Firefox keeps crashing upon launch

Question

I am running RHEL 7.4 on an EC2 server. I noticed this issue probably yesterday or so. Normally I always get command line errors when i run firefox, but the browser itself was always working smoothly. Now when I run firefox, the webpage displays an error and doesn't allow me to visit any website. Also I don't know if this has to do with the fact that i'm already running the bot for another one of my accounts. I created a separate quickstart.py file and edited it for the second account.

$ firefox
[Parent 8748] WARNING: pipe error (35): Connection reset by peer: file /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-52.6.0/firefox-52.6.0esr/ipc/chromium/src/chrome/common/ipc_channel_posix.cc, line 322
[Parent 8748] WARNING: pipe error (40): Connection reset by peer: file /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-52.6.0/firefox-52.6.0esr/ipc/chromium/src/chrome/common/ipc_channel_posix.cc, line 322
[Parent 8748] WARNING: pipe error (36): Connection reset by peer: file /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-52.6.0/firefox-52.6.0esr/ipc/chromium/src/chrome/common/ipc_channel_posix.cc, line 322
[Parent 8748] WARNING: pipe error (37): Connection reset by peer: file /builddir/build/BUILD/firefox-52.6.0/firefox-52.6.0esr/ipc/chromium/src/chrome/common/ipc_channel_posix.cc, line 322

###!!! [Parent][MessageChannel] Error: (msgtype=0x2C006A,name=PBrowser::Msg_UpdateDimensions) Channel error: cannot send/recv


###!!! [Parent][RunMessage] Error: Channel error: cannot send/recv

Answer 1

The only solution that solved this for me, running very similar environment to you, and having tried many different about:config settings, upating to the very latest package, etc, was to disable "private tracking"

Here is the description

"Tracking Protection blocks online trackers that collect your browsing data across multiple websites."

It's the setting often seen next to “Do Not Track” signal. Unfortunately, if users try enable too many privacy options, or configure options that analytics providers deem too "low value", they will face many types of user-degradation schemes such as this. Planned, untreated, inhibilitating degradations that make choosing user-advantageous options very difficult to actually enable and use.

My theory is that if they can't track you in some method, they will force you into it by forcefully disabling access. I've only seen this particular error when using FF in RHEL, so it's possible that it's a Linux-targeted type of protection to help fend off bots. And since I haven't experienced this in any other OS using FF, it doesn't seem to be a wide-spread problem.

However, reason I wanted to respond is that I remember this exact error giving me grief a few months ago. When I noticed it had not been fixed, and that surely I am not the only person seeing this, that my theory is possibly true in many ways.