Ask HN: Firefox connection problems after enabling DoH?
The latest version of Firefox (96.0 and 95.02) seems to have a problem where as soon as you enable DOH (DNS over HTTPS) the browser is unable to establish any connections. Disabling this feature once enabled doesn't resolve the issue, closing the browser leaves processes hanging in the background consuming resources. Several of my friends have reported (Windows/Linux) seeing the same issue but we haven't been able to find a solution.
395 comments
What worked for me was disabling HTTP3 support with the 'network.http.http3.enabled' key in about:config and then restarting Firefox.
Seems like it's stuck in the 'SocketThread', repeatedly doing this:
2022-01-13 08:20:53.075936 UTC - [Parent 4106991: Socket Thread]: V/nsHttp Http3Stream::OnReadSegment count=333 state=4 [this=7f6e295623a0]Updates on the bug:
> We have other services with the same type of load balancer in front of it and we currently suspect it is an HTTP/3 load balancing problem.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749908#c17
> Our current suspicion is that Google Cloud Load Balancer (or a similar CloudFlare service) that fronts one of our own servers got an update that triggers an existing HTTP3 bug. Telemetry was first implicated because it's one of the first services a normal Firefox configuration will connect first, but presumably the bug will trigger with any other connection to such a server. Our current plan is to disable HTTP3 to mitigate until we can locate the exact bug in the networking stack.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749908#c21
> We have other services with the same type of load balancer in front of it and we currently suspect it is an HTTP/3 load balancing problem.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749908#c17
> Our current suspicion is that Google Cloud Load Balancer (or a similar CloudFlare service) that fronts one of our own servers got an update that triggers an existing HTTP3 bug. Telemetry was first implicated because it's one of the first services a normal Firefox configuration will connect first, but presumably the bug will trigger with any other connection to such a server. Our current plan is to disable HTTP3 to mitigate until we can locate the exact bug in the networking stack.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749908#c21
And here I go explaining my friends and family I helped switch to Firefox that the browser I've installed on their computers got broken at the beginning of a new day while Edge and Chrome work fine... personally, I know very well bugs happen and I'm not mad, but this certainly hurts the confidence in it for the non-tech people.
It seems another workaround is disabling the collection of usage data:
https://twitter.com/vanilla_chief/status/1481546294489489409
€: It seems telemetry does no longer triggers the bug as they've changed something on the server side? So this probably won't help anymore.
https://twitter.com/vanilla_chief/status/1481546294489489409
€: It seems telemetry does no longer triggers the bug as they've changed something on the server side? So this probably won't help anymore.
Reddit Thread with tons of comments already: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/s2u7eg/is_firefox_...
I have the same issue, a different profile worked
edit: Twitter feed https://twitter.com/search?q=firefox&src=typed_query&f=live
There better be some hell of a post mortem
edit2: `network.http.http3.enabled` in about:config to false fixed it for me. Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/s2u7eg/is_firefox_...
I have the same issue, a different profile worked
edit: Twitter feed https://twitter.com/search?q=firefox&src=typed_query&f=live
There better be some hell of a post mortem
edit2: `network.http.http3.enabled` in about:config to false fixed it for me. Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/s2u7eg/is_firefox_...
I suggested that data collection should be opt-in since it is (almost) the cause of this issue, and my comment was hidden for "advocacy".
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749908#c11
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749908#c11
Firefox has been pretty unstable for me too recently, just now I had to kill several "GeckoMain" processes that kept churning even after I closed the browser. There also seems to be a memory-/performance leak that leads to the browser getting slower and slower the longer it is open, so once per day I have to close and re-open it, which fixes the issue.
I really try hard to like Firefox but it keeps falling behind. For certain tasks like debugging web applications I already resort to Chrome because the debug tools in Firefox are painfully slow in comparison. I guess FF developers have too beefy laptops and don't notice this, on my "old" T460p it makes the browser more and more unusable though. Same goes for opening "expensive" web apps like Slack or video conferencing tools, performance greatly degrades.
I really try hard to like Firefox but it keeps falling behind. For certain tasks like debugging web applications I already resort to Chrome because the debug tools in Firefox are painfully slow in comparison. I guess FF developers have too beefy laptops and don't notice this, on my "old" T460p it makes the browser more and more unusable though. Same goes for opening "expensive" web apps like Slack or video conferencing tools, performance greatly degrades.
This happened to me and a co-worker too, and I could resolve it with a `sudo killall firefox` and re-starting it.
In contrast to all the heat from many of the comments here, I'll say this: shit happens to any company. My trust in Mozilla is not (yet) shaken just because a bug made it into production, even if that bug made it there due to bad decisions or even (hopefully temporary) lack of vision.
