[HOWTO] Fix unresponsive Chromium/Iceweasel in Wheezy/SID

[p00d73]

As you may have noticed, the update to libcairo2 1.12 caused some browsers to behave extremely slow. Personally I found this to be worst on Chromium and Google Chrome. Having more than 3 tabs open caused the browser to become unresponsive in tab switching, opening and closing. After a while I found that this was caused by a missing patch to libcairo2 1.12 The Ubuntu version of this package still contains the patch, so this is where I got it. (the patch is named server_side_gradient.patch)

Here's how to install a patched version of libcairo2 1.12 on your system:
open a terminal and cd in to a directory where you want the cairo source. Download the source with

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apt-get source libcairo2

cd into the newly downloaded source folder, currently "cairo-1.12.2"
Now create a patchfile in ./debian/patches with your favourite text editor:

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nano ./debian/patches/07_server_side_gradients.patch

Paste the following in this file:

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# Description: don't use server side gradients most drivers don't handle it
Index: cairo-1.12.2/src/cairo-xlib-display.c
===================================================================
--- cairo-1.12.2.orig/src/cairo-xlib-display.c	2012-04-25 21:53:19.000000000 +1200
+++ cairo-1.12.2/src/cairo-xlib-display.c	2012-05-17 16:06:18.543220800 +1200
@@ -266,11 +266,7 @@
     /* Prior to Render 0.10, there is no protocol support for gradients and
      * we call function stubs instead, which would silently consume the drawing.
      */
-#if RENDER_MAJOR == 0 && RENDER_MINOR < 10
     display->buggy_gradients = TRUE;
-#else
-    display->buggy_gradients = FALSE;
-#endif
     display->buggy_pad_reflect = FALSE;
     display->buggy_repeat = FALSE;
 

Save it, and add this patch to the ./debian/patches/series file with:

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echo 07_server_side_gradients.patch >> ./debian/patches/series

Build the source with:

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dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b

You may get some error messages about unmet dependencies, if so, install them all and run the command again.
Once finished without serious error messages, you should find a bunch of .deb files in this directory. Install them with:

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dpkg -i [packagename]

I disabled X11 while I did this, just in case, and I installed all of them, which might have been unnecessary too. But since I don't know for sure if any of the other packages except libcairo2 were affected by this patch, I felt this to be the safest way.

Now reboot (or alternatively relaunch X server) and the unresponsiveness should be fixed.

--The credit for this solution goes completely to the Ubuntu package maintainer of cairo and/or whoever wrote this patch--

[craigevil]

Complete and absolute BS.

Ubuntu packages do not have some magic voodoo that makes them work better than Debian packages.

The real solution is to run Firefox and Chrome as they do not suffer from these supposed problems. Oh wait neither do Iceweasel or Chromium.

Fully upgraded sid, with most of kde from experimental. And even on this ancient Thinkpad using the radeon driver I have no slow downs with Firefox or Chrome. Maybe I am not taking the right magic mushrooms.

$ apt-cache policy libcairo2
libcairo2:
Installed: 1.12.2-2
Candidate: 1.12.2-2
Version table:
*** 1.12.2-2 0
500 http://ftp-mirror.internap.com/pub/debian/ unstable/main i386 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

$ apt-cache policy google-chrome-stable
google-chrome-stable:
Installed: 19.0.1084.52-r138391
Candidate: 19.0.1084.52-r138391
Version table:
*** 19.0.1084.52-r138391 0
500 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable/main i386 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

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$ inxi -F
System:    Host: debian Kernel: 3.3.0-trunk-486 i686 (32 bit) Desktop: KDE 4.8.3 Distro: Debian GNU/Linux wheezy/sid
Machine:   Mobo: IBM model: 27223YU Bios: IBM version: 1PET41WW (1.09 ) date: 03/03/2003
CPU:       Single core Intel Pentium M (-UP-) cache: 1024 KB flags: (sse sse2) clocked at 1300.00 MHz 
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV200 [Mobility Radeon 7500] 
           X.Org: 1.12.1.902 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1024x768@60.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x209) GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.2
Audio:     Card: Intel 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller driver: snd_intel8x0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: 1.0.24
Network:   Card-1: Intel 82801DB PRO/100 VE (MOB) Ethernet Controller driver: e100 
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: 00:06:1b:cd:f5:82
           Card-2: Intel PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter driver: ipw2100 
           IF: eth1 state: up mac: 00:04:23:5b:b5:88
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 17.2GB (69.8% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: IC25N020ATCS04 size: 17.2GB 
Partition: ID: / size: 16G used: 12G (79%) fs: ext3 ID: /boot size: 228M used: 38M (18%) fs: ext2 
           ID: swap-1 size: 0.51GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 48.0C mobo: 47.0C 
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A fan-1: 0 
Info:      Processes: 111 Uptime: 3 days Memory: 867.2/2025.7MB Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.5 

