Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes? Topic is solved

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ron_1
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Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by ron_1 » 2022-01-26, 14:03

A while ago I went from Devuan Linux 2.1 up to Devuan 3, and since then I've been getting a lot more hard crashes of the browser. I am not using hardware acceleration (there was a reason but I don't remember it). My question is if I switched it on, would that reduce the number of crashes I'm getting?

Code: Select all

System:
  Kernel: 4.19.0-18-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0
    Desktop: MATE 1.20.4 Distro: Devuan GNU/Linux 3 (beowulf)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: ASUS product: All Series v: N/A
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: ASUSTeK model: H81M-C v: Rev X.0x serial: <superuser required>
    BIOS: American Megatrends v: 3602 date: 03/26/2018
CPU:
  Info: dual core model: Intel Pentium G3220 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Haswell
    rev: 3 cache: L1: 128 KiB L2: 512 KiB L3: 3 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1940 high: 2302 min/max: 800/3000 cores: 1: 2302
    2: 1579 bogomips: 11972
  Flags: ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics
    vendor: ASUSTeK driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: loaded: modesetting
    unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Haswell Desktop v: 4.5 Mesa 18.3.6
    direct render: Yes

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-01-26, 14:19

Intel IGP is notorious for being less than stable. Perhaps that's why you disabled HWA in the past
All i can say is give it a try. if it works better, good. If it doesn't, then you'll know soon enough.
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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by ron_1 » 2022-01-26, 14:23

Moonchild wrote:
2022-01-26, 14:19
All i can say is give it a try. if it works better, good. If it doesn't, then you'll know soon enough.
Flipped it on just before reading your post. :) Will post back as soon as I'm satisfied I figured it out, whether it helps or not.

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by ron_1 » 2022-02-04, 17:42

Since creating this post, I have updated my OS from Devuan 3 to 4. That didn't seem to help much with PM's crashes (FTR, I get a lot of crashes with Vivaldi when viewing YouTube). I thought it might since this problem didn't exist on Devuan 2.1. Most of PM's crashes came when I had a lot of tabs of yahoo news stories opened, which do have a lot of video, so I'm assuming the crashes have something to do with video playing. Trying now to avoid using yahoo for news.

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-02-04, 20:17

Definitely sounds like you're having an issue with video playback as a whole on your system, if it's common between Vivaldi and Pale Moon specifically with video being played.
I suspect graphics driver instabilities as a root cause; of course on Devuan that is completely out of my area of expertise.
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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by ron_1 » 2022-02-05, 20:47

Moonchild wrote:
2022-02-04, 20:17
I suspect graphics driver instabilities as a root cause; of course on Devuan that is completely out of my area of expertise.
Here's that info, if anybody can give me any direction to take.

Code: Select all

Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics
    vendor: ASUSTeK driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: modesetting
    unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics (HSW GT1) v: 4.5 Mesa 20.3.5
    direct render: Yes

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by vannilla » 2022-02-06, 01:12

The listed info seems correct.
The important part is Mesa, but it correctly lists the Intel driver as expected and has direct rendering activated.
Since you also experience crashes with other programs, I suggest updating everything to the latest version available, reboot the system completely (i.e. make sure it actually turns off everything instead of dropping to some kind of suspended state) and then ask either in the Devuan support place or some other Linux place, though I advise against the second option.

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by ron_1 » 2022-02-06, 03:27

vannilla wrote:
2022-02-06, 01:12
Since you also experience crashes with other programs, I suggest updating everything to the latest version available, reboot the system completely (i.e. make sure it actually turns off everything instead of dropping to some kind of suspended state) and then ask either in the Devuan support place or some other Linux place, though I advise against the second option.
I always keep everything up to date. I have asked in the Devuan forums; still waiting for a reply there.

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by ron_1 » 2022-02-06, 17:27

Got a reply there. It implies the problem is because both Pale Moon and Vivaldi are using their own libraries (the poster there even linked to this and he made it clear he doesn't agree). It was suggested to try a browser from the repos to see if I get crashes, to which I am grudgingly testing out. So far, I've gotten no crashes, but haven't tried long enough to be satisfied. I'm testing with Chromium.