I, for one, am not comfortable with giving full control of the internet to Google and friends, so using FF is one of the things that let me "fight".
In contrast to all the heat from many of the comments here, I'll say this: shit happens to any company. My trust in Mozilla is not (yet) shaken just because a bug made it into production, even if that bug made it there due to bad decisions or even (hopefully temporary) lack of vision.
I, for one, am not comfortable with giving full control of the internet to Google and friends, so using FF is one of the things that let me "fight".
I really hope the auto-update component doesn't have the same issue, otherwise Firefox is essentially dead on millions of computers owned by non-techies.
What is going on at Mozilla? It's getting harder to stay faithful to the organization supposedly representing the open web. They are acting more like the profit-first companies that are strangling our use of the internet. Starting a browser to a blank page should not make any outbound connection until the user requests something. Apparently their HTTP3 support is choking while trying to connect to some centralized service. This is an unacceptably poor engineering design.
Genuinely, I cannot reproduce the issue. I ensured that both DoH (set to Cloudflare) and H3 are enabled but didn't hit the snag, so either Cloudflare has a buggy deployment or the hunch (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749908#c6) that it's telemetry activating H3.
Update: using Google's (the horror) DoH, and I didn't notice problems. Might just be CF having a bad H3 deployment, but I want to know what bug it triggered on FF.
Update 2: To clarify, CF did indeed hang FF, but also Google, which is know for at least bothering to monitor complaints (and dns.google is still H2). Trying to disable telemetry now.
Update 3: incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org is still H2. Can someone give me the other domains of MozTelemetry? Browser still working as of the moment.
Update 4: Telemetry was indeed H3'd: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749908#c17, me angery right now.
Update: using Google's (the horror) DoH, and I didn't notice problems. Might just be CF having a bad H3 deployment, but I want to know what bug it triggered on FF.
Update 2: To clarify, CF did indeed hang FF, but also Google, which is know for at least bothering to monitor complaints (and dns.google is still H2). Trying to disable telemetry now.
Update 3: incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org is still H2. Can someone give me the other domains of MozTelemetry? Browser still working as of the moment.
Update 4: Telemetry was indeed H3'd: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749908#c17, me angery right now.
So what's strange here is that these hangs are weeks after Firefox 95.0.2 was released. That points to either DoH provider or some HTTP 3 server triggering the buggy behavior at scale. Either is fairly scary.
On Bugzilla now: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749908
I've been using firefox since its very first day. In recent months I have had quite a lot of issues. Somehow the fullscreen mode always shows "Press ESC to escape". Last week, somehow all my cookies are gone and I have to re-login all sites again; worst, all add-ons settings are gone too. Well quite a lot of stuff. It's my mistake to install some add-ons or something crazy, but I really hope there is any easy way to "understand and fix the problems". The browser is not a technical bomb field that I need to invest my time :(
I'm typing this from my rarely-used Chrome install. Firefox just broke for me, and killing all the processes and / or restarting isn't helping.
Edit: I am on Firefox 91.4.1esr, so clearly it isn't just the latest versions that are affected.
Edit: I am on Firefox 91.4.1esr, so clearly it isn't just the latest versions that are affected.
Other workaround: Go to preferences -> Firefox Data Collection and uncheck everything. Then restart Firefox[0]
[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749908#c6I'm having the same issue. All tabs froze and the FF energy demand spiked. I upgraded manually from 95.0.2 to 96.0 but the issue persisted.
Twitter[1] is currently lighting up with broken FF reports across the globe.
Some people are reporting that if you hold down Shift while opening it works (though any FF personalisation is wiped). That didn't work for me on Mac.
[1]: https://twitter.com/search?f=live&q=firefox%20until%3A2022-0...
Twitter[1] is currently lighting up with broken FF reports across the globe.
Some people are reporting that if you hold down Shift while opening it works (though any FF personalisation is wiped). That didn't work for me on Mac.
[1]: https://twitter.com/search?f=live&q=firefox%20until%3A2022-0...
I love Firefox. It's depressing to see the hate they're getting in the comments.
Firefox stopped working in the middle of writing an email. Couldn’t even restart the browser without it crashing. Rebooting didn’t fix it. Reinstalling it only temporarily fixed it. I got frustrated and installed the ESR version and it STILL didn’t work.
This whole incident makes me feel better about myself. Like any developer, I’ve deployed some nasty bugs into production. But I’ve never completely broken a web browser relied on by millions. My heart goes out to the FF team members working to fix this.
This whole incident makes me feel better about myself. Like any developer, I’ve deployed some nasty bugs into production. But I’ve never completely broken a web browser relied on by millions. My heart goes out to the FF team members working to fix this.
Thought it was my Internet connection as a browser wouldn't just stop working like that. Currently on Edge.