My Firefox Information

Last updated: Tue, 05 Jun 2012 15:16:19 GMT
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0

Extensions (enabled: 30, disabled: 2; total: 32)

• Adblock Plus 2.0.3
• Add-on Compatibility Reporter 1.1
• BetterPrivacy 1.68
• Certificate Patrol 2.0.14 [disabled]
• CoLT 2.5.7
• Cookie Monster 1.1.0 [disabled]
• eCleaner 1.4
• Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus 1.2.2
• FlashGot 1.4.5
• Ghostery 2.7.2
• GoogleSharing 0.22
• Greasemonkey 0.9.20
• Hide My Ass Proxy Extension 1.2.7
• HTTPS Finder 0.85
• HTTPS-Everywhere 2.0.5
• InfoLister 0.10.4a3
• Konquefox 1.8.2
• MAFIAAFire Redirector 0.9d
• MAFIAAFIRE: Gee! No evil! 1.0.0.0
• MAFIAAFire: ThePirateBay Dancing! 0.2.2.23.17022012
• Movable Firefox Button 1.4
• Nightly Tester Tools 3.3
• NoScript 2.4.4
• Open in Private Browsing Mode 0.1
• Oxygen KDE Options 3.8
• QuickProxy 2009.07.19
• Read It Later 2.1.4
• Skip Cert Error 0.3.2
• SPDY indicator 2.1
• Stylish 1.2.6
• Toggle Cookies 0.5
• User Agent Switcher 0.7.3

Themes (3)

• Default
• Firefox B [selected]
• Oxygen KDE

Plugins

• DivX Browser Plug-In
• Java(TM) Plug-in 1.7.0_04
• KParts Plugin
• LibreOffice Plug-in
• mplayerplug-in is now gecko-mediaplayer 1.0.6
• QuickTime Plug-in 7.6.9
• RealPlayer 9
• Shockwave Flash
• Windows Media Player Plug-in

[p00d73]

You could have brought that up a little bit nicer now couldn't you? These problems originate from various Linux GPU drivers not supporting the server side gradients feature, as you might have noticed if you read the patch comments. Maybe AMD fixed that in their drivers, I don't know since I don't own any AMD cards. But if you would have taken time to read various bug reports for Google Chrome, Firefox, Chromium, nVidia drivers, libcairo2, etc. like I did, you would have noticed that this issue is not due to some sort of "magic mushrooms".

No, I do not believe Ubuntu packages have some sort of "voodoo magic", otherwise I would be using Ubuntu right? The fact remains that version 1.10 of libcairo2 had this patch included due to a whole load of bugreports about 1.8 and 1.9, and that this patch has disappeared from the 1.12 package, reintroducing this problem for a lot of users. Another fact is that the Ubuntu 1.12 package still has this patch for very good reasons. Now if you're not interested in this solution because you don't have the problem, why even bother to reply?

Btw, this "voodoo magic" did work for me.

[craigevil]

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You could have brought that up a little bit nicer now couldn't you?

no not really, I am a total and complete ***hole just ask any of my ex-wives. Plus I will most likely be dead in six months so its not like I give a crap if I piss people off.

People have whined and complained about libcairo2 for ages. And by ages I mean pretty much since Firefox>Iceweasel, and the magic fix has always been to use the Ubuntu version.

It makes the fonts look shinier, or pages magically load faster. Or rainbows brighter.

I just use Firefox and Chrome rather than Iceweasel or Chromium. Or maybe its because I tweak the hell out of Firefox.

