firefox problem after 13.3->13.4

Todd M · Monday at 6:37 PM

I upgraded from 13.3 to 13.4 today, but `firefox` was failing to load. I did a `pkg upgrade` etc., but no good.

The very undescriptive error is "exiting due to channel error".

I could get it to open from the command line, but not from my window menu, and then it was in safe mode. The only way I could get it to start up from the menu and outside safe mode was to uncheck:

"Use recommended performance settings" & under it "Use hardware acceleration"

in settings.

I am using `kldload amdgpu` for my graphics.

Firefox seems to work now without the recommended performance settings.

Thoughts?

Todd M · Monday at 6:42 PM

I see from my notes that in the past I have had to disable "webgl" in firefox, but not lately/currently....

Jose · Monday at 8:58 PM

I had to disable hardware acceleration on my laptop to work around this problem. Something in the upgrade broke OpenGL hardware acceleration, and I haven't had time to troubleshoot drm-kmod.

Does it launch in safe mode?

Code:

firefox --safe-mode

in a terminal.

Todd M · Monday at 9:11 PM

Yes, it launched in safe mode, and I was able to disable the hardware acceleration and launch it normally.

What happens next?

Jose · Monday at 9:27 PM

So I believe what's happening is that the graphics/drm-kmod package that is available on the package servers was compiled against 13.3, and therefore does not work on 13.4. Unfortunately, this will be the case until 13.3 is EOLed at the end of this month. The only workaround is to compile the port yourself.

I'm not sure because I'm going from memory. I thought there were some good posts on this subject floating around the forum, but can't find them at the moment.

Todd M · Monday at 9:34 PM

When going 13.2->13.3, drm-kmod had to be built from ports, or amdgpu would not load. (In fact, it would kernel fault.) But that was not the case going to 13.4. Everything seems fine with the graphics, the minimal graphics that I use with X windows that is, except for the hardware acceleration in firefox.

As you say, perhaps this will be resolved when 13.3 is truly gone.... (I never seem to know the best time to do these updates either.)

Jose · Monday at 9:37 PM

Try running glxinfo from graphics/glx-utils.

Todd M · 2024-12-03T18:26:03+0000

So can anyone confirm? Is this an issue of needing a new drm-kmod or something else?