Bug#627348: "New Tab" often unresponsive the first time I start Chromium

[Torbjörn Andersson]

Package: chromium
Version: 11.0.696.68~r84545-2
Severity: normal

Normally when I start Chromium, I get a built-in start page with 
recently visited pages etc. However if I haven't run Chromium for a 
while, and then start it, I usually get a blank page. After a while, I'm 
told that the "New Tab" page has become unresponsive:

    Page(s) Unresponsive
    The following page(s) have become unresponsive.
    You can wait for them to become responsive or kill
    them.

       New Tab
                                     [Kill pages] [Wait]

Nothing useful is printed to the console. Only a message about the debug 
file /home/<username>/tmp/mozdebug being opened, and I think that comes 
from the "mozplugger" package. Removing that didn't seem to make any 
difference.

Chosing to kill the tab doesn't help much. I do get a new tab, and when 
I use it a page may load at least partially, but then it usually becomes 
unresponsive again.

If I quit Chromium its processes remain running, presumably waiting for 
something to die. However, if I terminate it forcibly (e.g. by pressing 
Ctrl-C at the prompt where I launched it) and start it again, it works. 
When hitting Ctrl-C the following messages are printed to the console:

    Handling SIGINT.
    Check failed: g_shutdown_pipe_write_fd != -1
    Handling SIGINT.
    Successfully wrote to shutdown pipe, resetting signal handler.

(The order of the messages may differ. I have to hit Ctrl-C a second 
time for Chromium to die.)

But that's not much different from what happens if I kill a working 
Chromium the same way.

My only theory, and it's just a wild guess, is that it's somehow related 
to timing and/or threading. The first time, it presumably had to load 
everything from disk, while the second time it was cached in memory. 
This could of course affect the timing of things. This is almost - but 
not quite - always enough to reproduce the bug for me:

    # sync
    # echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
    $ chromium

(This is voodoo to me; I just came across it today while looking for 
ways to clear the file system cache.)

I don't think I have any old configuration that messes things up. I 
almost only use Chromium when Iceweasel fails me. I tried removing my 
~/.config/chromium directory, and it still happened. It seems more 
likely that it's interacting badly with something else that I've 
installed, but I don't know what. (I do have the flashplugin-nonfree 
package installed, but that can't be uncommon.)

This is all frustratingly vague, and debugging Chromium from the source 
code is beyond my abilities. But if someone could tell me how to produce 
usable debug output, I'd be happy to.

Regards,

Torbjörn Andersson


-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
   APT prefers unstable
   APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.38-2-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_DK.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_DK.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages chromium depends on:
ii  chromium-inspect 11.0.696.68~r84545-2    page inspector for the 
chromium br
ii  libasound2       1.0.23-4                shared library for ALSA 
applicatio
ii  libbz2-1.0       1.0.5-6                 high-quality block-sorting 
file co
ii  libc6            2.13-4                  Embedded GNU C Library: 
Shared lib
ii  libcairo2        1.10.2-6                The Cairo 2D vector 
graphics libra
ii  libcups2         1.4.6-5                 Common UNIX Printing 
System(tm) -
ii  libdbus-1-3      1.4.8-3                 simple interprocess 
messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2 0.92-1                  simple interprocess 
messaging syst
ii  libevent-1.4-2   1.4.13-stable-1         An asynchronous event 
notification
ii  libexpat1        2.0.1-7                 XML parsing C library - 
runtime li
ii  libfontconfig1   2.8.0-2.2               generic font configuration 
library
ii  libfreetype6     2.4.4-1                 FreeType 2 font engine, 
shared lib
ii  libgcc1          1:4.6.0-7               GCC support library
ii  libgconf2-4      2.28.1-6                GNOME configuration 
database syste
ii  libgcrypt11      1.4.6-5                 LGPL Crypto library - 
runtime libr
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0 2.23.3-3                GDK Pixbuf library
ii  libglib2.0-0     2.28.6-1                The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgtk2.0-0      2.24.4-3                The GTK+ graphical user 
interface
ii  libjpeg62        6b1-1                   The Independent JPEG 
Group's JPEG
ii  libnspr4-0d      4.8.7-2                 NetScape Portable Runtime 
Library
ii  libnss3-1d       3.12.9.with.ckbi.1.82-1 Network Security Service 
libraries
ii  libpam0g         1.1.2-3                 Pluggable Authentication 
Modules l
ii  libpango1.0-0    1.28.3-6                Layout and rendering of 
internatio
ii  libpng12-0       1.2.44-2                PNG library - runtime
ii  libprotobuf7     2.4.0a-2                protocol buffers C++ library
ii  libspeex1        1.2~rc1-1               The Speex codec runtime library
ii  libstdc++6       4.6.0-7                 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libv8-3.1.8.10   3.1.8.10-3              V8 JavaScript Engine
ii  libvpx0          0.9.6-1                 VP8 video codec (shared 
library)
ii  libx11-6         2:1.4.3-1               X11 client-side library
ii  libxdamage1      1:1.1.3-1               X11 damaged region 
extension libra
ii  libxext6         2:1.3.0-1               X11 miscellaneous extension 
librar
ii  libxml2          2.7.8.dfsg-2+b1         GNOME XML library
ii  libxrender1      1:0.9.6-1               X Rendering Extension 
client libra
ii  libxslt1.1       1.1.26-7+b1             XSLT 1.0 processing library 
- runt
ii  libxss1          1:1.2.1-1               X11 Screen Saver extension 
library
ii  libxtst6         2:1.2.0-1               X11 Testing -- Record 
extension li
ii  xdg-utils        1.1.0~rc1-2             desktop integration 
utilities from
ii  zlib1g           1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3        compression library - runtime

chromium recommends no packages.

Versions of packages chromium suggests:
pn  chromium-l10n                 <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information