firefox crashes on flash contents when using libflashsupport

[LGB [Gábor Lénárt]]

Testcase:

use pulseaudio and libflashsupport together with flashplugin-nonfree in firefox.

1. navigate to youtube video
2. wait till sound plays
3. hit back button
4. hit forward
5. goto 2 if not yet crashed.

the crash sometimes happens after 2 iterations ... and i can't remember that i ever made 10 :) ...

=================

Tested on two machines both with gutsy and hardy (on 32 bit x86): flash content very often crashes firefox (both of firefox-3.0 in hardy and older versions). I've just tried with other browsers, epiphany-browser crashes as well, and even konqueror from KDE (though it's not crashing at a whole, since it may run flash and other plugins as another user or something similar - I think at least - but it reports the crash of flash). I don't know exactly the package I should report this against, but as far as I can remember this issue presents since I started to play with pulseaudio: there is a wrapper lib to allow flash to play sound via PA right, so it CAN BE caused by this single issue instead of problem of the browser or the flash plugin itself?

=================
Workaround for early Hardy adopters:

Manually uninstall the libflashsupport via 'apt-get remove libflashsupport' or synaptic. This is necessary because libflashsupport would not automatically be removed by update-manager when it was changed from a dependent package to a recommended package during the Hardy development cycle.

=================
Update 13/8/08: Hopefully this summary can help clarify the situation and help get this bug fixed!

Since the release of Flash 9, ALSA is the only audio output method supported by Flash (as opposed to earlier releases which had OSS and ESD support built-in). However, to aid with backwards-compatibility, Adobe have provided a simple API to support other audio (and secure transaction) schemes, which can be exposed by using the "libflashsupport" code. You can view the original implementation on Adobe's wiki page, which extends OSS and ESD output to Flash 9: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Player:Additional_Interface_Support_for_Linux

The version of libflashsupport used in Ubuntu (and most recent distributions that use PulseAudio) is different to the above, as it has been extended to support PulseAudio. You can see the relevant upstream wiki, with a description and link to the git repository: http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/FlashPlayer9Solution

The problem that users are experiencing in this bug is that Flash becomes unstable when the libflashsupport API is used; both the original OSS/ESD implementation provided by Adobe and the version adapted for PulseAudio exhibit this instability. The source of the problem is within Flash itself and it is not due to a bug in the modified libflashsupport code. See this PulseAudio bug report: http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/267

So what can we do? We can drop libflashsupport entirely and use a better method to enable PulseAudio support in Flash (and all ALSA applications, in fact). PulseAudio provides ALSA plugins that enable most ALSA applications to have PulseAudio support. Unfortunately, Ubuntu is one of the few distributions that did not configure PulseAudio completely and thus ALSA applications completely bypass PulseAudio, causing mixing conflicts. This issue is reported on bug #198453 and you can read the FAQ at the following link for a summary of the problem here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=866965

If we remove libflashsupport and fix bug #198453, there's "good news" and "bad news" with regards to Flash:

The bad news: Flash 9 still won't work (due to Flash 9's erroneous reliance on snd_async_add_pcm_handler() which causes problems with the PulseAudio ALSA plugin). See the PulseAudio developer's comment on Flash 9 here: https://tango.0pointer.de/pipermail/pulseaudio-discuss/2008-May/001796.html

The good news: the snd_async_add_pcm_handler() issue is fixed in Flash 10 (since beta 1). Essentially, Flash 10 is 100% PulseAudio compatible when using the proper configuration of bug #198453.

In summary, the solution to this bug:
1. Upgrade to Flash 10 (at release candidate status as of 13/8)
2. Drop libflashsupport completely (it causes instability in Flash 9 and 10)
3. Fix bug #198453

This bug is a trivial fix for Intrepid (and should have been fixed a long time ago, to give PulseAudio time for testing). It is also possible to fix in Hardy, as long as the prerequisites of bug #198453 can be fulfilled whilst keeping the SRU policy for an LTS release in mind. Either way, *something needs to be done*.

[TerryG (tgalati4)]

Marking as incomplete until reporter posts specific examples (links) to sites that crash. Flash is a moving target in Firefox. I presume you are running the latest version of Flash?

