Firefox 3.0 crashes with "Segmentation Fault"

[useResa]

Before someone makes a comment: I DID search the forums and found many threads on this issue. But I seem to find nowhere a solution.

As reported in many other threads, running Firefox from terminal only gives the indication "Segmentation fault".

rdrijsen@dell-ubuntu:~$ firefox
Segmentation fault

I have seen posts where it was indicated that it may be related to Seesmic (I don't know what it is so that will certainly not be the case in my situation).

Or that it could be related with closing the GMail tab (as posted here and here), but I was NOT closing the GMail tab. Actually I was trying to reply to another post on this forum when the crash occurred. That is why I am currently posting from Opera.

Furthermore I have found various (possible ) solutions:
Installation of FF 3.0.1
However, AFAIK I am running 3.0.1 (see below the result of aptitude show firefox)

Package: firefox
State: installed
Automatically installed: yes
Version: 3.0.1+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.3
Priority: optional
Section: web
Maintainer: Alexander Sack <asac@ubuntu.com>
Uncompressed Size: 123k
Depends: firefox-3.0
Description: meta package for the popular mozilla web browser
 Firefox 3 is the next major release of the standalone Mozilla browser; it is
 written in the XUL language and designed to be lightweight and cross-platform. 
 
 This browser was previously known as Firefox 2, Firebird and Phoenix. 
 
 This is a meta package that will point to the latest firefox package in ubuntu.
 Don't remove this if you want to receive automatic major version upgrades for
 this package in future.

Resolved with July 25,2008 update
Since it is currently August and my system is up-to-date ... I guess that did not work for me

Removal of the SCIM package
This seems to have resolved the issue for at least two users. And to be honest ... I have not tried this one yet. If I look up SCIM I get the following from the description

Description: smart common input method platform
 Smart Common Input Method (SCIM) is an input method (IM) platform.  Input
 methods are needed to enter complex characters in many non-latin languages.
 SCIM provides a common platform for various plugin modules and independent IM
 programs, as well as a set of modules and programs on its own.  It is highly
 modularized and exposes abstract interfaces, so that plugin modules with
 different functions can easily communicate with each other.  The currently
 supported module types are configuration, IM engine, front end, filter, and
 setup GUI. 
 
 SCIM achieves the communication between IM engines and front ends through both
 shared library linking and server/client mode.  It supports XIM protocol, as
 well as GTK+ IM module and Qt IM module. 
 
 This package is the main binary package of SCIM.  It includes: the main program
 scim (GTK+ based) and other support programs; simple configuration module, X11
 front end module, rawcode IM engine module, simplified/traditional Chinese
 conversion filter module, and their corresponding setup GUI modules; GTK+ panel
 and its setup GUI module; and a GTK+ based setup tool. 
 
 SCIM is a well accepted platform and features various input method engines for
 many languages.  In Debian you can find the following separately packaged IMs
 useful: scim-tables-{additional,ja,ko,zh}, scim-pinyin, scim-uim, scim-m17n,
 scim-chewing, scim-anthy, scim-canna, scim-prime, and scim-skk. GTK+ users
 would also find package scim-gtk2-immodule useful for GTK+ IM module support. 
 
 For development on SCIM platform, please see the description of scim-dev
 package.
Homepage: http://www.scim-im.org/

From this I understand it is needed for IM. So I do not like to remove it until I know it is save to remove.
Can anyone indicate what issues I may run into when removing the package?

And then there are still a number of threads that indicate the problem still exists. References are made to Flash (which IIRC was an old issue in FF 2).

Does anybody know a proper solution (besides running Opera )?

BTW: I am running Hardy 8.04

[kelean]

I have recently done a install of 8.4.1 and I am having the same some of the same issues. After the install and updating I was not able to start firefox at all. When I tried from the cli the error posted was segmentation fault. Today I was able to start firefox for a short time but after a minute or two it just closes. I started it from the cli and when it closed the error was the segmentation fault.

