Hey fediverse--
I recently made the switch from desktop Chrome to desktop #Firefox, which has mostly been fine, except for one problem:
Firefox stops bothering to answer AJAX requests in tabs pretty quickly, which makes my preferred webmail client--#Roundcube--FAR less functional under FF than it was under Chrome.
If left alone for a moment--or sometimes, even while typing an email--FF stops paying attention, further AJAX calls fail, and I'm forced to refresh the tab.
Anybody have any ideas?
belated note: I'm running Firefox on Ubuntu 26.04, using the default snap. (Pic related.)
I don't think the problem is localized there, though, because when I went a-web-searchin' I saw MANY similar complaints about Ajax and FF dating back nearly 20 years.
On a suggestion from someone who says they have no issues with Roundcube under Debian FF ESR, I tried installing from Mozilla's Apt repository.
No obvious change, sadly. Still gets stuck on "refreshing" and fails to update.
@nyquildotorg it just took upwards of 30 seconds to complete one of those "Refreshing..." loops. No additional warnings appeared.
I've never seen it take longer than MAYBE 500ms in Chrome. Usually, more like 50ms, barely enough to spot before it's done.
@oemb1905 it's not server side because it's the same server, same network path, and same workstation on the client side as well. Literally the only change is the browser.
If you've got some other answer than ajax I'm listening, but to the best of my understanding ajax is the way RC keeps a live two-way connection going WITH the server.
What am I missing?
@jimsalter I had an issue only with one account, which was an email address that gets thousands per day (for fail2ban reports). All other accounts worked flawlessly under Firefox, including the PWA extension. For that one, though, I had to beef up dovecot in 10-master.conf as follows:
service imap {
vsz_limit = 4096M
process_limit = 2048
}
Then, similarly in /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-imap.conf, I had to add/replace:
protocol imap {
imap_max_line_length = 256k
mail_max_userip_connections = 50
imap_idle_notify_interval = 15s
}
This fixed the red bar you get where it says fail to connect. Once that was gone, I can leave the tab (or PWA) open indefinitely and mail just comes in no issue. I only use Firefox for checking Roundcube. My full email server setup is here:
https://wiki.haacksnetworking.org/doku.php?id=computing:mailserver-trixie
Keep me posted and hope you get it sorted. But yeah, I'm kind of neurotic about email so I would certainly notice if it failed to refresh, provide alerts, or function - can't recreate here, but I certainly trust that you are not getting the same results ;(
@oemb1905 thank you VERY much for that data point.
When I get a minute, I'll try installing the .deb version and see if it behaves better!
@oemb1905 just installed FF from Mozilla's own apt repository... which I was pleased and VERY surprised to discover actually overrode the snap, without me having to sort out which identical FF icon went to the snap version and which went to the newly installed version (which happens if you dpkg -i the raw deb, or install from tarball).
I'll update tomorrow whether this solves the problem or not; I should CERTAINLY know by then.
(Any interested onlookers, feel free to poke me if I forget.)
Maybe use a tab suspender extension and whitelist that site?
If that doesn't work, try setting browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory to false.
...in "about:config"
@rl_dane boy howdy, that would be some STUPID "optimization" if that's the issue...
Not that I haven't seen VERY stupid memory-related "optimizations" over and over and OVER again on nearly all platforms.
me@elden:~$ free -m
total used free
Mem: 62790 8174 50376
Jim Salter
jer
Haack’s Networking
Mark Stosberg
Ministerofimpediments
R.L. Dane 
🍵 
furicle
Gilgwath
Tom