TorBrowser constantly crashes

First off, I aploogise for the long post. I’ve tried to include everything.

I can’t seem to find anything on this so it must be something I’m doing wrong.

I’ve installed the latest version of Whonix with Virtualbox 6.1. I had this running perfectly with a previous version but after a drive failure I had to rebuild it.

I’m having an issue with Tor Browser on the Workstation.

It crashes out after about 15-30 seconds of opening, and I get this error…


ERROR: Tor Browser ended with non-zero (error) exit code!

Tor Browser was started with:

/home/user/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/start-tor-browser --verbose --allow-remote .

Tor Browser exited with code: 139

To see this for yourself, you could try:
Start Menu → System → Xfce Terminal
Then run:
torbrowser


If I open with torbrowser --debug It crashes with these pop ups…


ERROR: x-www-browser returned 139! Please report this bug!


and


ERROR: Tor Browser maybe_use_open_link_confirmation error.

Failed:
/usr/libexec/open-link-confirmation/open-link-confirmation --debug
tool_exit_code: 139


The output from the terminal is here:

user@host:~$ torbrowser --debug

  • set -e
  • main_function --debug
  • source_config --debug
  • shopt -s nullglob
  • local i
  • for i in /etc/open_link_confirm.d/.conf /rw/config/open_link_confirm.d/.conf /usr/local/etc/open_link_confirm.d/*.conf
  • bash -n /etc/open_link_confirm.d/31_default.conf
  • source /etc/open_link_confirm.d/31_default.conf
    ++ link_confirmation_for_links=1
    ++ link_confirmation_for_files=1
  • preparation --debug
  • ‘[’ -n ‘’ ‘]’
  • OPEN_LINK_CONFIRMATION_MAXIMUM=5
  • ‘[’ -n ‘’ ‘]’
  • OPEN_LINK_CONFIRMATION_COUNTER=0
  • OPEN_LINK_CONFIRMATION_COUNTER=1
  • export OPEN_LINK_CONFIRMATION_COUNTER
  • ‘[’ 1 -ge 5 ‘]’
  • export OPEN_LINK_CONFIRMATION=true
  • OPEN_LINK_CONFIRMATION=true
  • ‘[’ 1 = 0 ‘]’
  • input_object_original=–debug
  • trim=128
  • input_object_string_length=7
  • input_object_trimmed=–debug
    ++ /usr/libexec/msgcollector/striphtml --debug
  • input_object_stripped_and_trimmed=–debug
  • ‘[’ 7 -gt 128 ‘]’
  • ‘[’ -f --debug ‘]’
  • is_file=0
  • input_type=link
  • command -v qubesdb-read
  • ‘[’ -f /run/qubes/this-is-templatevm ‘]’
  • ‘[’ -f /usr/share/anon-gw-base-files/gateway ‘]’
  • workstation --debug
  • ‘[’ 0 = 1 ‘]’
  • test -e /usr/share/kicksecure/marker
  • ‘[’ -n ‘’ ‘]’
  • open_in_tool_bin=x-www-browser
  • ‘[’ -n ‘’ ‘]’
    +++ command -v x-www-browser
    ++ readlink -f /usr/bin/x-www-browser
  • open_in_tool_bin_name_readlink=/usr/bin/whichbrowser
  • ‘[’ -n ‘’ ‘]’
  • open_in_tool_bin_name=‘x-www-browser (/usr/bin/whichbrowser)’
  • ‘[’ ‘x-www-browser (/usr/bin/whichbrowser)’ = ‘x-www-browser (/usr/bin/torbrowser)’ ‘]’
  • ‘[’ ‘!’ -n ‘’ ‘]’
  • ‘[’ -n ‘x-www-browser (/usr/bin/whichbrowser)’ ‘]’
  • ‘[’ /usr/bin/whichbrowser = /usr/libexec/open-link-confirmation/open-link-confirmation ‘]’
  • local careful_text
  • test -e /usr/share/kicksecure/marker
  • careful_text=‘

    Be careful if x-www-browser (/usr/bin/whichbrowser) is already running as your activities might get linked.

  • ‘[’ --debug = ‘’ ‘]’
  • ‘[’ --debug = ’ ’ ‘]’
  • title=‘Confirm Open’
  • msg='

    The following link will be opened in x-www-browser (/usr/bin/whichbrowser).

Be careful if x-www-browser (/usr/bin/whichbrowser) is already running as your activities might get linked.

--debug

' + question='Continue?' + button=yesno + return 0 + final --debug + local ask_for_confirmation=1 + '[' 0 = 1 ']' + '[' 1 = 0 ']' + local ask_for_confirmation=1 + '[' '' = DispVM ']' + '[' '' = 1 ']' + '[' 1 = 1 ']' + local answer + answer=0 ++ /usr/libexec/msgcollector/generic_gui_message warning 'Confirm Open' '

The following link will be opened in x-www-browser (/usr/bin/whichbrowser).

Be careful if x-www-browser (/usr/bin/whichbrowser) is already running as your activities might get linked.