[LGB [Gábor Lénárt] (lgb)]

Flash plugin is downloaded and installed by flashplugin-nonfree hardy package (currently: 9.0.115.0ubuntu4), flash version - according to about:plugins - is 9.0 r115. I can't give a specific URL, all flash content can crash firefox it seems, but browsing youtube.com and watching videos can trigger the bug quite often (but not always!). I've disabled (eg: removed file /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so) on the other machine; since then no crash; so I assume it's the fault of the plugin and not the browser itself.

[TerryG (tgalati4)]

I've only watched a few youtube videos and I've never experienced a crash, but on the forums several other folks have so I assume that it's a flash plug-in problem. If you can repeat the crash with a specific video, that would help. Also, watch your memory consumption (in a terminal: free), if you run out of swap, then that can crash firefox without warning. It could be a memory leak in the flash plug-in. I've experienced crashes with flash chat and music streaming from www.cocgospel.com so I assume that it's the flash plug-in because the crash corresponds with RAM filling up, then swap filling up, then crash.

If we can get a repeatable use case, then we can confirm the bug, otherwise we know that the non-open flash plug-in is the likely culprit, and without the source, it's tough to fix. We can work around it by watching for memory leaks, and other things that cause crashes.

[LGB [Gábor Lénárt] (lgb)]

Now, it's harder to trigger again but happens sometimes. I can't mention a given URL/video, it sometimes crashes on flash content, and sometimes not. There is an apport report, but I can't figure out how to attach to this bugreport, so it created another bug ticket at #198020 sorry for the action ...

Btw, I checked memory usage and it's not the case at least it didn't seem so.

[LGB [Gábor Lénárt] (lgb)]

Just having the same issue and apport states that there is not enough memory to report crash which is strange since there is more than 4Gbyte swap was free and also some RAM (from the 1Gbyte). Flash plugin may require abnormal huge amount of memory which is failed to allocate?

[Guillaume M (diabo-bugreport)]

I confirm the bug. Under gutsy, flash animations like youtube videos used to cause epiphany-browser to crash from time to time while unloading the animation. Now that I upgraded to hardy beta, this happens way more often, like on 50% of the animations. This is not reproducible for each animation.

However, I was able to find an animation which seems to trigger the bug repeatedly (or at least a bug with the same symptoms): it is the big animation at the top of http://www.makinghistory.upenn.edu/ .

(Directions:
> Let the animation play until the end and watch the browser hang
> Re-load and press the "skip intro" button to witness the same effect)

Hope it helps.

gm.

[LGB [Gábor Lénárt] (lgb)]

Well, it does not crash here, but quite often on youtube videos ... I've read quite large amount of posts on various forums that ubuntu hardy is very unstable if you want to use the non-free flash plugin and firefox, and some of them think (similar to me) that it can be something with pulseaudio and libflashsupport (according to some of posts even gutsy affected if pulseaudio is installed). However don't know what to do with this gossip like information here :)

[Jeff Fortin Tam (kiddo)]

+1 gadm. I am using epiphany-gecko with flashplugin-nonfree, and it is very easy to reproduce. Just watch random youtube videos until it crashes. I recommend searching for funny cats videos.

Epiphany+flash used to be very stable (as in: crash maybe once every 2-3 months?) in gutsy and previous releases, and now it crashes *every* day, on 25-50% of trials (trial = loading a web page containing flash content, be it youtube or something else). This is unacceptable, I had to remove flashplugin-nonfree to keep a crash-free experience for the moment being, but half of the web is crippled now (though I don't miss those ads ;).

Nothing to do with memory/swap usage. What information still needs to be provided for this bug?

[Jeff Fortin Tam (kiddo)]

by the way, you don't have to watch entire youtube videos. Just watching the first few seconds will determine if it's going to crash or not. So, go to youtube, and play 10 seconds of video, go to the next video, play 10 secs, etc.

It may crash on the very first one. It may crash on the 5th. On the 10th. But it will crash, sometime. I have not tried, but maybe opening multiple youtube pages in tabs at once could make it crash faster. Heck, even osnews.com makes the browser crash, and it happens so often that I disabled apport because it took me too much time to recover.

