firefox + flash video: crash playing second movie

[knarf]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

Firefox 3.0 beta 4 + flashplugin-nonfree leads to crashes playing second (or third or fourth) flash movie clips. This problem has been reported many times but so far all reports seem to be labeled 'invalid' because the report does not contain the needed data. I can not see whether this report contains a valid stack trace, nor do I know whether the proprietary flash plugin leads itself to producing such.

As this is a real, existing and annoying problem and as the proprietary flash plugin unfortunately remains the only way to play the majority of the flash video content out 'there' on the web it would be good to find a way to limit these crashes.

Short of breaking into Adobe to fix the bugs in their software I'm afraid there is no real solution (given that the crashes stem from problems in the flash plugin and not from problems in Firefox or any related plugins that is) other than to run the flash plugin as an external process which can be respawned if it dies. This seems to be the way the Opera browser handles flash (and other plugins) judging from the presence of 'operapluginwrapper' and 'operaplugincleaner' processes which get spawned when doing anything flashy. Killing these processes does nothing to Opera itself. Reloading the page containing the flash content leads to these processes being respawned.

It is clear that this approach to handling unstable plugins leads to fewer crashes related to those plugins. It also seems to lower performance of flash somewhat. I for one would be willing to sacrifice some performance with unstable proprietary software to gain immunity from the many bugs hidden in the proprietary code. For free plugins this approach should not be necessary as it is possible to actually fix the bugs. With proprietary code this is not possible.

ProblemType: Crash
Architecture: i386
CrashCounter: 1
Date: Mon Mar 31 13:15:43 2008
Disassembly: 0xb7ff6424:
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/lib/firefox-3.0b4/firefox
NonfreeKernelModules: ath_hal
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~b4+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcCmdline: /usr/lib/firefox-3.0b4/firefox
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/X11R6/bin:/opt/APPdillo/bin:/opt/APPf-spot/bin:/opt/APPhv/bin:/opt/APPida/bin:/opt/APPjalbum/bin:/opt/APPseamonkey/bin:/opt/APPtclkit/bin:/opt/LIBsee/bin:/opt/LIBtkhtml/bin
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
Signal: 11
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Stacktrace: #0 0xb7ff6424 in ?? ()
StacktraceTop: ?? ()
ThreadStacktrace:

Title: firefox crashed with SIGSEGV
Uname: Linux 2.6.25-rc6-t23-200803190110 i686
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout dip fax floppy fuse lpadmin netdev plugdev powerdev pulse-rt sambashare scanner src tape video

[knarf (launchpad-ubuntu-f)]

I see that this report does not contain a stack trace. I will try to get one using gdb and attach it to this bug report.

[Apport retracing service (apport)]

StacktraceTop:?? ()

[knarf (launchpad-ubuntu-f)]

Well, as expected libflashplugin.so does not contain debugging info so it is impossible to get a usable stack trace. I have posted this bug to Adobe's bug tracker but they seem to ignore bug reports judging from the reactions on their forum:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=44&catid=184&threadid=1328059&enterthread=y
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=44&catid=184&threadid=1292079&enterthread=y
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=44&catid=184&threadid=1330175&enterthread=y

etcetera...

I also offered to help them fix the bug or at least find the cause but they have to make an unstripped version of libflashplugin.so available. As that might not fit with some corporate policy this might simply never happen. Adobe does offer a 'debugging version' of the plugin but this is meant for 'content debugging', not debugging of the plugin itself. These versions can be found here:

http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

As the flash documentation license precludes the use of said documentation to create a free version we may be staring down a dead-end street.

Hey Adobe, are you reading along? Want your competition to beat you on the fastest growing platform on the 'net? Microsoft is helping out with porting Silverlight to Mono...

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, your crash report didn't yield the required information. Please go ahead and submit a new crash report if it crashed again with the latest available package. Thanks in advance for your cooperation and understanding.

[Nevermore (ward-jake)]

I'm having this bug - what information is required?

