Thread

Classilla 9.3.2

Classilla 9.3.2 Troubleshooting 22 posts Jan 6, 2013 — Dec 22, 2013

#1 Sun, 6 Jan 2013 - 19:45

Posted to the macos9 mailing list:

Classilla 9.3.2 is released. Due to several large regressions in 9.3.1, Idecided to keep the scope of this release small to stabilize the base.

In this release, Byblos' reliability has been further improved and it is now

able to rewrite style sheets as well. You can also generate fallbacks so that

mail.google.com can be handled one way, but everything else *.google.com can

be handled another.

This release also fixes a long-running bug going back to WaMCom where cookies

with far-future dates overflowed the 32-bit signed classic Mac time value.

This probably fixes a lot of complaints with shopping carts and site logins,

though the key here was one of the reports had a particularly easy to debug

shopping cart system and the cookie log clearly showed the issue for the

first time. I did a minor overhaul of the cookie system at the same time.

This release also fixes the Turktrust intermediate certificate issue where

mis-issued intermediates could be used to enable man-in-the-middle attacks.

This is also being repaired in TenFourFox 17.0.2. libpng is also updated to

fix several security and stability problems.

Regressions repaired include an issue with cursor keys in text boxes being

ignored and Cmd-clicking certain links wouldn't open a new window (this was

repaired by a user submission -- you too can contribute), both caused by

security updates in 9.3.1, and an issue where Byblos caused spurious dialogue

boxes if you downloaded HTML (such as saving a web page to disk).

There are other minor but important custodial changes. Hopefully this will

give everyone a stable base to update to, and the security rollup will

continue with 9.3.3.

As usual, the release is tested on the MDD G4 (9.2.2), Twentieth Anniversary

Mac (9.2.2), TiBook G4 (9.2.2), Power Mac 7300 (9.1) and, of course, my

trusty PowerBook 1400 (9.1) -- http://www.floodgap.com/iv/1758

http://www.classilla.org/

#2 Sun, 6 Jan 2013 - 20:14

I'm happy this thing gets updated. I'm posting on a 366mhz iBook with 9.2.2.

#3 Mon, 7 Jan 2013 - 02:05

Thank you very much! Works great still in 8.6!

#4 Mon, 7 Jan 2013 - 03:44

Good to hear. I don't have any 8.6 systems anymore, unfortunately, and my only OS 8.1 machine is the Q800, so I appreciate the testing.

#5 Wed, 9 Jan 2013 - 02:49

By the way, it is rather quick on this machine (B&W g3 400mhz)

faster than 10-4 on tiger, on somewhat same machine (Sawtooth 350mhz) and it somehow is way faster than classilla 9.3.2 in 9.2.2 on that G4.

#6 Wed, 9 Jan 2013 - 06:23

8.6 is certainly lighter than 9.2.2. But why do you have virtual memory on? I bet it would be even faster with that off, and 512MB of physical RAM in 8.6 is unbelievably roomy.

#7 Wed, 9 Jan 2013 - 11:46

Lol, somehow I didnt even realize I was using vm..... hmm...

EDIT:

Thank you for pointing that out! The difference is night and day!!

Not to mention the hard drive being very slow as it is...

#8 Wed, 9 Jan 2013 - 14:33

Only my TAM and PowerBook 1400 use VM (actually RAM Doubler) because both of them are severely RAM-impaired; the TAM is limited to 128MB and the 1400 to 64MB, so they need all the help they can get.

But all my other OS 9 systems are crammed with physical RAM and VM is turned off, and as you saw, it makes a massive difference in performance to run everything out of memory. Sadly, there is no easy and safe way to do this with OS X. +1 to Classic.

#9 Wed, 9 Jan 2013 - 17:22

Here's a little bug I just came accross. I thought links were broken last night but today I tested it again.

Downloading files and/or 'Save link target as' create disk activity for a second or two but nothing happens. So in 9.3.2 I cannot download files. How I tested was copy paste the link into Internet explorer 4.5 and it downloads.

#10 Thu, 10 Jan 2013 - 03:20

I tested that before I shipped. Is there a specific site it does it on? For something that major I would expect to have received other reports.

#11 Thu, 10 Jan 2013 - 04:25

People turn VM off? Seriously? There are benefits to turning it on, you know...

#12 Thu, 10 Jan 2013 - 04:28

But why do you have virtual memory on?

I seem to recall something about virtual memory being beneficial to the performance of Mac OS 9 on PowerPC computers, even in situations where you have enough ram that your data never has to touch it. It had something to do with needing to pull entire large executable files off of the disk and put them in ram in order to run them, rather than being able to start the program quicker and only pull the parts of an application that you need from the disk.

The difference is night and day!!

When launching the apps or when running? I haven't run a PowerPC machine in a while so I don't even remember how I used to run.

#13 Thu, 10 Jan 2013 - 04:29

I think he's talking about 9.3.2 being faster than 9.2.2...

(a 400 MHz G3 and G4 have identical performance on non-AltiVec loads)

#14 Thu, 10 Jan 2013 - 05:10

Classichasclass: the older apple software page on the apple site, and also from macguicity.com..... I can get specific in the morning.. however anything I have tried wont work. After a few reboots I managed to get a "save this file where" dialog... I would see a temp file appear but then just as fast dissapear. Still no luck. I may just trash it and try again.

