How can I find out what makes Firefox segfault?

Question

Firefox has started segfaulting when using my default profile. If I run it in safe mode, it runs OK. So I know the segfault probably comes from an extension or from some custom setting. The problem is that I have a lot of these...

Is there any way to have more details about the crash, so I can fix the problem without completely losing my profile?

OS: Arch linux FF 3.5.3

Solution 1

Use strace to watch system calls, it will show you what the program is trying to do just before crashing:

strace firefox

If you find nothing relevant (firefox trying to open some non-existent path, ...),start by doing a memtest and a file-system check. I lost hours because I was sure some problems were not hardware related, and they were.

Memtest86+ is a small utility available as a boot option on many systems and live-cds

A file system check is done by launching the following command when the aimed partition (sda1 using an ext3 file system here) is unmounted (for exemple from a live-cd):

e2fsck -cfvp /dev/sda1

Solution 2

Start deactivating every AddOn you've installed recently until it stops...I think this would be the easier way instead of going down all the way of 'real' debugging.

Comments

[Paul van Leeuwen]

e.g. by running firefox --safe-mode