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/* Speed Tweak - Common to all Configurations */
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("plugin.expose_full_path", true);
user_pref("ui.submenuDelay", 0);
/* Speed Tweak - Fast Computer Fast Connection */
user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

/* Disable IPV6 - Use tmpfs*/
user_pref("network.dns.disableIPv6", true);
user_pref("browser.cache.disk.parent_directory",/tmp);

/* SPDY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPDY */
user_pref("network.http.spdy.enabled", true);



///////////////////////
//*External Applications*//
///////////////////////
/* Tor/Privoxy*/
user_pref("network.http.keep-alive.timeout",600); 
user_pref("network.http.proxy.keep-alive", true);

/* Search with Duckduckgo */
user_pref("keyword.URL", "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=");
user_pref("browser.search.defaultenginename","DuckDuckGo (SSL)");

/* Multimedia players */
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.mms", "/usr/bin/mplayer");
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.mms", true);
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.rtsp", "/usr/bin/realplayer");
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.rtsp", true);

/* Access local files*/
user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "localfilelinks");
user_pref("capability.policy.localfilelinks.sites", "http://localhost");
user_pref("capability.policy.localfilelinks.checkloaduri.enabled", "allAccess");

///////////////
//* Ui tweaks *//
///////////////

/* Fix the font layout */
user_pref("layout.css.dpi", 0);

/* Hide the Go button */
user_pref("browser.urlbar.hideGoButton", true);

/* Get rid of the ugly gtk file picker */
user_pref("ui.allow_platform_file_picker", false);

/* Set backspace key to go to previous page */
user_pref("browser.backspace_action", 0);

/* hide tab close button*/
user_pref("browser.tabs.closebuttons",2);

/* Disable tab open/close animations*/
user_pref("browser.tabs.animate", false);

/////////////////////////
//*Turning off annoyances*//
/////////////////////////

// Turn that annoying autocomplete popup REALLY off:
// (This actually has a UI but it's buried.)
user_pref("browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.urlbar.showPopup", false);
user_pref("browser.urlbar.showSearch", false);

/*Turn off ext install timeout*/
user_pref("privacy.sanitize.timeSpan",0);

/* Block 3rd party cookies */
user_pref("network.cookie.cookieBehavior", 1);

// Self-signed certificate handling is annoying //
user_pref("browser.ssl_override_behavior", 2);
user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.expert_bad_cert", true);

/* Disable Mozilla blocklist*/
user_pref("extensions.blocklist.enabled",false);

/* Disable network prefetching/search engine suggest */
user_pref("network.prefetch-next", false);
user_pref("browser.search.suggest.enabled", false);

/* Enable Do Not Track*/
user_pref("privacy.donottrackheader.enabled",true);

/* Disable geolocation */
user_pref("geo.enabled", false);

/* Disable Google lookups */
user_pref("browser.safebrowsing.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.safebrowsing.remoteLookups", false);

/* Put an end to blinking text! */
user_pref("browser.blink_allowed", false);
user_pref("browser.display.show_image_placeholders", false);

/* Disable  Find As You Type */
user_pref ("accessibility.typeaheadfind", false);

/* Disable image animation */
 user_pref("image.animation_mode", "none");

/* Disable scrolling marquees */
user_pref("browser.display.enable_marquee", false);

[p00d73]

People have whined and complained about libcairo2 for ages. And by ages I mean pretty much since Firefox>Iceweasel, and the magic fix has always been to use the Ubuntu version.

Well thise bug certainly had nothing to do with the "difference" between FF and Iceweasel, neither with those between GC and Chromium. I just mentioned those two since those are the official packages. The problem affects more than browsers too. I don't suggest using the Ubuntu version either, I tried it and it completely scr*w*d up my system, this is merely a howto for those of us who don't know how to get the much-needed patch.

I just use Firefox and Chrome rather than Iceweasel or Chromium. Or maybe its because I tweak the hell out of Firefox

Probably just your AMD driver that does a better job than the nVidia one in this case.

Plus I will most likely be dead in six months so its not like I give a crap if I piss people off.

Sorry to hear that, I hope you enjoy the time you have left.

[stevepusser]

It may be a little bit easier to copy the patch from the Ubuntu debian folder into your debian one, rather than recreate it by hand.

