Weird stalling of browsers/surfing, feels like timeouts - Wireshark looks ok

Ask Fedora
1

Hi

if anyone has a better title for this, feel free…
I’m having a weird issue for quite a while now, where sometimes, out of nowhere, all browser page loading just stops, as if my internet went out (pages load infinitely, no progress). If this happens, both Firefox and Chrome are affected. Curl works though, just as any other devices on my network. Reboot or logout/login seem to fix the issue, although the last time, the issue came back few minutes after rebooting and then my session just wouldn’t log off. Suspend and wake up seemed to have fixed it for now though. Funny thing was, that after resuming from suspend, I unlocked my computer, which then immediately logged me off (guess logoff task was pending since before I suspended the PC). When I logged in again, issue was gone (for now).

Wireshark shows traffic when I try to load pages (application data, so in the background there IS something working). Firefox btw. wouldn’t even open again, if closed completely when the issue is present. Used ps aux to verify there’s no processes left.

First I thought that this was really some weird networking or ssl lib issue but since other network traffic works and even discord, signal, remmina, horizon client and dnf update work flawlessly, I thought this might have something to do with page rendering?
journalctl -f shows nothing particularly useful, when the issue is present.

Any ideas where to start digging, when this occurs the next time? I’m utterly aimless.

Fedora 42 KDE Spin (installed GNOME though, a year ago)

             .',;::::;,'.                 root@fedora-12thgen
         .';:cccccccccccc:;,.             -------------------
      .;cccccccccccccccccccccc;.          OS: Fedora Linux 42 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition) x86_64
    .:cccccccccccccccccccccccccc:.        Kernel: Linux 6.14.9-300.fc42.x86_64
  .;ccccccccccccc;.:dddl:.;ccccccc;.      Uptime: 40 mins
 .:ccccccccccccc;OWMKOOXMWd;ccccccc:.     Packages: 3770 (rpm), 91 (flatpak)
.:ccccccccccccc;KMMc;cc;xMMc;ccccccc:.    Shell: bash 5.2.37
,cccccccccccccc;MMM.;cc;;WW:;cccccccc,    Display (XG27ACMG): 2560x1440 @ 144 Hz in 27" [External] *
:cccccccccccccc;MMM.;cccccccccccccccc:    Display (PL2788Q): 2560x1440 @ 60 Hz in 27" [External]
:ccccccc;oxOOOo;MMM000k.;cccccccccccc:    WM: Mutter (X11)
cccccc;0MMKxdd:;MMMkddc.;cccccccccccc;    WM Theme: Adwaita
ccccc;XMO';cccc;MMM.;cccccccccccccccc'    Theme: Adwaita [GTK2/3]
ccccc;MMo;ccccc;MMW.;ccccccccccccccc;     Cursor: Adwaita
ccccc;0MNc.ccc.xMMd;ccccccccccccccc;      Terminal: GNOME Terminal 3.56.2
cccccc;dNMWXXXWM0:;cccccccccccccc:,       Terminal Font: Adwaita Mono (11pt)
cccccccc;.:odl:.;cccccccccccccc:,.        CPU: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-12600K (16) @ 4.90 GHz
ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc:'.          GPU: AMD RX 9070/9070 XT [Discrete]
:ccccccccccccccccccccccc:;,..             Memory: 11.68 GiB / 62.53 GiB (19%)
 ':cccccccccccccccc::;,.                  Swap: 0 B / 8.00 GiB (0%)
                                          Disk (/): 788.96 GiB / 929.91 GiB (85%) - btrfs
                                          Disk (/mnt/DATA_LINUX): 615.64 GiB / 931.51 GiB (66%) - btrfs
                                          Disk (/mnt/DATA_NVME): 727.01 GiB / 931.51 GiB (78%) - btrfs
                                          Local IP (enp9s0): 10.25.128.12/24
                                          Locale: en_US.UTF-8

thanks

2

Look in both the system and user journals for clues.
That hopefully will get you started.

3

Unfortunately the logs don’t give any hints at all. BTW lynx and Steam work (which is a browser, essentially), as well as Discord for example.

How are Firefox and Chrome even related, that they both dont work? Firefox won’t even start even if all processes were killed. If I try starting it multiple times, it will complain that it is already running, but not responding.

4

Code wise they are not related.
But they both will do the same sorts of things on startup as they are both browsers.

The next thing I’d think to check is that DNS look ups are working well as well as what your network interfaces look like.

What does resolvectl status and ip addr report?

5

chrome starts normally but just loads infinitely without any progress as if my internet went out.

internal network resources (rdp via remmina, ssh to servers, bitwarden, discord, steam, etc) work just fine. this is very weird…

I have 3 DNS servers (two on site, one on a remote site) in my network.
The onsite ones have a sophos xg firewall in front of them and also a CRS326 is L3 routing between clients and the sophos xg.

servers can reach all resources while this issue persists (over multiple hours, until i reboot). they have to go through the same networking infrastructure (even one hop more, the sophos) as my client PC so I doubt it is anything on the network.

i’ll try my wifi interface of the PC the next time though and try to go through maybe even a phone hotspot to rule everything out.

