Firefox hanging regularly

[Featherfoot]

I am running Firefox 24.3.0 but have had similar problems with other recent versions.

What is happening is if I leave Firefox up and running for an indeterminate amount of time, it will become unresponsive and event handling will get very slow; screen refresh will get slow, changing tabs will take a long time, even exiting is slow. If I terminate Firefox and restart it, the problem will go away for a while.

Other than switching to Chromium, does anybody have any ideas on what is wrong?

emerge --info follows:

opper bin # emerge --info firefox
Portage 2.2.8-r1 (default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop, gcc-4.7.3, glibc-2.17, 3.10.32-gentoo x86_64)
=================================================================
System Settings
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-3.10.32-gentoo-x86_64-AMD_Phenom-tm-_II_X4_970_Processor-with-gentoo-2.2
KiB Mem: 4044228 total, 798760 free
KiB Swap: 1021948 total, 985652 free
Timestamp of tree: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 01:00:01 +0000
ld GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.23.2
app-shells/bash: 4.2_p45
dev-java/java-config: 2.2.0
dev-lang/python: 2.7.5-r3, 3.2.5-r3, 3.3.3
dev-util/cmake: 2.8.11.2
dev-util/pkgconfig: 0.28
sys-apps/baselayout: 2.2
sys-apps/openrc: 0.12.4
sys-apps/sandbox: 2.6-r1
sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.69
sys-devel/automake: 1.10.3, 1.11.6, 1.12.6, 1.13.4
sys-devel/binutils: 2.23.2
sys-devel/gcc: 4.7.3-r1
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.7.3
sys-devel/libtool: 2.4.2
sys-devel/make: 3.82-r4
sys-kernel/linux-headers: 3.9 (virtual/os-headers)
sys-libs/glibc: 2.17
Repositories: gentoo
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/config /usr/share/gnupg/qualified.txt"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/dconf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/php/apache2-php5.5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5.5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5.5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FCFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-logs config-protect-if-modified distlocks ebuild-locks fixlafiles merge-sync news parallel-fetch preserve-libs protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch userpriv usersandbox usersync"
FFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org"
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed"
MAKEOPTS="-j5"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --omit-dir-times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --human-readable --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=""
USE="3dnow X Xaw3d a52 aac aalib acl acpi aim alsa amd64 ao apache2 apm audiofile avahi berkdb bidi blas bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo calendar caps cdda cddb cdinstall cdparanoia cdr cgi clamav cli consolekit cracklib crypt css ctype cups curl cvs cxx dbi dbm dbus dbx dga directfb dri dts dv dvb dvd dvdr emboss encode enscript evo examples exif expat fam fastcgi fbcon ffmpeg firefox flac fontconfig foomaticdb fortran freetype ftp gcj gdbm gif gimp glu gmp gnuplot gnutls gphoto2 gpm graphviz gsl gsm gstreamer guile gzip hal handbook hddtemp httpd iconv icq icu idn ieee1394 imagemagick imlib innodb introspection iodbc ipv6 jabber java java6 javascript jbig jingle jpeg jpeg2k kde kontact lapack lcms ldap libcaca libedit libgda libnotify libwww lm_sensors lua lzma lzo mad maildir matroska mikmod milter mime mmap mmx mng modules motif mozilla mp3 mp4 mpeg mpi mplayer msn multilib musepac mysql mysqli nas ncurses networkmanager nls nntp nptl nsplugin odbc offensive ofx ogg oggvorbis opengl openmp osc oscar oss pam pango pch pcntl pcre pdf perl php plasma plotutils png policykit portaudio posix postgres ppds pulseaudio python qt3support qt4 quicktime raw rdesktop readline rss ruby samba sasl sdl semantic-desktop session sharedext sharedmem simplexml smp sndfile snmp soap sockets socks5 speex spell sqlite sqlite3 sse sse2 ssl startup-notification stream subversion suid svg symlink syslog sysvipc szip tcl tcpd theora threads tidy tiff timiditytk tokenizer truetype udev udisks unicode upower usb v4l v4l2 vcd vlm vorbis win32codecs wmf wxwidgets x264 xcb xcomposite xft xine xinerama xinetd xml xnlrpc xosd xv xvid yahoo zeroconf zlib" ABI_X86="64" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" APACHE2_MODULES="authn_core authz_core socache_shmcb unixd actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cgi cgid dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CALLIGRA_FEATURES="kexi words flow plan sheets stage tables krita karbon braindump author" CAMERAS="ptp2" COLLECTD_PLUGINS="df interface irq load memory rrdtool swap syslog" ELIBC="glibc" GPSD_PROTOCOLS="ashtech aivdm earthmate evermore fv18 garmin garmintxt gpsclock itrax mtk3301 nmea ntrip navcom oceanserver oldstyle oncore rtcm104v2 rtcm104v3 sirf superstar2 timing tsip tripmate tnt ublox ubx" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS="presenter-console presenter-minimizer" LINGUAS="en" OFFICE_IMPLEMENTATION="libreoffice" PHP_TARGETS="php5-5" PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python2_7" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_3" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby19 ruby18" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia nouveau" XFCE_PLUGINS="brightness menu trash" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account"
Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_BUNZIP2_COMMAND, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, SYNC, USE_PYTHON

=================================================================
Package Settings
=================================================================

www-client/firefox-24.3.0 was built with the following:
USE="alsa dbus gstreamer jit libnotify minimal (multilib) pulseaudio startup-notification -bindist -custom-cflags -custom-optimization -debug (-pgo) (-selinux) -system-cairo -system-icu -system-jpeg -system-sqlite -wifi" ABI_X86="64" LINGUAS="-af -ak -ar -as -ast -be -bg -bn_BD -bn_IN -br -bs -ca -cs -csb -cy -da -de -el -en_GB -en_ZA -eo -es_AR -es_CL -es_ES -es_MX -et -eu -fa -fi -fr -fy_NL -ga_IE -gd -gl -gu_IN -he -hi_IN -hr -hu -hy_AM -id -is -it -ja -kk -km -kn -ko -ku -lg -lt -lv -mai -mk -ml -mr -nb_NO -nl -nn_NO -nso -or -pa_IN -pl -pt_BR -pt_PT -rm -ro -ru -si -sk -sl -son -sq -sr -sv_SE -ta -ta_LK -te -th -tr -uk -vi -zh_CN -zh_TW -zu"
CFLAGS="-pipe -mno-avx"
CXXFLAGS="-pipe -mno-avx"

bopper bin #

[666threesixes666]

"Other than switching to Chromium, does anybody have any ideas on what is wrong?" you didn't switch is the problem. ditto, which is horrible i hate chromium but i cant take those kinds of speed impacts & memory leaks. i actually went google-chrome route since its bin.

[njcwotx]

I am experiencing much the same last several weeks. Open Firefox, surf, hang. I am beginning to suspect it might be a flash issue as the hang typically occurs when loading pages with flash. I just popped on to google to start to find a fix and saw this here. When I find anything more ill pass it on. Im going to start by reloading flash.

bonus:
I found this on Adobe's flash player download....

[njcwotx]

there is quite about out there about flash haning all browsers in Linux and windows.

I changed /etc/adobe/mms.cfg to have this line to disable hardware acceleration.
AVHardwareDisable = 1

This supposedly helps the crashing, but it does not help for some.
_________________
Drinking from the fountain of knowldege.
Sometimes sipping.
Sometimes gulping.
Always thirsting.