On default configs, what did the trick for me was disabling all telemetry, then restart Firefox. Works on Windows and Linux.
EDIT: FIX worked temporarily.. had to go the network.http.http3.enabled route, sorry folks
I literally just fixed this problem by installing that microsoft visual redistributable https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1326304
It just started happening to me after i updated firefox.. I installe that VC runtime, restarded, and now it works.. didn't have to disable anything in the browser.. this has been happening for at least a year, reading reddit and googling..
I literally just fixed this problem by installing that microsoft visual redistributable https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1326304
It just started happening to me after i updated firefox.. I installe that VC runtime, restarded, and now it works.. didn't have to disable anything in the browser.. this has been happening for at least a year, reading reddit and googling..
I feel a symptom I've been having for a couple of days could be related, but I can't be sure: There's a site I can only access via a personal VPN connection. If I try to access it while on the VPN, it works immediately. If I try to access it off the VPN, realise it's not accessible because I'm not on the VPN, connect to the VPN and try again, it takes a good 30s to a minute to get to.
Feels like Firefox waits some amount of time before making fresh attempts to a previously failed site, possibly due to some caching.
Feels like Firefox waits some amount of time before making fresh attempts to a previously failed site, possibly due to some caching.
Oh man and I thought it was only me. I couldn't even refresh Firefox from the UI and had to start it in safe-mode to reset everything. That fixed it but holy moly
Aaaand another bunch of users lost to Chrome ...
I've only spoken with 2 other people and they were not as lucky as me to have read about the fix on this very comment page, so they were "forced" to use Chrome/ium to be able to access the web. Not sure they will switch back to Firefox.
I am surely not switching to Chromium based browsers, but it is time again for me to consider switching to Icecat or so instead after what happened today.
I've only spoken with 2 other people and they were not as lucky as me to have read about the fix on this very comment page, so they were "forced" to use Chrome/ium to be able to access the web. Not sure they will switch back to Firefox.
I am surely not switching to Chromium based browsers, but it is time again for me to consider switching to Icecat or so instead after what happened today.
I created a short step-by-step blog post, with images, about a solution that worked for us because people started contacting our support. I think I can share it here: https://www.queuemetrics.com/blog/2022/01/13/firefox-stopped...
What's driving me crazy about Firefox is that every time they release a new version, whatever version I am running on my machine stops working-- it refuses to load any new page or to refresh any existing page.
So I have to open Safari and download and install the latest release.
Which means I can never count on Firefox working. Frustrating.
osx, if that helps anyone suggest a fix.
So I have to open Safari and download and install the latest release.
Which means I can never count on Firefox working. Frustrating.
osx, if that helps anyone suggest a fix.
So, looking at the HTTP3 wikipedia page I see this:
"HTTP/3 uses QUIC, a transport layer network protocol which uses user space congestion control over the User Datagram Protocol (UDP)."
Ok. Is it still a thing with internet core routers that in case of congestion issues they drop datagram packets because they're not guaranteed to be delivered anyway?
"HTTP/3 uses QUIC, a transport layer network protocol which uses user space congestion control over the User Datagram Protocol (UDP)."
Ok. Is it still a thing with internet core routers that in case of congestion issues they drop datagram packets because they're not guaranteed to be delivered anyway?
My firefox hung in a weird way and I think it might be because of this. However what happended was slightly amusing.
I was in the middle of a chess game. I played a move and the opponent's clock just seemed to be ticking down. The correct response for them was obvious so I couldn't understand why they were taking so long. Eventually I became suspicious and realised all my firefox tabs were kind of "stuck" and I couldn't refresh anything etc. Eventually my opponents clock seemed to run out completely but the game didn't end. I had to forcefully restart my firefox and when I got back to my game (fully expecting to have lost on time) saw that my opponent had played a terrible blunder and immediately resigned.
I was in the middle of a chess game. I played a move and the opponent's clock just seemed to be ticking down. The correct response for them was obvious so I couldn't understand why they were taking so long. Eventually I became suspicious and realised all my firefox tabs were kind of "stuck" and I couldn't refresh anything etc. Eventually my opponents clock seemed to run out completely but the game didn't end. I had to forcefully restart my firefox and when I got back to my game (fully expecting to have lost on time) saw that my opponent had played a terrible blunder and immediately resigned.
Once again, thank you to jbaiter - his HTTP3 solution worked for me.
The fault occurred mid-session, whilst streaming a live broadcast, and I lost the connection.
Plenty of people using the opportunity to criticise Mozilla, but if it's a third-party srvice problem, you can't blame them.
The fault occurred mid-session, whilst streaming a live broadcast, and I lost the connection.
Plenty of people using the opportunity to criticise Mozilla, but if it's a third-party srvice problem, you can't blame them.