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-02-07, 01:41

Our mainline binaries are by definition going to target the broadest generic platforms, and will use in-tree libraries for security and stability on those platforms. If Devuan has special requirements in terms of requiring being linked against or built with specific (versions of/patched) libraries then it will require someone from the Devuan community (not us) to make a contributed build that they maintain and test (which is nothing strange in FOSS land on Linux platforms). As an extension to the rights granted by the MPL, Pale Moon also allows for officially-branded contributed builds as per the conditions in the binary redistribution license.
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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by nostril » 2022-02-07, 14:24

For what it's worth.

Running Devuan 3.1 (updated since 1.0 Jessie) on mainly 10 year old hardware, and I never experienced any excessive hard crashes of the browser. About 3-4 crashes per year, nothing that I'd consider not to be normal. I do get about 1 system freeze per month that requires a hard reboot, but that's a different story.
Always running the latest standalone GTK2 tarball version from my /home directory, never used any .deb instalable.

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by ron_1 » 2022-02-07, 20:08

After doing what I consider to be a sufficient amount of youtube video viewing and browsing yahoo news stories on Chromium, I got zero crashes on it. Now whether that vindicates what the person on the Devuan forums has said, I don't know, I'm no computer/programing expert. I just find it weird that I didn't have this problem on Devuan 2.x. Pale Moon is still my browser of choice, but to be honest, I'm starting to waver a bit.

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-02-07, 20:25

I'll say what I've always said: Use what works best for you. If that's not Pale Moon, then that's a pity, but so be it!
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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by ron_1 » 2022-02-07, 21:26

Moonchild wrote:
2022-02-07, 20:25
I'll say what I've always said: Use what works best for you. If that's not Pale Moon, then that's a pity, but so be it!
I was thinking about you saying this as I was writing my post. For Youtube and Yahoo, and a few other sites, Chromium it must be (for now). But for everything else it's still Pale Moon. :thumbup:

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by ron_1 » 2022-02-09, 18:54

In thinking more about this problem of mine, I decided to open Pale Moon up via the terminal, and when I did I got this message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module". The reason it fails to load is because I don't have this thing installed. Researching it online, it doesn't seem possible that not having it is the cause my crashes, but what do I know? Before I install this "canberra-gtk-module" can I get some thoughts from the experts? Its description in Synaptic reads:
A GtkModule which will automatically hook into all kinds of events
inside a GTK+ program and generate sound events from them.
Come to think of it, is it a possibility that using the gtk3 version of Pale Moon will fix the crashes?

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by vannilla » 2022-02-09, 23:15

"canberra" is pretty much useless and the warning is there because GTK tries to load it.
The latest versions of GTK don't even use it anymore, assuming it was ever used in practice in the first place.
I don't believe switching to GTK 3 will solve the crashes since it's likely to come from the combination of the graphics card, the driver(s) used by the kernel and Pale Moon's own patches to the bundled libraries, but you might want to give it a spin: in the worst case nothing changes and you can just take out that experiment from the list.

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by ron_1 » 2022-02-10, 17:28

I just noticed that Pale Moon is available in the repos for MX Linux. Is it the exact same as the tarball from PM's site, or is it tailored for MX? Depending on the answer, I just may have to switch Linux distros to enjoy Pale Moon as fully as possible.

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by micwoj92 » 2022-02-10, 17:37

You can download both and compare checksums.

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by ron_1 » 2022-02-10, 18:06

micwoj92 wrote:
2022-02-10, 17:37
You can download both and compare checksums.
I'm not running MX Linux. You can download a Pale Moon tarball from MX Linux repos?? EDIT: Never mind, I see that you can, and I just did.

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Re: Would using hardware acceleration reduce crashes?

Unread post by ron_1 » 2022-02-10, 18:21

Okay, so the sums are completely different. I guess the answer to my question is a "yes" then.

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