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Brad Fitzpatrick

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Firefox + PAC considered harmful [Mar. 24th, 2008|09:14 am]
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Update to my previous FireFox rant:

After talking with Mike Shaver and sending him some debug info, it turns out the problem is PAC files. Firefox runs all Proxy Auto-Configuration scripts synchronously, blocking the entire UI while things like DNS resolution run in JS (which is more noticeably painful over a slow connection).

Shaver says this won't be fixed until after FF3.

In the meantime, find another solution to your complex proxy rules... localhost proxy w/ PAC logic, ssh tunnels, etc.

As [info]jesserud pointed out, it might be this bug, if you want to track it. (Update: And indeed, Shaver confirms that's the bug, and this comment says what needs to be done.)

Good to know what it is, at least.
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Comments:
[User Picture]From: [info]muerte
2008-03-24 04:45 pm (UTC)

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Do you have multiple PAC scripts? Why not just hardcode them into FF instead of auto-configure every time. I must be missing something.
[User Picture]From: [info]brad
2008-03-24 04:47 pm (UTC)

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One PAC file.

Read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_auto-config

It's a JavaScript file that determines, per-URL, which proxy to use. Quite popular in corporate environments.
[User Picture]From: [info]muerte
2008-03-24 04:53 pm (UTC)

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Gotcha... I didn't realize there was JS logic and multiple proxies involved.
From: [info]baudehlo
2008-03-24 06:16 pm (UTC)

Try SwitchProxy?

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I just use SwitchProxy for this. Yes, it's a manual process, but I guess it's better than it being slow for all operations.
[User Picture]From: [info]brad
2008-03-24 09:06 pm (UTC)

Re: Try SwitchProxy?

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That'd annoy me even more. Too many proxies/rules. That's what PAC is for. :)
From: [info]baudehlo
2008-03-24 09:24 pm (UTC)

Re: Try SwitchProxy?

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Surprised you haven't just written a localhost proxy in perl then :-)
[User Picture]From: [info]herbie
2008-03-25 06:27 am (UTC)

Re: Try SwitchProxy?

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I used to use switchproxy with a PAC, and only enable it when I needed to get into a proxied site, so there's only one setting. I suppose it depends on how often the proxy settings are relevant - if you're always going to sites which need to be proxied, then it sucks, but for occasional use, it's just a binary flag, and will help work around the problem during the majority use case.
[User Picture]From: [info]herbie
2008-03-25 08:26 am (UTC)

Re: Try SwitchProxy?

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I realized i may not have been clear - I had one setting in SwitchProxy for "no proxy" and one for "autoconfigure with this PAC", and just switched between them as needed.
From: [info]seeds_of_peace
2008-03-24 07:31 pm (UTC)

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man i wish vista had some sort of "detected hangs" list like that
[User Picture]From: [info]ajaxxx
2008-03-24 11:42 pm (UTC)

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I thought this had always been true. Well, at least that the PAC script ran serially and that DNS was slow, not necessarily that it blocked the UI thread.
[User Picture]From: [info]luserspaz
2008-03-25 04:05 pm (UTC)

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Bug 235853: don't freeze the UI when resolving DNS for PAC, by using deferred
resolution if we would otherwise block on DNS. r+madskills=biesi, a-b5=mconnor


Looks like you owe shaver a beer!