[LGB [Gábor Lénárt] (lgb)]

Exactly! This is why this bug is marked as incomplete because an exact description is required to reproduce the bug, but it seems it is not the nature of this bug ... And yes, crashing always occures at the starting of youtube videos but not always: sometimes crashes on the same video, sometimes not even repeating many times to trey to make firefox crashing. Firefox, epiphany are always unusable for me because of random crashes (konqueror is protected to use some kind of separated envirnoment for stuff like binary blobs, it would be a great win for firefox especially for this issue ...)

[Jeff Fortin Tam (kiddo)]

although this bug report seems to have been created initially before hardy, as a more generic "crashes" bug; it looks like our issue is very different in Hardy than in previous releases. Maybe we should instead be concentrating our efforts in Bug #196588 ?

[LGB [Gábor Lénárt] (lgb)]

Well, this bug was reported by me it was based on hardy, but I got this problem in gutsy too when I've started to play with pulseaudio. For me it seems the bug affects the daily usage of browsers since I'm using pulseaudio thus libflashsupport is needed regardless it's gutsy or hardy. For me at least, the problem is the same. I've got a crash report too with apport at bug #198020. Anyway I've just commented bug #196588 about these thoughts.

[Rafael C. Brandão (rcbrandao)]

I can confirm this bug as well. I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron, it's fully patched and I'm getting crashes very often when I'm watching youtube videos. On the terminal, if I run firefox and this crash happens, an error message appears "Segmentation fault". I'm not sure whether this bug would apply on gutsy with pulseaudio installed. An interesting thing is that I wasn't experiencing such bug until I removed my /home directory and logged in back again.

[Krister Koski (kikke)]

Yes this is definitely Pulseaudio server problem, i tested it and FLash crashing stopped example with Youtube videos.
LGB [Gábor Lénárt] information is correct and i found nasty solution.

I removed all Pulseaudio packages by using Synaptic, use search and find pulse, only packages what i left there are these:
libao2
libgsm1
libpulse0
vlc
vlc-nox

so remove all other and do reboot.

But now there is still bug in PulseAudio server what need to be fixed.

Description: Ubuntu hardy (development branch)
Release: 8.04

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

assigned package pulseaudio instead of firefox due to user comments.

[Mike Smith (mlsmith)]

I can also confirm that by deleting PulseAudio Sound Server 0.9.9-1ubuntu4 alone stopped the crashes for me.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

I decided today to rebuild a local copy of flashplugin-nonfree and remove the dependency on libflashsupport. This has fixed all of the random crashes (with useless backtraces) that I was experiencing.

It seems that there is a bug in libflashsupport that causes the crashes. I can't find any easy way to generate additional useful information, however; the mere absense of that library stops my crashes. (This is a fully up-to-date Hardy).

I recommend that the dependency on libflashsupport be dropped, in light of this. These crashes are easily preventable, and Hardy can't be released with a browser that cannot even go to YouTube.

[Jeff Fortin Tam (kiddo)]

could you provide your package (or give instructions to do what you did) so we can test this?

[LGB [Gábor Lénárt] (lgb)]

Agreed, and as I've written, it even started in gutsy when I started to play with PulseAudio. The only problem about lack of libflashsupport that you won't able to use flash sound support on hardy otherwise on "simple" sound cards, since as far as I know pulseaudio is installed by default and cheap sound cards often manages only one channel to play, so if pulseaudio is running, flash would not able to produce sound. I think libflashsupport and/or pulseaudio should be fixed instead, or Adobe should be asked to find the bug in its binary blob. But otherwise you're right even my wife say "this crap is much worse than windows, not even a single video can be viewed without crash". Ok sure she don't understand the problems and the fact that it's not a stable distribution but it shows the problem if hardy would come out in this unusable state ...

[LGB [Gábor Lénárt] (lgb)]

I can confirm this.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

A build is pending in my PPA, I am just waiting for the PPA system to actually get around to building it.

It should be done soon.

https://edge.launchpad.net/~mtrausch/+archive

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

THe package should be available as soon as it moves from pending to published.

After installing it, remove libflashsupport, and restart Firefox. YouTube, et al. should work as expected unless something else is using your sound card at the time that Flash wants to try to get it.