I am wondering if removing it and reinstalling will have any effect.

I do like opera for the most part. I do prefer firefox most of the time.

[useResa]

Yesterday I was still able to browse some of the pages but (mainly) got the Segmentation Fault when trying to reply or so on a forum.
Today it crashes at startup.

Seems I am stuck to Opera until this is resolved

[kelean]

I am starting to get the same things in opera now. Shutdowns for no reasons and then I cant start opera at all. I just get segmentation fault from the cli. I am seroiusly thinking about tring out Slackware or Arch linux.

[jou770d]

Been having the same problem for a long time. Firefox is annoying the hell of me by crashing all the time with a "segmentation fault".
It's not always flash related, although flash does seems to make things worst (tried every "fix" on the forums and some that aren't but nothing helped).
And please don't "advise" me to use Opera...

[geokok1981]

I just did a fresh install using the 8.04.1 cd (greek translation version).....5 times!!!

This is not flash related in any way. I have been getting the "segmentation fault" for firefox WITHOUT flash installed - WITHOUT any plugins installed.
Also I have other apps (such as: terminal, update manager, sources, etc) crashing on the same, sudden, way, although I haven't checked that they are in the same category of "segmentation fault" through a terminal outpout. They sure look the same though.

And all this on a system that has been running ubuntu for 6 months now without any hick ups so, no it is not hardware related either.

[Cato2]

...
Also I have other apps (such as: terminal, update manager, sources, etc) crashing on the same, sudden, way, although I haven't checked that they are in the same category of "segmentation fault" through a terminal outpout. They sure look the same though.

And all this on a system that has been running ubuntu for 6 months now without any hick ups so, no it is not hardware related either.

It's just possible that some hardware has gone bad recently - uncommon but can happen. One easy thing to do is to reboot Ubuntu and choose the 'memory test' option in GRUB (hit Esc when booting, it should be in there - if not, Google for "memtest ubuntu grub menu.lst" to see what to edit in /boot/grub/menu.lst). Leave this test running overnight and that will at least help see if memory is involved here.

I did have problems with Firefox crashing a while back, and it's started again, but not very often - possibly because I run with 100+ tabs and 12+ extensions. However, no other applications crash at all, which makes me think your issue may be hardware.

[useResa]

I have issued a separate bug on this issue, see bug #260374: firefox 3 crashes with segmentation fault

With the bug report I have also included the result of strace, which for reference is also attached to this post.

[geokok1981]

It's just possible that some hardware has gone bad recently - uncommon but can happen. One easy thing to do is to reboot Ubuntu and choose the 'memory test' option in GRUB (hit Esc when booting, it should be in there - if not, Google for "memtest ubuntu grub menu.lst" to see what to edit in /boot/grub/menu.lst). Leave this test running overnight and that will at least help see if memory is involved here.

I did have problems with Firefox crashing a while back, and it's started again, but not very often - possibly because I run with 100+ tabs and 12+ extensions. However, no other applications crash at all, which makes me think your issue may be hardware.

It seems that you were correct. Memtest found did find errors so I took out one of the 2 memory dimms. The pc now has 256MB of RAM and runs xubuntu (low ram would not allow ubuntu) happily.

Thanks for the tip.

[cor2y]

I believe its related to flash in some form or fashion.
Firefox crashes for me to with that segmentation fault error but its on sites that use flash video/animation.
Why i don't know and it is always random, in most cases, meaning visit the same site with firefox again and it won't crash but try again later and it does.
I also attempted to visit those same sites with opera just to see if it was a firefox problem , what happens is opera refuses to display the flash parts of the site.
So i assume its a flash 10 issue (which is the version i am using) i know while i used 8.04 while it was in beta and then RC and even when it was officially released there was no crashing of firefox while visiting sites, flash 9 was what was in use then.
I only updated to 10 because of the pulse audio fix.