Just download the debian.tar.gz file from here: http://packages.ubuntu.com/quantal/libcairo2

extract it, and you'll have the patch in debian/patches.

[p00d73]

I didn't do that because the Ubuntu version contains more changes than just this patch, and one of the changes over the Debian version (I don't know which one) requires libc6 >= 2.14 which isn't in the SID repositories as of yet.

[cynwulf]

As I understand it this is a butnut workaround for the server side gradients issue - and it's an nvidia problem. I remember reading about this several days ago, but decided to downgrade libcairo2 instead (which fixed the sluggishness with iceweasel when using the nouveau driver). With the nvidia driver downgrading to 1.10 is not a solution and downgrading to 1.8 is not an option, so this parch is something I might try later.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=616308

Note: The OP did not suggest installing butnut packages, but to apt-get the debianised source, patch it and build the package with server side gradients turned off. I don't see the problem there - except that the patch came from a butnut maintainer/dev?

You won't see this issue at all in Firefox/Thunderbird from Mozilla because they're not even built to use cairo...

[craigevil]

You won't see this issue at all in Firefox/Thunderbird from Mozilla because they're not even built to use cairo...

Which is one more reason to use Firefox.

Ikey the creator/maintainer of Solusos mentioned something about the libcairo crap, which is why his distro has Firefox and Thunderbird and not the Ice* even though Solusos is based on Debian Stable.

Also goes to show that Iceweasel is not just Firefox renamed. To be honest I should remove the Iceweasel IS Firefox post.

Still not really sure how a problem with nvidia (there have been a lot lately) is helped by patching libcairo.

I could care less where the 'patch' comes from, its just the fact that for years now libcairo in *buntu has been the magic fix for a multitude of issues, mostly having to do with Iceweasel. I have used Firefox and Thunderbird from Mozilla since Debian changed the names, and just like h2 I have had very few issues, none compared to all the problems with Iceweasel and Chromium.

It is always imho best to use upstream for browser and email client.

Firefox, Thunderbird, and Google Chrome all work perfectly. While you will find on any Debian forum thread after thread of Ice* problems.

Save yourselves the headache and just use Firefox, Thunderbird, and/or Seamonkey, or Google Chrome.
Tech Patterns :: Switching from Debian Iceweasel to Firefox, permanently - http://techpatterns.com/forums/about1435.html

They all upgrade when Mozilla releases new versions and they do not depend on whichever Debian releases you happen to be using. Chrome and Opera add a repo when you install them so they also stay updated.

[stevepusser]

Yes, I just suggested where to get the patch file out of the Ubuntu source, not use every patch that's in there. Of course, it's just as easy to create one from your original post with copy and paste, too.

[p00d73]

its just the fact that for years now libcairo in *buntu has been the magic fix for a multitude of issues

That's beside the point. The fix works, I could provide you with some desktop videos if you want.

Still not really sure how a problem with nvidia (there have been a lot lately) is helped by patching libcairo.

I've mentioned it more than once, server side gradients are not supported by the nVidia drivers, previous versions of libcairo2 included a patch to work around this issue. It appears to be related to anti-aliasing, when AA is disabled the performance (almost) back to normal. Another workaround was setting pixmapplacement to 0 on nVidia drivers, but that has other negative effects.

Save yourselves the headache and just use Firefox, Thunderbird, and/or Seamonkey, or Google Chrome.

The problem also exists on Google Chrome (I tested versions 18, 19, 20 and 21). I personally don't like FF , so this issue was important to me. Besides, the browsers were not the only ones affected by the slow 2D rendering, just the most notable examples. I don't think any bug with a known solutions should be ignored just because there is alternative software which isn't affected.

Yes, I just suggested where to get the patch file out of the Ubuntu source, not use every patch that's in there. Of course, it's just as easy to create one from your original post with copy and paste, too.

Just tried to make it simpler by not including downloading the Ubuntu source

[cynwulf]

Also goes to show that Iceweasel is not just Firefox renamed. To be honest I should remove the Iceweasel IS Firefox post.

Firefox can be built to use libcairo, Debian is not the only distro which does this - the changed branding is irrelevant.

It is always imho best to use upstream for browser and email client.

So... why not upstream everything? Distros are packagers. Iceweasel is not the only package built to use libcairo. I believe some terminal emulators and other parts of DEs like gnome and xfce also use it.