#15 Thu, 10 Jan 2013 - 05:15

Cory: both. Apps start quicker and run smoother. (My hdd is very slow.)

Techfury90: it runs alot faster in 8.6 than 9.2.2 but 9.2.2 is on a g4 350, same ram, faster hdd. Seems about same on imac g3 350.

#16 Thu, 10 Jan 2013 - 05:38

Sorry for flooding the thread but this was bothering me so I had to get up and check it out again.

I trashed the whole classilla folder and prefs and started over.

It's working now.

must have missed something when I updated. ;-)

thanks again for this update!

#17 Thu, 10 Jan 2013 - 20:36

I seem to recall something about virtual memory being beneficial to the performance of Mac OS 9 on PowerPC computers, even in situations where you have enough ram that your data never has to touch it. It had something to do with needing to pull entire large executable files off of the disk and put them in ram in order to run them, rather than being able to start the program quicker and only pull the parts of an application that you need from the disk.

What happens is that the code fragment of the Mac PEF executable remains on disk in VM mode, and is demand-paged in. This requires less working memory because the entire segment need not be loaded, and as a result appears to make the app start faster, but the application can be paged out -- technically, its in-memory mapped pages will be marked as on-disk to make room for another app to use those RAM pages, since the code fragment is immutable -- as well as paged in which means that overall performance can be worse if a particular code segment is hot. The operating system can also be subject to this operation, worsening overall operation still.

RAMDoubler improves on this somewhat by compressing memory where possible so that more pages can fit in RAM, so it swaps less. If you have to use VM due to low memory (1400 or TAM in my case), use RAMDoubler.

With virtual memory off, everything is loaded into memory, including the OS. This uses significantly more RAM in some cases, but it will be a lot faster in the long run because nothing gets swapped out to disk and everything runs from physical memory. In fact, OS 8/9 won't even let you enable VM if you have 1GB or more of RAM.

Just to complicate things, applications with shared libraries (Classilla has a lot of shlbs) don't have them all mapped at once. The shlb is only mapped or loaded on reference, unlike apps that just have a big honking code frag. Classilla has to load a number of shlbs to get started, and these will all be separately mapped under VM.

#18 Fri, 11 Jan 2013 - 15:36

Except if you *have* enough RAM, they won't be paged out... so you're loading them unnecessarily, but I digress...

#19 Fri, 11 Jan 2013 - 15:47

If you want real insanity, try browsing the web on a PowerBook 5300 with 8 MB of physical RAM...

Went with a PCMCIA flash drive as boot drive, RAMdoubler, SpeedDoubler, absolute minimum possible system load (System 7.5.5 stripped to the TCP/IP-capable bone,) and iCab. Still unstable as hell...

#20 Fri, 11 Jan 2013 - 20:08

Except if you *have* enough RAM, they won't be paged out...

That assumes that the classic VM system is at all logical. Why take the risk? We already know that classic VM is not a typical demand-page system and that loads are non-determinative. So if you have the RAM, why not get around that problem completely?

Besides, you don't get those pages for free. First there's the overhead of VM itself -- with it disabled, the nanokernel turns all loads and stores into direct access. The VM system ages all memory pages using an LRU algorithm every eighth page fault (this got better in 7.5.5, but still occurs in OS 9; see TN 1069), which gets worse as memory increases, and VM uses up file descriptors and disk cache for its data fork loading. There is also maintenance of the backing store which must occur even if nothing is being paged out, and the backing store still exists and is serviced even in the 1MB "file mapping only" VM mode, even though the store is itself not used for the code fragment mapping. None of this happens with VM disabled; it's all real memory and there is no abstraction or overhead.

In fairness, OS 9 did substantially improve code fragment mapping, and OS 9 even has SPIs for letting the app itself control it, but you get this even with VM off. So there's even less of a reason to take the hit.

#21 Fri, 17 May 2013 - 06:27

I'm having a bit of an issue after swapping hard drives. I formatted this guy and copied my older slower HDD to it.

Everything seems to work fine, except classilla. I was using a custom theme so that might be what is screwing it up.

Is there a way to trash my preferences and start clean?

(I've already trashed the Classilla folder, along with the Mozilla DB I found under prefs, but I don't know where else to look)

Thanks guys.

#22 Sun, 22 Dec 2013 - 10:28

Hello,

i just downloaded classilla 9.3.2 and until now is working great. My system (which i am using it right now) is:

Performa 6116 at 60 mhz with sonnet G3 at 500 mhz installed

136 mb ram

Mac OS 8.1 & 9.0

A pds video card with 1 mb of ram

Macintosh Color Display with 640x480 resolution

Apple M3501 keyboard

Macally adb mouse.

The only problem is that the Greek fonts (i live in Athens, Greece) don't appear correctly. I tried all greek character encodings with no success. Is there a solution for this? Also, is there a way to install greek language and with some key combination to change from one language to another? And finally, is there a way to play youtube videos on this computer system?