics card is not behaving oddly at all during the crashes and I can't recall any other gpu related crashes on other programs of that scale. I do game on linux, so I'm sure I would have noticed.

Nandalee

Okay, Updates:
Before extensively testing with a new profile the problems escalated into me being unable to open vivaldi at all, that firmly rules out profile settings as a course, I think. Further, firefox started to act up, too, which cost me my last nerve and I reset the whole system. Now I am on a brand new system, a couple days in, and guess what: The problem is back! I did extensive memory tests as the shutdown error before was "Speicherzugriffsfehler" which is german for something like memory access error and I got arount fixing vaapi, which was what caused some of the lines you see in earlier posts here and were not related.

This is what I got from a crashing vivaldi before the system reset unable to even start up (not there again...yet):

So, the errors I'm getting now on the fresh system are all related to chrome-extensions, it seems. I did install adblocker but removed it afterwards. I even completely reinstalled vivaldi and the extensions are not showing up in the settings anymore aside from a plasma related one that was installed automatically. Could there problems with removing chrome-extensions properly in vivaldi? And how would I be going about that?

S_Paternotte

Could it be a hardware failure (drive, memory, cpu, main board)?

Nandalee

@s_paternotte As mentioned, I thought it is related to memory failure, too, but I did a memtest before resetting the system, got back healthy for all disks and RAM. I didn't do more extensive tests for lost segments, yet, I will do that now that exams are finally over, thank god
I do not have any other issues with steam, wine, eclipse and a whole lot of various other programs that are way more unstable than a browser normally is so I doubt it is related to cpu, mb or gpu, but I might as well be wrong there. I don't really know how to go about testing that, to be honest, apart from stresstesting and having a close eye on various hardware monitors, is there something specific you would try first?

On a side note: I did install vivaldi on my laptop (also manjaro arch) and while it didn't crash there, I got the exact same chrome-extension errors and I'm way more sure about the hardware being healthy there, never acted up before in the slightest. Even if the crashing is indeed related to hardware failure, is there an explanation for these errors?

Nandalee

Update: Neither disks nor RAM had anything.

Nandalee

After a lot of switching hardware and testing between this and another system the culprit seems indeed to be two of the four RAM sticks, hadn't had any issues for over a week now. The mem tests simply did not catch this, I guess.
So, thank you all for help this far, even if it was such a banality as tests not catching issues in the end