[OU] Freezing problems after update to opera 9.5 (sparc solaris)

Thu Jun 26 13:02:30 UTC 2008

Hi Hanne,

thanks for your reply. I'll try my best to give as detailed information as possible, from installation on, and will report on further (minor) difficulties with the new Opera version as well.

I. INSTALLATION

I uncompressed the statically linked Opera 9.5 version for Sparc Solaris, changed to this directory, and linked my old profile:

mv profile profile.old
ln -s /home/tobias/.opera profile

The profile has been in use for several years and with several previous Opera versions.

II. STARTUP

./opera &

The Opera window appears after 190 seconds. (Way too long, but not a real problem since I never close the program once it's running.)

Clicking on Help -> About Opera displays:

Version information:
Version 9.50
Build 2042
Platform SunOS
System sun4v, 5.10
Qt library 3.3.5
Java Java Runtime Environment installed

Browser identification:
Opera/9.50 (X11; SunOS sun4v; U; en)

III. DISPLAY PROBLEMS

I type www.wikipedia.org into my address window. The page is loaded after <1 second, but all the fonts except for the cyrillic Russian font are ugly pixeled typewriter font (unlike in Opera 9.26).

I switch to User Mode (over View -> Style). This should enforce the text to be displayed in the standard font for text. Instead, it's still a typewriter font (this time anti-aliased, not pixeled). 

I try to change the standard font via Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Fonts, Web page normal text. No matter which font I specify there, Opera ignores the standard font and keeps on displaying the typewriter fonts. 

The font specifications for Web page h1, Web page h2, ... are working. Only Web page normal text is ignored.

For the rest of the tests I switch back from User Mode to Author Mode.

IV. FREEZES

After the steps above, I surfed for several minutes on the Opera website and clicked on many links there. Everything worked fine and the display was without font problems.
Then I opened a new tab and went to www.spiegel.de (sorry, it's all in German there). The page was loaded immediately. There, I clicked on one of the links (http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,562199,00.html) with the middle mouse button to open it in a new tab.

Opera freezes for 95 seconds (!), then it opens the link without display problems in a new tab.

I close the tab and click on exactly the same link, again with the middle mouse button. The link is opened immediately in a new tab this time. I surf on www.spiegel.de for some more minutes without any problems. 

I type into the address bar: www.newyorktimes.com and press Enter. Opera freezes for 133 seconds (!), then opens the webpage (redirected to www.nytimes.com). I click one of the headlines with the middle mouse button (link http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/world/middleeast/26christians.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin). Opera freezes for 55 seconds, then opens the link in a new tab. (The standard font is again the ugly typewriter font which had been used for wikipedia already.)
I close the tab and open exactly the same link again - no freezing this time, it is opened immediately in a new tab.

I close the whole opera and reopen it. The startup time is again exactly 190 seconds. I call www.nytimes.com - which is opened immediately. I click on the same link as above (link http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/world/middleeast/26christians.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin) - it is opened immediately. I open several other links and browse for some time on the nytimes site - everything works fine.

V. CLEAN PROFILE 

In the opera directory I reversed the profile changes:
mv profile profile1
mv profile.old profile
./opera &
182 seconds later appears a window with:
Opera has detected KDE is running.
Some Opera keyboard shortcuts (like Ctrl+F4) may not work because KDE has reserved them.
You can modify KDE shortcuts in the KDE Control Center.
I click on Close, and the opera window appears.

I perform exactly the same steps as under III. Wikipedia still has the ugly pixel typewrite font, but the User Mode shows a serif font this time (!). I change "Web page normal text" to other fonts - this time is it NOT ignored but working as expected.

After that I browsed on the same websites as above without any freezes. Then I went to another website (www.sueddeutsche.de) and called this link: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/sport/weitere/artikel/70/182503/
This time, opera froze for 85 seconds before it opened the link. Again, it was not reproducible. When I called the link for a second time, everything worked fine. Short time later, Opera froze for more than 4 minutes (!) on this link:
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/sport/weitere/artikel/70/182503/3/
(again not reproducibly).

Please forward this message to your QA person. If you need further information or tests I can perform please let me know, and your QA person may contact me directly for further questions as well (mailinglists at tobias-elze dot de).

Best regards,

Tobias.