nspluginwrapper segfaults in post-install script

[Zane]

Binary package hint: update-manager

A dialog pops up near the end of the upgrade, reading "The upgrade has aborted. Your system could be in an unusable state. A recovery will run now (dpkg --configure -a). Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and include the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bug report. E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)"

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thank for your report.

The error is
Looking for plugins in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins

Segmentation fault

dpkg: error processing nspluginwrapper (--configure):

 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 139

No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already

Moving to nspluginwrapper

[Tiede (marcarthur)]

just to point it's not just upgrades.
Purging and reinstalling it results in the same behavior:
(sorry example is in french)

tiede@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get purge nspluginwrapper
[sudo] password for tiede:
Lecture des listes de paquets... Fait
Construction de l'arbre des dépendances
Lecture des informations d'état... Fait
Le paquet nspluginwrapper n'est pas installé, et ne peut donc être supprimé
0 mis à jour, 0 nouvellement installés, 0 à enlever et 0 non mis à jour.
tiede@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install nspluginwrapper
Lecture des listes de paquets... Fait
Construction de l'arbre des dépendances
Lecture des informations d'état... Fait
Les NOUVEAUX paquets suivants seront installés :
  nspluginwrapper
0 mis à jour, 1 nouvellement installés, 0 à enlever et 0 non mis à jour.
Il est nécessaire de prendre 0 o/175 ko dans les archives.
Après cette opération, 582 ko d'espace disque supplémentaires seront utilisés.
Sélection du paquet nspluginwrapper précédemment désélectionné.
(Lecture de la base de données... 472703 fichiers et répertoires déjà installés.)
Dépaquetage de nspluginwrapper (à partir de .../nspluginwrapper_1.2.2-0ubuntu9_amd64.deb) ...
Traitement des actions différées (« triggers ») pour « man-db »...
Paramétrage de nspluginwrapper (1.2.2-0ubuntu9) ...
plugin dirs:
Auto-update plugins from /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
Looking for plugins in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
Segmentation fault
dpkg : erreur de traitement de nspluginwrapper (--configure) :
 le sous-processus script post-installation installé a retourné une erreur de sortie d'état 139
Des erreurs ont été rencontrées pendant l'exécution :
 nspluginwrapper
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
tiede@ubuntu:~$

[Tiede (marcarthur)]

Workaround for those affected by this issue:

There seems to be a conflict with the Google Talk Plugin, causing this behavior.
To resolve the issue, this should work
sudo apt-get purge google-talkplugin

at the end, nspluginwrapper will be automatically configured.

**workaround taken from bug#773899, which is a duplicate report of this bug.

[Derek Penton (pentondb)]

Thank you. The workaround to remove the GoogleTalk plugin appears to
have resolved the issue with the nspluginwrapper and Flash plugin.

On 05/01/2011 06:20 AM, Tiede wrote:
> Workaround for those affected by this issue:
>
> There seems to be a conflict with the Google Talk Plugin, causing this behavior.
> To resolve the issue, this should work
> sudo apt-get purge google-talkplugin
>
> at the end, nspluginwrapper will be automatically configured.
>
>
> **workaround taken from bug#773899, which is a duplicate report of this bug.
>

[Sergio Callegari (callegar)]

One note about the workaround.

As soon as you re-install google talk plugin, as it is often suggested, the nsplugin wrapper starts segfaulting at any invocation.
For instance

nspluginwrapper -l

that should list the installed plugins starts segfaulting. So the workaround is really to either do without nspluginwrapper or do without google talk plugin, which is hardly acceptable.

Now, even if the google talk plugin was a very bad and completely obscure piece of software, segfaulting (with a double free, I think) is not the behavior that one would expect from the nspluginwrapper.

[Sergio Callegari (callegar)]

The bug is still present with the oniric version of nspluginwrapper (1.4.4) as tested via a backport (glasen ppa) to natty.

Before oniric is shipped, please either:

1) Patch nspluginwrapper to avoid even looking at the google-talk plugin (e.g. via some blacklisting)
2) Modify the nspluginwrapper deb package to have a conflict with google-talk plugin so that they cannot be installed simultaneously.

Please do not ship oniric with a segfaulting application when this can be very simply avoided.

[Sergio Callegari (callegar)]

Upstream bug is probably https://github.com/davidben/nspluginwrapper/issues/8

Cannot add it properly to the bug as launchpad does not recognize the github bug tracker.

Bug looks to be closed there, but it is unclear to me whether it is closed as fixed or wontfix.

Seems to be caused by QT (see https://bugreports.qt.nokia.com//browse/QTBUG-10861)

As oniric comes with qt 4.7 it is very much likely to be affected by the bug too, since the qt bug report mentions the bug being fixed in qt 4.8.

[Sergio Callegari (callegar)]

Opened a QT bug at https://bugs.launchpad.net/qt/+bug/856175

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

The upstream bug includes code changes in nspluginwrapper. That's 'fix released'. And the commit https://github.com/davidben/nspluginwrapper/commit/0ff78b2a875ad99b2c2b0c1715493cf1ec36aea1 is present in nspluginwrapper 1.4.4 that we have in oneiric.

> The bug is still present with the oniric version of nspluginwrapper (1.4.4)
> as tested via a backport (glasen ppa) to natty.

I have no idea about that backport, but I cannot reproduce this with the actual oneiric package.
$ dpkg --print-architecture
amd64
$ dpkg -l google-talkplugin:*|grep ^ii
ii google-talkplugin 2.3.2.0-1 Google Talk Plugin
$ nspluginwrapper -l
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flashplugin-alternative.so
  Original plugin: /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so
  Plugin viewer: /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer
  Wrapper version string: 1.4.4-1
/usr/lib/firefox/plugins/flashplugin-alternative.so
  Original plugin: /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so
  Plugin viewer: /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer
  Wrapper version string: 1.4.4-1
$

No crashes.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Since I can't reproduce this with the current package in oneiric, I'm marking this as fixed. If you can tell me how to reproduce the issue, please reopen with that information.