Firefox crashes when attempting to print to file (PDF)

[komputes]

Binary package hint: firefox

When attempting to print a PDF (print to file), Firefox crashes.

Steps to reproduce:
1) File > Print
2) Select "Print to file"
3) Select "PDF" as file type

Print dialog gets to 33% then firefox crashes and PDF is never created.

Selecting PostScrpt (PS) works well but PDF makes Firefox crash (quit/disappear) at times. I am unable to consistently reproduce this bug, but it has happened to me multiple times and only in Firefox.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

This currently works for me, I was able to print this bug page to a PDF without problems. Can you check which version of Firefox you have installed?

apt-cache show firefox | grep Version

I have 3.0.3+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu1 installed.

See if you have the same or a different version, and see if you can still reproduce it on the latest version. If so, please provide the URL of the page which you are trying to print which is crashing.

[Jonas Pedersen (jonasped)]

I just tried to replicate this bug by printing from 5 different web sites. None of them crashed firefox and PDF is created correctly. I am also using FF version 3.0.3+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu1.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

 status invalid

[komputes (komputes)]

I have tested this on firefox 3.0.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu2 and I am glad to say that I can no longer reproduce this.

[dino (adinov)]

I have been doing a hell of a lot of printing to pdf files, on different Linux computers with different versions of firefox over time. I have seen this bug every time. It happens intermittently, about 1 in 10 prints on average. It doesn't occur with Konqueror. This bug still exists in firefox 3.0.5 on Ubuntu 8.10.

[dino (adinov)]

please check this bug. Its a bit harder to reproduce than what was already tried. Its a damn nuisance because it leads to potentially irreversible data loss in some cases, eg: pages that can only be accessed once, transaction receipts, etc...

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

@dino - did you really think that assigning a bug to me would help get it resolved? Please don't do that again. I would encourage you to read https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage if you'd like to make a real difference on this bug and on free software in general.

[dino (adinov)]

Sorry, I'm an innocent newbie- had no idea what I was doing-...... thanks for the link!!!!!
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage.

I will check to see if the Apport crash report gets sent when it happens again.

thanks,

AD

[h1repp (heinz-repp)]

Confirming this bug with ubuntu hardy and 3.0.10+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1 and some pages, the last one where firefox crashed was on the page at the end of an account creation trying to print the summary, and before sending the changes - unfortunately I cannot provide the complete link for privacy reasons and because it is most likely a temporary session link. In this case I had to redo the whole accout creation three times, as I tried printing to file/pdf a second time.

[0xff (lat36)]

I can repeat this bug consistently when trying to print

http://www.vesahack.net/1/post/2009/06/jussi-halla-aho-maahanmuuttajien-ja-ruotsinkielisten-ystv.html

as pdf.

apt-cache show firefox | grep Version
Version: 3.0.11+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
 Don't remove this if you want to receive automatic major version upgrades for
Version: 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu3
 Don't remove this if you want to receive automatic major version upgrades for

[komputes (komputes)]

@0xff I'd like to figure out what's causing this bug for you. We haven't seen much talk on this bug. This hasn't happened to me in a while. Also, I am able to print the link you provided to pdf.

@0xff @h1repp Could you please update to firefox 3.0.13 and test this again? I will mark the bug as incomplete for now. Please reopen/re-confirm it if you can reproduce this with the latest updates in hardy. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[h1repp (heinz-repp)]

As we have a stable firefox 3.5 in the meanwhile, and the backporters team refused to backport it to hardy (see bug #395167), I removed the distribution's firefox package and installed the vanilla build from mozilla.com (and updated it since to 3.5.2). With this package, not the ubuntu one, I did some test and had no crashes printing to file in pdf format. This is not exactly what you asked, but I am not willing to use an obsolete version any more.

[komputes (komputes)]

I haven't had this issue for a long time now. It seems to have been fixed somewhere along the way though release updating.