Re: Firefox 133 test package for ppc64

On 13/5/25 6:08 am, Ken Cunningham wrote:
> It's challenging to debug firefox.
>
> I have 3.5G of RAM, and I added an 8G swapfile, and with that firefox will run under gdb but it takes 15-18 minutes for firefox to start. It uses a lot of swapfile.

That's a long time. When I first tested it under gdb I found my HDD 
thrashing because I had left an old swap partition active. Or actually 
the installer would have picked it up. I setup an SSD that I've 
dedicated to Linux installs but didn't add a swap partition too. Do you 
run it from SSD?

I did add swap to my SSD but managed to install 8GB to my machine so I 
could load it into pure memory. That reduces it to around 2 minutes load 
time. Should time it.

> Then when you start interacting with is (eg ask it to open a website) it does a hard crash and locks up the system, with no opportunity to backtrace.
>
> Turns out gdb logging is off by default -- I'll turn that on and see if I can capture anything before it downs the system.

Do you have any way of attaching a terminal? My system has a serial port 
so it's easy enough for me to do it the "old fashioned" way over serial 
cable with a "console=ttyS0" added to my kernel command line.  Don't 
know if a G5 Mac USB supports but I found USB2/3 has a debug feature 
that's pretty much a modern drop in replacement for a serial port link. 
Just needs activating in kernel and the right USB cable. So kinda like 
the old way as you need a modern USB null modem cable now. :-)