Firefox, Thunderbird, and Google Chrome all work perfectly. While you will find on any Debian forum thread after thread of Ice* problems.

Mostly down to ignorance and people spreading FUD... the only major problem with iceweasel in Wheezy/Sid is caused indirectly by these libcairo2 issues. In stable there are no issues as it uses an older libcairo2.

//edit: Tested the butnut patch and for me it makes no difference. Downgrading libcairo2 to 1.10 does - that's with nouveau. The nvidia driver is laggy regardless of the libcairo2 version and the patch.

[torturedutopian]

Thanks for the fix ! Actually, I stumbled upon this very same bug, I guess, when using Mozilla backports under Debian Squeeze. What I understood is that it was due to a cairo version triggering some bug or unsupported feature with Nvidia drivers, that was patched under the stable repos but not the backports, unfortunately.

I'm now using Wheezy (really happy after so many issues with Ubuntu & other distros !), and noticed the problem, not with Iceweasel, but with Icedove that makes minimization / displaying the Gnome Shell overview significantly slower than what it should.

Well, I hope it'll be fixed in Wheezy for the next "stable" users ! It seems Nvidia and/or Cairo doesn't intend to fix it upstream ?

Anyway : without Debian and Gnome, I would have lost faith in Linux. Been distro-hopping for so many years !

[scoaste]

Here's how to install a patched version of libcairo2 1.12 on your system:

I confirmed this problem with libcairo2 1.12.2-2 making Iceweasel 10.0.6 extremely sluggish in Debian Wheezy. I followed these procedures and then installed libcairo2_1.12.2-2_amd64.deb and libcairo-gobject2_1.12.2-2_amd64.deb packages. An extremely noticeable improvement in peformance resulted. Thanks, p00d73!

[waldo22]

This worked beautifully.

I didn't even have to restart X.

For some reason, this was not affecting Iceweasel for me, but maybe that's because I'm running Iceweasel 14 from Experimental?

Regardless, thanks for the solution!

-Wes

[gill_za]

Thank you very much. This solved my problem!

[sej7278]

the patch fixed iceweasel 15 for me, google+, twitter, github and a few other sites were unusable without it.

i've never had a problem with google chrome though (21-24 at least).

it generated this lot, but i only installed libcairo2 itself, as i assume that's where the patch ended up:

cairo-perf-utils_1.12.2-2_amd64.deb
libcairo2_1.12.2-2_amd64.deb
libcairo2-dbg_1.12.2-2_amd64.deb
libcairo2-dev_1.12.2-2_amd64.deb
libcairo2-doc_1.12.2-2_all.deb
libcairo-gobject2_1.12.2-2_amd64.deb
libcairo-script-interpreter2_1.12.2-2_amd64.deb

[sej7278]

seems for some reason this patch isn't on the debian packager's radar as its not in the experimental 1.12.4-1 changelog:

http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/p ... /changelog

it doesn't solve the pdf printing bug either: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=682673

[millman12345]

Just wanted to add another success story post here. The patch worked flawlessly and completely eliminated the sluggish (what an understatement!) tab switching/creating/closing behavior.

Thanks p00d73!

Side note: I'm not really sure why craigevil decided to respond to this the way he did, but I can tell you for 100% certain that this patch made all the difference in the world for me, on both Chromium and Chrome. Can't speak for firefox/iceweasel because I don't use either, but I can tell you that it's a certainty that this patch fixed my tab switching issues in Chrome and Chromium. It's definitely not "complete and absolute BS", and it's obviously not some "magic voodoo" either (and really it doesn't have anything to do with Ubuntu other than that is where p00d73 found the patch)... it's simply a couple of lines of code that fix a VERY big headache for lots of people out there... there's nothing magic about code, it quite literally does what you tell it to do, and code doesn't discriminate against the source: whether it was written by an Ubuntu contributor, or a Debian contributor, or whoever... it quite simply does what it was designed to do.

Thanks again p00d73... rest assured that this was a HUGE help for me and many others. It appears that nvidia supposedly fixed this problem on their end with the release of 275.x version of their drivers... but I am using much newer drivers than those and I still had the problem before applying this patch. Thanks again.

[komandan]

... nice info ...
i love this forum