[Martin Erik Werner (arand)]

Working so far without crash using your (Michael's) package, and normally I'd have crashed ten times by this much youtube browsing.

[Jeff Fortin Tam (kiddo)]

It seems to make the situation worse in my case. Youtube videos play for
maybe 2 seconds and then they "pause", I don't know why. And also, if you
try to use rhythmbox while any youtube page is open (even if no video is
playing), rhythmbox will not play and it will hang.

As far is I knew, my sound card was capable of hardware mixing without
problems, as it was able to play tons of stuff at the same time before the
pulseaudio era (most likely with alsa?). It's an integrated SiS chip on my
motherboard. lspci tells me:

00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97
Sound Controller (rev a0)

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

System: Dell Inspiron 510m
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)

I can confirm the same issue on my system fully up-to-date Hardy install. Navigating away from a page with flash content (usually Youtube) causes the browser to crash, reporting a segmentation fault. Attempting to view three or four videos successively on Youtube is usually enough to trigger a crash.

Installing Michael's modified package and removing libflashsupport seems to have eliminated these crashes completely; we need to investigate a way to get flash working with pulseaudio without this issue.

[Thomas Drapier (contact-thomasdrapier)]

Same problem here, the browser usually crash when trying to display a video in a flash applet. When running from the console, it reports a segmentation fault, but nothing else. Usually when reloading firefox right afterwards using the url which just crashed, it works.

It seams flash isn't managing memory properly. After a few minutes the browser started, it is not able to play videos (memory leak in the fash plugin?).

[dano (danoex)]

same problem in hardy heron - firefox beta 5 - flash plugin 9,0,124,0
Always fails to open a second flash video (youtube, google video, mogulus, etc.)

[Christoph Reiter (lazka)]

http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/225

same here..
killall pulseaudio fixes it.

[LGB [Gábor Lénárt] (lgb)]

IMHO/AFAIK: I think this bug should be show stopper or similar at priority, since playing flash content with audio on Ubuntu as desktop operating system is not a rare usage pattern I think :) And because hardy is based on pulseaudio by default (so the flash plugin) this should be fixed before the final release of the distribution, I think. Dropping pulseaudio support from flash plugin/wrapper is not a sultion because pulseaudio is used as core audio component (if I'm not right please correct me), so it should run, and many audio hardware can't play streams from multiple sources: from flash plugin (without PA support) and from PA, so it's not the solution either. The only solution is to fix this issue or drop PA fully from the default install at least, but I think the latter is not an option.

[D4nielfree (d4nielfree)]

just remove the /usr/lib/libflashsupport.so solved my crashing problem
why do we need both the libflashsupport and flashplugin-nonfree anyway ??

[LGB [Gábor Lénárt] (lgb)]

D4nielfree: as far as I know: flashplugin-nonfree is the flash plugin itself (in fact that ubuntu package is only a downloader/installer for fetching the flash plugin from adobe through the Net and install it), while libflashsupport is for support flash to be able to play audio through PulseAudio sound server which is a core component of Ubuntu Hardy. So if you remove libflashsupport you loose the ability of working through PulseAudio. If you have a sound card which capable of playing multiple streams by hardware it's not a problem, however not every sound card is from this type, and also the basic idea of PulseAudio (and its role in Ubuntu Hardy, and also in other distributions like Fedora - as far as I know at least) is to have an audio server to be able to control all audio sources and mixing together then.

Ok, if I'm wrong in my explanation somewhere, please correct me!!

[Martin Erik Werner (arand)]

latest update seems to have broken Michael's package, it's not recognised by firefox at all... Grrrr!

Installing newest updated version leads to crash-fest.

Installing Michaels package makes me unable to use any flash...

Showstopper, definitely.

[D4nielfree (d4nielfree)]

ah.. got it..thx for the information :)
so the bug should go with the sound support, hope ppl can fix it soon

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

This has nothing to do with Firefox rejecting the package.
If you want your bug to be looked at please file a seperate bug for each crash report and please add your crash report to the bug. this way we know what crashes when it crashes and why. Otherwise we are unablet o confirm your issue is the same as the reporters. Apport will mark as a duplicate if it sees the same faults.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

>I decided today to rebuild a local copy of flashplugin-nonfree and remove the dependency on libflashsupport. This has >fixed all of the random crashes (with useless backtraces) that I was experiencing.