Thanks!

[knarf (launchpad-ubuntu-f)]

I'm the reporter. I noticed that this bug seems to occur mostly (or is it even only?) when flash is handled through a blocker extension such as flashblock or noscript. The crashes occur when the flash plugin is loaded for the second (or third or fourth...) time in a browser session. Without a blocker flash is not nearly as crash-happy.

As the web is much more palatable with flash blocked but the crashes occur mostly when flash video is blocked one of the ways of managing this problem is by disabling the blocking extention before accessing video content. Just don't forget to re-enable it before browsing elsewhere or you'll be hit in the face by all the evil flash bring to bear...

[Nevermore (ward-jake)]

I don't use a flash blocker - in fact I've been getting the bug on a totally vanilla, brand-new installation of FF3 beta 4. I've also experienced the crashing on beta 2. (Never used beta 3). It's always the same thing - I browse to a flash file and when I leave the page it hangs. I think it's always been when browsing youtube, but this could just be because that's when I most use flash.

Every bug report has been marked invalid with the same "not the required information" reply. What information is required?

[knarf (launchpad-ubuntu-f)]

The required information is a valid stack trace. This is impossible to get from the nonfree flash plugin as it does not contain symbols (it has been stripped) and the source is not available.

Your crashes/hangs seem to be different from the ones I describe in this bug report so you probably are plagued by another bug. The crashes I describe occur when starting a new video after one (or more) has already been played. I do not see crashes/hangs when leaving video pages.

If only Adobe's license would allow it these problems could be solved by writing a complete free flash player... but the license explicitly forbids this:

http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/fileformat/faq/#item-1-8

"...Can I use the File Format Specification to create a SWF interpreter or player?
     No, the File Format Specification is provided for the specific purpose of enabling software applications to export to the SWF file format..."

One proprietary format to bring them in and in the crashes bind them...

[Luis Jorge (luisjorge)]

Hi! I've had the same problem for some time now, and it is indeed annoying. I've used a standalone flash player 9, both for linux and for windows, the last one using wine. The curious thing is that the linux version crashes, while the windows version, running under linux, but with wine, doesn't crash! I don't know much about getting these "information stacks" or anything, but if I can help, please let me know how. It would be really good if we could see a solution different from using gnash.

Thanks!

Luis Jorge.

[SoloTurn (soloturn)]

here moving /usr/lib/libflashsupport.so out of the way cured it ...

[Payteer (prowan)]

Firefox 3.05 beta in Hardy with latest flash update as of yesterday 17th April 2008. On the BBC site, crashed first time worked second time.

[Valentin Neacsu (valentin.neacsu)]

On YouTube it's always crashing after a movie has been played and you click a new one. I'm running Hardy Beta with all updates.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

(Might be related to https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=438277 )

[Jehan (jbruggem)]

I can confirm this bug. I also have random crashs with firefox rc2 when viewing videos.

[KIAaze (zohn-joidberg)]

I also get crashes when watching flash videos. I use flashblock and noscript. I'll try disabling flashblock as suggested here and will test if it crashes regularly at the second video (which seemed to be the case so far).
Here's the console output from my latest crash:

GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x805f280: NP_GetMIMEDescription
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x805f280: NP_GetMIMEDescription return
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x805f280: NP_GetValue
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x805f280: NP_GetValue: returning plugin name.
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x805f280: NP_GetValue return
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x805f280: NP_GetValue
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x805f280: NP_GetValue: returning plugin description.
GCJ PLUGIN: thread 0x805f280: NP_GetValue return

(firefox:21530): Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_draw_image: assertion `GDK_IS_GC (gc)' failed

(firefox:21530): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

(firefox:21530): Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_draw_image: assertion `GDK_IS_GC (gc)' failed

(firefox:21530): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

(firefox:21530): Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_draw_image: assertion `GDK_IS_GC (gc)' failed

(firefox:21530): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

[1]+ Segmentation fault firefox