Clicking on huge image locks/hangs machine (complete loss of interactivity)

[Paul Sladen]

Note that whilst I've initially filed this against Firefox, it is a wider cross-stack performance issue (a single application should not be able to bring the machine down). Clicking on the following image:

  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Georgetown_PowerPlant_interior_pano.jpg (27,000✕17,000)

sets the Firefox title, but then immediately locks the machine with all loss of interactivity.

Ideally Firefox should not undertake activities that are likely to bring the machine down (such as allocated huge arrays for data that it has not yet even received) and ideally the rest of the stack down to the kernel should not let a single application bring the rest down.

(Metadata and a tiled-image viewer for the image can be found at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Georgetown_PowerPlant_interior_pano.jpg )

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

I need to look at this in more detail, but it seems that it's creating a lot of X resources when opening that image, and Xorg ends up using GBs of RAM

[mgmechanics (mgmechanics)]

I clicked that link an firefox starts to load the image. The system becomes slow but i was able to switch to thunderbird and read some emails (more than one). Then, as the picture seems almost completely loaded, firefox crashed and cames up with an excuse and a bug report to mozilla. I wrote in the bug report, that this crash happens because i was veryfing a lauchpad bug. Than firefox asked me to recover last sessions (i agreed) and tried to load the picture again. I closed the tab, butmade a bug report to launchpad.

[Mechanical snail (replicator-snail)]

I can confirm this with Firefox 3.6.13 on Lucid, with Linux 2.6.32-27.29.
Since one application can bring down the system, this seems to be a kernel bug.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hey paul, this sounds like a driver texture size limitation which was worked out not too long ago. You didn't mention which version of Ubuntu this was seen in, though. Can you check if this issue still happens with natty, and if so please run 'apport-collect 673389'.

[Marius Vasilescu (vegancorr)]

I've tried the link above with Firefox 4 RC (Lucid) and it displayed "The image [...] cannot be displayed because it contains errors.". The system behaved normally.

[Starbuck Johnson (starbuckjohnson)]

The message displayed when trying to view the image directly is the result of a fix released into the mainstream firefox version that shows an error message when trying to display an image that has an extremely high resolution. This will not be a problem for any pictures except those unreasonable large. Thanks for bringing this bug into attention.

[Starbuck Johnson (starbuckjohnson)]

Unfortunately this image will still open without the error message on the newer more unstable version of Firefox used with natty and the image will again crash a PC that is older or less powerful.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I don't reproduce it with the given URL. Just shows the "contains errors" message. Feel free to reopen if you have a reproducible test case.

[bugbot (bugbot)]

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 673389

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.