Loading www.yamana.com freezes Firefox and Linux. Reboot required

[Austriaco]

Binary package hint: firefox

Trying to load the following website: http://www.yamana.com/ freezes firefox, X and the whole OS. A hard reboot is required afterwards, since not even network access is available. I don't know how to debug this problem, since everything is frozen as soon as the pages starts to load in Firefox. Any advice on how to proceed would be very welcome.

To reproduce: Just go to the stated website with adobe flashplugin installed. System will severely slow down if not stop all together.

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS
Release: 10.04
Codename: lucid

$ apt-cache policy firefox
firefox:
  Installed: 3.6.12+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
  Candidate: 3.6.12+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
  Version table:
 *** 3.6.12+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1 0
        500 http://debian.charite.de/ubuntu/ lucid-updates/main Packages
        500 http://debian.charite.de/ubuntu/ lucid-security/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://debian.charite.de/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this!

I can confirm this bug. Seems that the flash plugin is what causes the crash by using all available RAM.

apt-cache policy firefox for my machine:
  Installed: 3.6.12+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
  Candidate: 3.6.12+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
  Version table:
 *** 3.6.12+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates/main Packages
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages

[Austriaco (lanieves)]

Thanks for confirming. What I don't understand is why the kernel doesn't terminate the process consuming all memory, instead everything freezes and i have to reboot. To me, this is perhaps a regression of some type in the kernel. I seem to remember in times past, the kernel would kill processes consuming too much memory. I learnt that in linux every process is strictly "caged", so to speak, and one process hanging would not hang the hole system. I mean, it is unacceptable linux is behaving this way.

[Brian Thomason (brian-thomason)]

Hi,

Can you verify which version of Adobe Flash you are using? (you can type about:plugins in Firefox to see)

I don't see this issue on my i386 Lucid with the latest flash installed using Firefox 3.6.8+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1. It may very well be a Firefox issue, but I want to ensure what version of Flash you are running before I test further.

Thanks!

-Brian

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

@ Brian

Good idea! That may be the case ;)

For reference, here is my flash version: Shockwave Flash 10.0 r45

[Austriaco (lanieves)]

same here: Shockwave Flash 10.0 r45 But I forgot to point out, I'm running on 64bits:

$ uname -a
Linux galar3 2.6.32-25-generic #45-Ubuntu SMP Sat Oct 16 19:52:42 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

@ Brian

You using the same shockwave version as us?

[Brian Thomason (brian-thomason)]

Well that explains it - 64 bit isn't supported yet :-) We should be officially releasing it in Aprilish.

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

Very good. Changing status due to impending 64 bit release.

[Austriaco (lanieves)]

I apologize for not stating right off the start i'm using 64bit.

And sorry for insisting, but shouldn't the kernel handle this in some more "not-hang-the-whole-system" way? I understand 64bit flash is not supported yet, but i think this exposes a deeper problem.