This has been done in newest flash. Flash no longer needs libflashsupport as a depends with nest version.

[Vashu (mbisono)]

I can confirm this bug as well. It's been happening for me since edgy maybe earlier. But got a lot more common on hardy.

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

I have made some interesting discoveries regarding this bug.

First of all, libflashsupport appears to trigger these crashes, but it is apparently exposing a bug in flash, not pulseaudio. See this upstream ticket: http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/267

Secondly, I have installed Fedora 9 (rawhide i686) on my laptop (a Dell Inspiron 510m), which has the following installed:

pulseaudio-module-gconf-0.9.10-1.fc9.i386
pulseaudio-utils-0.9.10-1.fc9.i386
gstreamer-plugins-pulse-0.9.5-0.5.svn20070924.fc9.i386
pulseaudio-core-libs-0.9.10-1.fc9.i386
pulseaudio-libs-glib2-0.9.10-1.fc9.i386
pulseaudio-0.9.10-1.fc9.i386
pulseaudio-module-x11-0.9.10-1.fc9.i386
pulseaudio-esound-compat-0.9.10-1.fc9.i386
pulseaudio-libs-0.9.10-1.fc9.i386
alsa-plugins-pulseaudio-1.0.16-4.fc9.i386
libflashsupport-000-0.5.svn20070904.i386
flash-plugin-9.0.124.0-release.i386
nspluginwrapper-0.9.91.5-26.fc9.i386

What I noticed is that Firefox never crashes on flash contents in Fedora 9 with the packages listed above, and pulse output works perfectly. If I remove nspluginwrapper, however, Firefox crashes on flash contents, just as in Hardy. I am guessing that the npviewer.bin process is isolated and prevents firefox from crashing.

I find it interesting that Fedora ships with nspluginwrapper for the x86 architecture, since it seems redundant, but it appears to solve the problem with flash. I will try to recompile nspluginwrapper on Hardy for the i386 architecture and see if it helps with this problem.

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

I have compiled and installed nspluginwrapper (from the original source, so it's a manual install).

I now experience the following behaviour:
Browsing Youtube works correctly as usual, but at some times the flash box turns grey and a message dialog pops up saying this: "This problem report does not apply to a packaged program. (/usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer.bin)". Firefox does not crash, and if I confirm the dialog and reload the page, flash content will load normally.

I noticed in Fedora 9 that the flash box would turn grey, but there was no error dialog, so perhaps it's related to Ubuntu's extra apport or bugreporting hooks.

It appears that nspluginwrapper has potential to protect flash from taking down the entire Firefox process, so I think we should consider creating an i386 flavour of the wrapper too. This makes sense since we have no control over the non-free flash plugin's development, and it appears to protect Firefox from completely crashing.

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

I hacked the amd64 source and built an i386 package of nspluginwrapper. It seems to work identically to Fedora 9; when flash crashes, the flash box turns grey but Firefox does not crash. There's no error dialog either (as mentioned in my last post).

If you test this package, remember that you have to reinstall flashplugin-nonfree afterwards, i.e.:

sudo dpkg -i /path/to/nspluginwrapper_0.9.91.5-2ubuntu2_i386.deb
sudo apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

[ski (skibrianski)]

I heartily agree with Conn's observations about nspluginwrapper (or something like it) having an x86 port. The thing I noticed immediately when I switched to nspluginwrapper (from a chroot jail where I ran x86 firefox) was that when I was watching a flash video which takes >90% cpu in one tab (e.g. msnbc), I could still navigate on the other tabs freely, because of the seperate process (it's a dual core machine).

So there are performance, as well as crash-protection, reasons to move in the "seperate process" direction. It's not really germane to this bug, but I wanted to put my 2 cents in, because I think it's a great idea.

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

Michael,

You're correct, but you reported in the wrong bug (wmode crashes are unrelated to libflashsupport and PulseAudio, see bug #239182). It still doesn't fix libflashsupport - but hey, that's ok, because....

Flash, Firefox and PulseAudio instability can be resolved completely with the following fixes:
1. Bug #192888: Remove libflashsupport
2. Bug #198453: Set the proper ALSA configuration (ensuring you also have libasound2-plugins installed)
3. Bug #239182: Update to Flash 10 RC, and set the proper /etc/adobe.cfg configuration (the updated flashplugin-nonfree deb in my PPA sets this configuration already)

[Robert Persson (ireneshusband)]

Alexander Jones wrote:
> Explanation: Adobe sucks at implementing their own specification (the
> "libflashsupport" extension API). It is *entirely* Adobe's fault that
> Flash crashes all the time.
>
> If you insist on "fixing" this, then the only solution is to stop
> using libflashsupport, which removes the ability for it to use the
> PulseAudio ALSA PCM properly, which means that either Flash or
> PulseAudio, but not both, can use the ALSA output at any one time.
> Uninstalling PulseAudio will mean that all ALSA applications can share
> the ALSA device using the "DMix" ALSA daemon, which is handled
> automatically.
>
I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. Flash works fairly well with Opera and
it doesn't seem to have any trouble negotiating access to the sound device.

But then again, it actually doesn't matter whose "fault" it is. Nothing
great in this world was ever built out of excuses. No commercial
product. Nothing. Please let's not have any more of this "It's Adobe's
fault" stuff. Will that make my browser work? Will it make Ubuntu a
viable desktop operating system?

There seem to be a lot of people for whom this bug seems to be fixed by
an upgrade to Flash 10 or whatever. Unfortunately that isn't the case
for me. I "upgraded" to 10 and I'm still spending my browsing hours
looking at blank rectangles.

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

Sorry for the duplication, but there has been some overlapping discussion between this bug and bug #198453.

If you look at post https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/198453/comments/109 and
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/198453/comments/111 (for 64bit users, thanks to Shot for the assistance), testing packages are available that essentially solve the (dire) situation with Flash and PulseAudio. Provided that we can backport/SRU the necessary packages for Hardy, and Flash 10 final comes soon, this bug is now completely fixable.

I have been running with this configuration for the past two days, and I haven't seen a single crash in Firefox or Flash. And yes, Flash uses PulseAudio, so there should be no more audio mixing conflicts.

[Jeremy LaCroix (jlacroix82-deactivatedaccount)]

Has anything changed recently?

I reported a while ago that something made this bug happen much more
common for me.

Now, as of today, it's even worse, as EVERY flash video with sound
freezes Firefox beyond control. 64-bit here.

Conn wrote:
> Sorry for the duplication, but there has been some overlapping
> discussion between this bug and bug #198453.
>
> If you look at post https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/198453/comments/109 and
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/198453/comments/111 (for 64bit users, thanks to Shot for the assistance), testing packages are available that essentially solve the (dire) situation with Flash and PulseAudio. Provided that we can backport/SRU the necessary packages for Hardy, and Flash 10 final comes soon, this bug is now completely fixable.
>
> I have been running with this configuration for the past two days, and I
> haven't seen a single crash in Firefox or Flash. And yes, Flash uses
> PulseAudio, so there should be no more audio mixing conflicts.
>
>

[dano (danoex)]

2008/8/27 Jeremy LaCroix <email address hidden>

> Has anything changed recently?
>
> I reported a while ago that something made this bug happen much more
> common for me.
>
> Now, as of today, it's even worse, as EVERY flash video with sound
> freezes Firefox beyond control. 64-bit here.
>
> Conn wrote:
> > Sorry for the duplication, but there has been some overlapping
> > discussion between this bug and bug #198453.
> >
> > If you look at post
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/198453/comments/109and
> >
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/198453/comments/111(for 64bit users, thanks to Shot for the assistance), testing packages are
> available that essentially solve the (dire) situation with Flash and
> PulseAudio. Provided that we can backport/SRU the necessary packages for
> Hardy, and Flash 10 final comes soon, this bug is now completely fixable.
> >
> > I have been running with this configuration for the past two days, and I
> > haven't seen a single crash in Firefox or Flash. And yes, Flash uses
> > PulseAudio, so there should be no more audio mixing conflicts.
> >
> >
>
> --
> firefox crashes on flash contents when using libflashsupport
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/192888
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

This workaround fix all my flash problems

························································
Elimina nspluginwrapper

$ sudo apt-get remove nspluginwrapper

* Elimina paquetes obsoletos y ficheros de configuracion:

$ sudo apt-get remove libflashsupport
$ sudo rm ~/.pulse/* ~/.asoundrc* /etc/asound.conf

* Instala las siguientes dependencias:

$ sudo apt-get install padevchooser libao-pulse libasound2-plugins
libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio

* Añade las siguientes lineas a tu fichero /etc/apt/sources.list:

# PulseAudio Fixes - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5587712
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/psyke83/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/psyke83/ubuntu hardy main

* Actualiza la lista de repositorios y despues actualiza tu sistema:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

* Fija Pulse Audio como el dispositivo ALSA por defecto (esto ejecutalo como
tu usuario normal, no como root):

$ asoundconf set-pulseaudio
$ echo "default_driver=pulse" >~/.libao

* Ve a Sistemas > Preferencias > Sonido y en todos los checkbox fijalos a
"Auto Detectar".
························································

--
Daniel Vásquez - Webmaster Revista Observaciones Filosóficas - DanoEX Chile
http://www.danoex.net/

[Jeremy LaCroix (jlacroix82-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you, but I'm not installing anything from other repositories or
packages not in the repositories, I'm keeping my installation of Ubuntu
to what the Ubuntu devs put in the default repositories, because I want
to make sure this is fixed without having to go through hoops.

I'm hoping an update comes in on its own soon to fix all these issues.

dano wrote:
> 2008/8/27 Jeremy LaCroix <email address hidden>
>
>
>> Has anything changed recently?
>>
>> I reported a while ago that something made this bug happen much more
>> common for me.
>>
>> Now, as of today, it's even worse, as EVERY flash video with sound
>> freezes Firefox beyond control. 64-bit here.
>>
>> Conn wrote:
>>
>>> Sorry for the duplication, but there has been some overlapping
>>> discussion between this bug and bug #198453.
>>>
>>> If you look at post
>>>
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/198453/comments/109and
>>
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/198453/comments/111(for 64bit users, thanks to Shot for the assistance), testing packages are
>> available that essentially solve the (dire) situation with Flash and
>> PulseAudio. Provided that we can backport/SRU the necessary packages for
>> Hardy, and Flash 10 final comes soon, this bug is now completely fixable.
>>
>>> I have been running with this configuration for the past two days, and I
>>> haven't seen a single crash in Firefox or Flash. And yes, Flash uses
>>> PulseAudio, so there should be no more audio mixing conflicts.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> firefox crashes on flash contents when using libflashsupport
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/192888
>> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
>> of the bug.
>>
>>
>
> This workaround fix all my flash problems
>
> ························································
> Elimina nspluginwrapper
>
> $ sudo apt-get remove nspluginwrapper
>
> * Elimina paquetes obsoletos y ficheros de configuracion:
>
> $ sudo apt-get remove libflashsupport
> $ sudo rm ~/.pulse/* ~/.asoundrc* /etc/asound.conf
>
> * Instala las siguientes dependencias:
>
> $ sudo apt-get install padevchooser libao-pulse libasound2-plugins
> libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio
>
> * Añade las siguientes lineas a tu fichero /etc/apt/sources.list:
>
> # PulseAudio Fixes - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5587712
> deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/psyke83/ubuntu hardy main
> deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/psyke83/ubuntu hardy main
>
> * Actualiza la lista de repositorios y despues actualiza tu sistema:
>
> $ sudo apt-get update
> $ sudo apt-get upgrade
>
> * Fija Pulse Audio como el dispositivo ALSA por defecto (esto ejecutalo como
> tu usuario normal, no como root):
>
> $ asoundconf set-pulseaudio
> $ echo "default_driver=pulse" >~/.libao
>
> * Ve a Sistemas > Preferencias > Sonido y en todos los checkbox fijalos a
> "Auto Detectar".
> ························································
>
>

[clickwir (clickwir)]

There looks like theres a lot of work going on with this, and I really appreciate it. I don't know if this is useful information or not, but I notice npviewer.bin crashing more often if I try to play two things with flash at the same time. Like on the same page or different tabs.

