Ever since I upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04, Chrome (google-chrome-stable) crashes a lot more often than before.
I do keep several tabs open (>20), but they are all light (no multimedia) and have never caused any problems in the past.
The processor and memory use is pretty low when the browser becomes unresponsive and the whole system is still usable.
Is there an easy fix? Where can I find more logs for a more complete diagnostic?
I have the same problem - try to run it with --disable-gpu flag, like
google-chrome --disable-gpu
also I use three monitors on two nvidia videocards with opened developer tools (I guess this is the reason)
--disable-gpu option different to the use hardware acceleration when available option in advanced settings?
Check out this post on the Google Chrome Help Forum. However, unlike you, the whole system is hanging. I only post it here because it might help other people who come across your post based on the title you gave it. It looks like the system hanging issue might be something to do with Radeon cards so if you don't have one it might not be relevant to you.
I've had similar issues with Chromium since upgrading to Ubuntu 14.10. Bumping the limit of open files as in my other answer (by using ulimit in bash or editing limits.conf) seems to resolve the issue for me. Summary:
In a shell, run:
ulimit -a
Check the line that reads open files (or run ulimit -n right away). On my system, the value is 1024. Quit Chromium. Then, in the same terminal, issue
ulimit -n 4096
chromium-browser
Replace 4096 by a value suitable for your system. You should be able to use more tabs in this browser session. Once you have found a reasonable limit, persist it in limits.conf:
* hard nofile 4096 * soft nofile 4096
/etc/pam.d/common-session*:session required pam_limits.so
References:
I know a solution that worked for me, it seems its related to the shell you are using. I was using gnome-flashback as session instead of Unity. When i uninstalled that and used the default Unity again i had no crashes. This hasn't been confirmed yet but from preliminary tests its the case. So the problem seems to lie with Gnome 3 ? Possibly opensource drivers and Chrome, although i doubt its a problem with chrome.
One more thing ... this occurred only on the 64 bit versions of chrome, thus I believe it might only affect 64 bit systems.
He's dead, Jim!
Just isn't as funny as it used to be.
By the way, Chromium tells me:
Boo... You have no extensions :-( Want to browse the gallery instead?
It must be something else -- I've always suspected that this is related either to Flash or to JavaScript run by ads/trackers.
Something that has helped: Open the task manager (shift+esc) and just click the End process button until you've closed everything but Browser and GPU Process (these two can't be closed). Now go back to the websites that were crashing and try again.
After killing all of your tabs in this way, you can go back and reload pages with F5 on an as-needed basis. This is the way web browsers should work anyway -- pages release resources and hibernate when not in use.
Long story short, I think Chromium has moved away from its original sandbox-per-page architecture, so now there is a great-deal of interdependence between running web pages -- and this results in the infamous sad-tab, which tends to come in bunches.
It's hard to keep a web-browser running great over time. I hate to say it (or do it), but sometimes you just have to throw up your hands and go back to Firefox.
To disable GPU, another method is through user settings.
Disable the setting: Use hardware acceleration when available
chrome://settings/search#hardware%20acceleration
After restarting browser, check gpu status
chrome://gpu
You should see everything set to software.
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade)