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Thread: Kali-linux 2018.4a upgrade breaks firefox

  1. #1

    Kali-linux 2018.4a upgrade breaks firefox

    yes it is me a nuisance newbie

    I installed the kali-linux arm 2018.4a 64bit for a raspberry pi 3 B+
    After I did the apt-get update followed by the apt-get upgrade followed by the apt-get dist-upgrade,
    I could not get firefox to work. what I was able to capture is as follows

    firefox --safe-mode --browser
    [Child 1069, Chrome_ChildThread] WARNING: pipe error (28): Connection reset by peer: file /build/firefox-esr-1JpCGy/firefox-esr-60.3.0esr/ipc/chromium/src/chrome/common/ipc_channel_posix.cc, line 353
    [Child 1069, Chrome_ChildThread] WARNING: pipe error (3): Connection reset by peer: file /build/firefox-esr-1JpCGy/firefox-esr-60.3.0esr/ipc/chromium/src/chrome/common/ipc_channel_posix.cc, line 353
    Crash Annotation GraphicsCriticalError: |[C0][GFX1-]: Receive IPC close with reason=AbnormalShutdown (t=6.8075) [GFX1-]: Receive IPC close with reason=AbnormalShutdown
    Segmentation fault

    Does anybody know about this kind of a problem. Can someone please help give me some idea of what I could do to get firefox working again.
    I had a woking firefox prior to the latest upgrade performed today.
    I had installed the 2018.4a image on 11/13/2018 and did the update and upgrade and did a kali-linux full install.
    I did have a working firefox at that time after all of the updates and installs.
    Today I tried to do an update and upgrade to see if that would help me with getting the wireguard install to work which I wrote about at that time.

    I tried to enter a bug report but I can not seem to get past the login. It says my email address is used but does not let me ask for a password reset. so I am posting here.

  2. #2
    I recently read where the 64bit Kali was a beta release. I was not aware of that when I created this post.
    I have decided to stay with the 32bit Kali. where firefox seems to working OK.
    I now have a web browser that appears to work.
    thanks to all who have patience with newbies
    problem solved

  3. #3
    Join Date
    2016-Dec
    Posts
    806
    it isn't a beta release, it's experimental. There hasn't been a beta release in years.

    Could you describe what we need to do to reproduce the bug as well as the firefox version?

  4. #4
    Mister X
    Thank you for repling. I do not know the difference between experimental and beta, I just know beta is a pre-release for testing.
    To answer your question. I originally detailed the sequence I followed. on Nov 17th 2018.
    Where I downloaded the 64bit image..
    I installed the image on an SD card put it in the raspberry pi 3b+
    connected to internet,
    did the apt-get update
    apt-get upgrade
    apt-get dist-upgrade
    then I went to open the browser which within 20 seconds would shut down.
    I then tried to attempt to see if there was a 'man firefox' which there was not.
    I then did a 'whereis firefox' which showed me it did exist in the executable path,
    then i tried 'firefox -h'
    that is when I found out I could run firefox from a terminal.
    Which is what I did to generate the information I saw after firefox shutdown.
    the first line in the third paragraph was the command line in the terminal

    I hope this is helpful. Once upon a long time ago I used to have to troubleshoot firmware. I was a user of Unix not an administrator of unix. and that was about 20 years ago. Since then I have not done much in linux or unix and that is why I feel like a newbie. A lot has changed and also I have forgotten a lot of what I used to know.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    2016-Dec
    Posts
    806
    Kali 2018.4a is a stable release, however, supporting 64 bit is not entirely stable, it's still experimental (the same tools used in the 2018.4a release have been recompiled when needed in 64 bit).

    You did not specify what you did in Firefox to trigger the bug in your original post.

  6. #6
    To Mister_X, sorry I had a senior moment. my last reply was wrong as it was not originally a fresh install. I should have re-read my original post before attempting to respond to your request for how to replicate the malfunction. The error I am referring to happened on an update and upgrade done on a raspberry pi 3B+ that had a working 2018.4a 64bit that I had completed the update and upgrade and dist-upgrade on Nov 13th. After the upgrades on Nov 13th the browser was working fine. Then on Nov 17th I tried the same thing of doing the update and upgrade and dist-upgrade to the system. After this upgrades is when I found that my browser would shutdown within 20 seconds. Although later I did try a fresh SD card installation with the same result. I had a friend with a raspberry pi 3B+ also try the upgrade and he also told me his firefox aborted in about 15 seconds. Whatever is the root cause was introduced between these two dates.

    I do hope that this is helpful in being able to make the browser work again as it should.

    As a side note:
    I observed that on a 32 bit version 2018.3 upgrading a raspberry Pi3B+ with the kali-linux-full doing the update and upgrade to get to version 2018.4 that the main menu internet selection shows two browsers in the menu and when you select either of them you get the same firefox esr browser the same one as when you select the browser icon on the bottom center of the desktop screen.
    Yet if I start with a blank SD card and do a direct install of the 2018.4 kali for the raspberry pi 2 and 3 and do the upgrade install kali-linux-full the main menu internet selection shows only one browser, the correct one, firefox esr.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    2014-Feb
    Posts
    309
    Quote Originally Posted by retired_techie View Post
    To Mister_X, sorry I had a senior moment. my last reply was wrong as it was not originally a fresh install. I should have re-read my original post before attempting to respond to your request for how to replicate the malfunction. The error I am referring to happened on an update and upgrade done on a raspberry pi 3B+ that had a working 2018.4a 64bit that I had completed the update and upgrade and dist-upgrade on Nov 13th. After the upgrades on Nov 13th the browser was working fine. Then on Nov 17th I tried the same thing of doing the update and upgrade and dist-upgrade to the system. After this upgrades is when I found that my browser would shutdown within 20 seconds. Although later I did try a fresh SD card installation with the same result. I had a friend with a raspberry pi 3B+ also try the upgrade and he also told me his firefox aborted in about 15 seconds. Whatever is the root cause was introduced between these two dates.

    I do hope that this is helpful in being able to make the browser work again as it should.

    As a side note:
    I observed that on a 32 bit version 2018.3 upgrading a raspberry Pi3B+ with the kali-linux-full doing the update and upgrade to get to version 2018.4 that the main menu internet selection shows two browsers in the menu and when you select either of them you get the same firefox esr browser the same one as when you select the browser icon on the bottom center of the desktop screen.
    Yet if I start with a blank SD card and do a direct install of the 2018.4 kali for the raspberry pi 2 and 3 and do the upgrade install kali-linux-full the main menu internet selection shows only one browser, the correct one, firefox esr.
    The image is experimental in that, things will break - if you have to have a 100% working image, I would suggest you stick with the 32bit image for now.

    Firefox is a known issue unfortunately, and upstream (Debian) already has a bug open about it - the reason that Firefox worked is because I manually installed an older version during image creation (You can read through the build scripts on Github to see the 3 packages that need to be installed).

    The current workarounds, are to

    a) Install Firefox in 32bit mode ( dpkg --add-architecture armhf && apt update && apt install firefox:armhf )
    b) Install Chromium and run it with --disable-sandbox (iirc, maybe it's a different option like --user-data-dir=/tmp )
    c) Install the older packages like I do in the build script, and then pin the packages (apt pinning instructions can be found on the web)

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