--debug

' 'Continue?' yesno /usr/libexec/msgcollector/generic_gui_message:110: DeprecationWarning: an integer is required (got type float). Implicit conversion to integers using __int__ is deprecated, and may be removed in a future version of Python. self.resize(620, messageHeight + 60) + answer=16384 + '[' '!' 16384 = 16384 ']' + command -v x-www-browser + local open_in_tool_exit_code + open_in_tool_exit_code=0 + DE=generic + x-www-browser --debug + open_in_tool_exit_code=139 + true + '[' '!' 139 = 0 ']' + local question= + local button=ok + local 'msg=

ERROR: x-www-browser returned 139! Please report this bug!

' + /usr/libexec/msgcollector/generic_gui_message error 'Confirm Open' '

ERROR: x-www-browser returned 139! Please report this bug!

' '' ok /usr/libexec/msgcollector/generic_gui_message:110: DeprecationWarning: an integer is required (got type float). Implicit conversion to integers using __int__ is deprecated, and may be removed in a future version of Python. self.resize(620, messageHeight + 60) + exit 139 [ERROR] [torbrowser] Tor Browser maybe_use_open_link_confirmation error.

Failed:
/usr/libexec/open-link-confirmation/open-link-confirmation --debug
tool_exit_code: 139
user@host:~$


This with just torbrowser in Terminal


user@host:~$ torbrowser
Fontconfig warning: “/home/user/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/fontconfig/fonts.conf”, line 85: unknown element “blank”
Fontconfig warning: “/home/user/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/fontconfig/fonts.conf”, line 85: unknown element “blank”
Fontconfig warning: “/home/user/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/fontconfig/fonts.conf”, line 85: unknown element “blank”
Fontconfig warning: “/home/user/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/fontconfig/fonts.conf”, line 85: unknown element “blank”
Fontconfig warning: “/home/user/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/fontconfig/fonts.conf”, line 85: unknown element “blank”
IPDL protocol error: Error deserializing ‘DisplayListData’
Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.

###!!! [Child][MessageChannel::SendAndWait] Error: Channel error: cannot send/recv

Exiting due to channel error.
Exiting due to channel error.
/home/user/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/start-tor-browser: line 362: 2646 Segmentation fault (core dumped) TOR_CONTROL_PASSWD=${TOR_CONTROL_PASSWD} ./firefox --class “Tor Browser” -profile TorBrowser/Data/Browser/profile.default “${@}” < /dev/null
[ERROR] [torbrowser] Tor Browser ended with non-zero (error) exit code!

Tor Browser was started with:
/home/user/.tb/tor-browser/Browser/start-tor-browser --verbose --allow-remote .

Tor Browser exited with code: 139

To see this for yourself, you could try: Start Menu → System → Xfce Terminal
Then run:
torbrowser

See online documentation:
(redacted for post)://www.whonix.org/wiki/Tor_Browser#Tor_Browser_Crash_Errors
user@host:~$


I have run updates on both VMs, they are up to date as far as I’m aware.

The TorBrowser version on the OVA image is 11.0.6 I have successfully updated this to 11.0.10 through the Terminal, as all other options fail, but it doesn’t help. It still crashes.

I have the Workstation running with 4 processors and 4GB RAM.

I would love some help as this is driving me mad.

Thanks.

This is already the answer what can be done next:

https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Tor_Browser#Tor_Browser_Crash_Errors

Thanks Patrick. I had seen that section and have been through the re-installation process several times. I’ve tried it again just now by deleting the .tb folder in /home/user/ folder and running the Tor Browser Downloader again but Tor Browser still crashes with the 139 exit code. Could it be hardware related? I had to change hardware due to the new VMs needing more resources.


ERROR: ###########################################################

update-torbrowser script bug.

No panic. Nothing is broken. Just some rare condition

has been hit. Try again later. There is likely a

solution for this problem. Please see the Whonix News,

Whonix User Help Forum and Whonix Documentation.

Please report this bug!

BASH_COMMAND: $tb_bin

exit_code: 139

output: output

output_opts:

progressbaridx:

Experts only:

bash -x update-torbrowser

###########################################################

Conceivable. I don’t know.

OK, so I’ve moved the Virtualbox and VMs as they were back to the old hardware, tweaked the resources until I could get them both to boot and TorBrowser appears to be functioning normally now… it’s slow with 1 core and 2GB RAM but it works… It’s very strange.

1 Like

Hi, this is a host kernel issue.
Had the same problem, google search lead me here. I’m running tails in kvm, tor browser was crashing with the latest kernels 5.18 and 5.17, after downgrading to kernel version 5.15.55 (probably LTS version) the browser is stable again. My system is gentoo, except the kernel all the relevant versions are up-to-date.

This is most likely a duplicate of Tor Browser crashing in Whonix VirtualBox since upgrade to Host Linux Kernel version 5.10.0-15

See:
Tor Browser crashing in Whonix VirtualBox since upgrade to Host Linux Kernel version 5.10.0-15 - #33 by Patrick