Global
         Protocols: LLMNR=resolve -mDNS -DNSOverTLS DNSSEC=no/unsupported
  resolv.conf mode: stub

Link 2 (enp9s0)
    Current Scopes: DNS LLMNR/IPv4
         Protocols: +DefaultRoute LLMNR=resolve -mDNS -DNSOverTLS DNSSEC=no/unsupported
Current DNS Server: 192.168.26.1
       DNS Servers: 192.168.26.1 192.168.25.1 192.168.24.1
        DNS Domain: nnet.local
     Default Route: yes

Link 3 (wlo1)
    Current Scopes: none
         Protocols: -DefaultRoute LLMNR=resolve -mDNS -DNSOverTLS DNSSEC=no/unsupported
     Default Route: no

ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host noprefixroute 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp9s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 50:eb:f6:5a:2a:83 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    altname enx50ebf65a2a83
    inet 10.25.128.12/24 brd 10.25.128.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute enp9s0
       valid_lft 685621sec preferred_lft 685621sec
3: wlo1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether fa:30:8c:07:77:b7 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff permaddr 60:dd:8e:0d:e8:a5
    altname wlp0s20f3
    altname wlx60dd8e0de8a5
6

You have 3 DNS servers on your network?
And they are not in the 10. network.
Do you have routes to all these DNS servers and do they all work?

What does ip route report?

Try using the dig tool to query each of the servers in turn.
For example:

dig @192.168.26.1 google.com
dig @192.168.25.1 google.com
dig @192.168.24.1 google.com

Do they all report that same answer?

You should see something like this is the output (the exact IP is likely to be different):

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com.			IN	A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com.		127	IN	A	142.250.187.206
7

sure

; <<>> DiG 9.18.36 <<>> @192.168.26.1 google.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 58025
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4000
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com.			IN	A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com.		236	IN	A	142.251.36.206

;; Query time: 28 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.26.1#53(192.168.26.1) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Fri Jun 13 16:46:44 CEST 2025
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 55


; <<>> DiG 9.18.36 <<>> @192.168.25.1 google.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 56725
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4000
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com.			IN	A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com.		261	IN	A	142.251.36.206

;; Query time: 1 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.25.1#53(192.168.25.1) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Fri Jun 13 16:46:44 CEST 2025
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 55


; <<>> DiG 9.18.36 <<>> @192.168.24.1 google.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 53721
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4000
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com.			IN	A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com.		228	IN	A	142.251.36.206

;; Query time: 70 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.24.1#53(192.168.24.1) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Fri Jun 13 16:46:45 CEST 2025
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 55

default via 10.25.128.1 dev enp9s0 proto dhcp src 10.25.128.12 metric 100 
10.25.128.0/24 dev enp9s0 proto kernel scope link src 10.25.128.12 metric 100

on 10.25.128.1 (which is my CRS326 L3 switch), default route goes to a sophos xg utm firewall (192.168.31.52) and from there to my edge firewall (10.200.25.1) where traffic finally leaves to the interwebs:

#      DST-ADDRESS       GATEWAY         DISTANCE
0  As  0.0.0.0/0         192.168.31.52          1
...
6  As  192.168.0.0/16    10.200.25.1            1
7  AsH 192.168.25.0/24   10.200.25.41           1
8  AsH 192.168.26.0/24   10.200.25.41           1

192.168.25.0/24 and 192.168.26.0/24 are on my local site and go to the sophos xg “datacenter” firewall (10.200.25.41) and the rest of 192.168.0.0/16 is going out through the edge firewall which has, among others, the site to site vpn connection to the site 192.168.24.0/24, where the third DNS server lives…

the setup has been unchanged for ages now and the only device that’s having the issues is my main PC. then again, it is more or less the only device that lives on the 10.25.128.0/24 network, because I at some point lost interest in finalizing the configuration and move all client devices to that network.

as I said, next time I’ll check whether the issue persists if I move my PC to a different network, like even a cell phone wifi hotspot, which would rule out all of my local network shenanigans.

1 Like
8

Issue came back today. What I’ve done to try to solve it:

  • killall firefox and restart firefox → nope
  • switch to different network (wifi hotspot to my phone) → nope
  • move a different machine to the network of my PC → different machine works on the network while my PC doesn’t
  • restart → worked briefly, then stopped working again (started Omnissa Horizon Client right away again, as I was working from home and thus needed it)

opera worked the whole time no problem. lynx as well.

Finally I decided to close VMware (now Omnissa) Horizon Client (which is something like Citrix) and Firefox started working again.

I installed Omnissa Horizon Client 2503 Build 8.15.0 (14256322247) from the official rpm package Omnissa-Horizon-Client-2503-8.15.0-14256322247.x64.rpm

I’ll try to reproduce this next time, if closing Horizon Client makes this recover immediately again.