Tor Browser stalls while loading Facebook login page (Waiting for static.xx.fbcdn.net)

Problem: After opening the Tor Browser and typing in facebook.com, page loading hangs, status bar showing "Waiting for static.xx.fbcdn.net"

HTTP GET requests for small images from static.xx.fbcdn.net stall in the "Blocked" state for minutes - viewed in Developer tools / Network / request / Timing (see attached screenshot Step2.png).

When a different website is opened in a new tab, HTTP requests continue loading successfully - seems to be some livelock within the browser.

This is not a network issue, connectivity in the browser works fine, also verifed without a SOCKS proxy (direct connection without Tor).

Reproducibility: nearly 100%

Environment:

• Windows 10 Pro, 64bit
• Tor Browser 7.5.3 for Windows, english
• Tor Browser 8.0a5 for Windows, english

Trac:
Username: uzi

added component::applications/tor browser ff60-esr owner::tbb-team priority::medium reporter::uzi resolution::fixed severity::major status::closed tbb-performance tbb-usability-website type::defect labels

Trac:
Username: uzi

Stalled browser loading Facebook

Trac:
Username: uzi

Trac:
Username: uzi

Un-stalled again

Trac:
Username: uzi

Works for me at win10 pro.

Trac:
Username: Ga15

Exact same behavior:

• on a different machine with Windows 7
• with a different internet connection

Trac:
Username: uzi

Hm, I wonder what's up here. Do you have some antivirus/firewall tool that could be interfering? If so, could you uninstall it for a test (disabling is often not enough) and see if that fixes your issue?

Trac:
Status: new to needs_information
Keywords: N/A deleted, tbb-usability-website added

In the meantime you can use the Facebook onion service https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/ which doesn't have this issue (hopefully).

Tried on a third machine, Win 7, another internet connection, antivirus uninstalled, no firewall - same behavior.

Am I really the only one who experiences this?

Trac:
Username: uzi

Replying to uzi:

Tried on a third machine, Win 7, another internet connection, antivirus uninstalled, no firewall - same behavior. Did you try with https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/?

https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/ works well.

Trac:
Username: uzi

Reproducibility: nearly 100% And thanks for the detailed description. It's up to developers now to find out what's up.

Trac:
Status: needs_information to new

I wonder whether this is a duplicate of/related to #21924 (moved), gk says there:

This change e.g. if I go to Trac in a new tab. Suddenly the icon on the former tab stops spinning and all is fine. This happens at least with a 64bit Linux.

(Sorry for the vague bug report :) )

Which seems to be the same case here (except the bug report is more precise :) ).

Maybe bugs like these can be simulated with a firejail --bandwidth=torbrowser set eth0 5 6 or worse, I don't know, but it seems like this is due to static.xx.fbcdn.net being overloaded by exits, and it took time to load up and something weird happened. If I recall trac.tp.o had also some overloading issues at the time, maybe that's why gk was experiencing a similar bug at the time.

Replying to cypherpunks:

Maybe bugs like these can be simulated with a firejail --bandwidth=torbrowser set eth0 5 6 or worse, I don't know, but it seems like this is due to static.xx.fbcdn.net being overloaded by exits, and it took time to load up and something weird happened. If I recall trac.tp.o had also some overloading issues at the time, maybe that's why gk was experiencing a similar bug at the time.

Good idea, but I think it's something different here. OP: does it help if you flip network.http.spdy.enabled and network.http.spdy.enabled.http2 to true (just for testing purposes)?

Trac:
Status: new to needs_information

Replying to gk:

OP: does it help if you flip network.http.spdy.enabled and network.http.spdy.enabled.http2 to true (just for testing purposes)?

It indeed does help - facebook loads instantly.

Important remark reiterated: the problem also happens when not connecting via Tor (reconfigured Tor Browser to just use a plain proxy or no proxy at all).

Trac:
Username: uzi

Trac:
Status: needs_information to new

Replying to uzi:

Replying to gk:

OP: does it help if you flip network.http.spdy.enabled and network.http.spdy.enabled.http2 to true (just for testing purposes)?

It indeed does help - facebook loads instantly.

Important remark reiterated: the problem also happens when not connecting via Tor (reconfigured Tor Browser to just use a plain proxy or no proxy at all).

Yes. It's not Tor-related but related to the above mentioned browser settings which are still active even if you configure a different proxy or none at all. We need #14952 (moved) sorted out first, to solve this problem which is supposed to happen soon.

Trac:
Keywords: N/A deleted, ff60-esr added

Trac:
Keywords: N/A deleted, tbb-performance added

Should be fixed with the changes made in commit 36724cc11e94d0dc3094c94f046d76fb5ce44a2b on tor-browser-60.1.0esr-8.0-1.

Trac:
Status: new to closed
Resolution: N/A to fixed

closed

moved to tpo/applications/tor-browser#25735 (closed)