I'm running Intrepid alpha, latest updates as of right now. 64bit.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

\sh, can you remove libflashsupport.so from ia32-libs too? (probably just missed in the recent intrepid upload). Thanks!

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

removing libflashsupport.so from ia32-libs has already been dragged for such a long time. milestoning the removal of libflashsupport.so for beta (but please upload asap anyway).

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

making libflashsupport.so removal from ia32-libs release critical so the RM get that on the radar.

[Stephan Rügamer (sruegamer)]

2.2ubuntu13 will not have libflashsupport.so anymore :)
I'm just waiting for some new results of new flashplugin10 to add more libs used by that package eventually.

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

Stephen Hermann,

As we discussed, we're going to need libasound2-plugins within ia32-libs as well, due to the PA ALSA plugins.

When you set the the default ALSA device to PulseAudio (via "asoundconf set-pulseaudio"), the following occurs:

1. You launch an ALSA application.
2. The ALSA application looks in /etc/asound.conf or ~.asoundrc to determine the proper ALSA device, etc.
3. The PulseAudio ALSA plugins are used.

As you can see, the necessary libraries are part of libasound2-plugins:

conn@dimension:~/work$ dpkg -L libasound2-plugins | grep pulse.so
/usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_conf_pulse.so
/usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_ctl_pulse.so
/usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_pulse.so

When you run a 32-bit application, it will look for the 32-bit libraries, correct? We may need other libraries in ia32-libs due to PulseAudio, but "libasound2-plugins" we need for certain.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package ia32-libs - 2.2ubuntu13

---------------
ia32-libs (2.2ubuntu13) intrepid; urgency=low

  * fetch-and-build:
    + added lib: (LP: #271392)
      - libxcb-render-util0
      - libxcb-render0
    + removed lib:
      - libflashsupport (LP: #192888)

 -- Stephan Hermann <email address hidden> Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:01:35 +0000

[Jeremy LaCroix (jlacroix82-deactivatedaccount)]

The update came in today, and Firefox still crashes on every other page
with flash content. Firefox is completely unusable.

Launchpad Bug Tracker wrote:
> This bug was fixed in the package ia32-libs - 2.2ubuntu13
>
> ---------------
> ia32-libs (2.2ubuntu13) intrepid; urgency=low
>
> * fetch-and-build:
> + added lib: (LP: #271392)
> - libxcb-render-util0
> - libxcb-render0
> + removed lib:
> - libflashsupport (LP: #192888)
>
> -- Stephan Hermann <email address hidden> Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:01:35 +0000
>
> ** Changed in: ia32-libs (Ubuntu Intrepid)
> Status: In Progress => Fix Released
>
>

[Robert Persson (ireneshusband)]

Jeremy LaCroix wrote:
> The update came in today, and Firefox still crashes on every other page
> with flash content. Firefox is completely unusable.
>
I second this. A week or two ago I installed the fix that Conn posted,
which I assume is the same one Jeremy is talking about, and I still find
that I have to crank up Opera to see Flash stuff. I might get to watch
two or three YouTube videos in Firefox before it crashes if I'm lucky.

[Ken Foskey (foskey)]

I get zero flash videos ever and I have not got any for a while. Firefox does not crash however.

Firefox is exceptionally slow over the last week.

--
Ken Foskey

Remember http://www.ride2work.com.au/ 15th October 2008

[ktp420 (ktp420)]

Another testcase in which npviewer.bin stops when starting to play another clip....

goto dialbo III website and click on to see different skill and once one is done playing the next one should start but npviewer.bin process stops/crashes/quites...no npviewer.bin process and no flash on the page.

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/witchdoctor.xml

[ktp420 (ktp420)]

bug #272286 might have found why npviewer.bin is so unstable.

[ktp420 (ktp420)]

you can disable windowless mode in the flash plugin by adding following to /etc/adobe/mms.cfg
   WindowlessDisable=true

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

not a firefox issue.

[ktp420 (ktp420)]

I lost audio in flash after recent update...now flash will not play sound if I have other apps playing sounds using pulseaudio.

[alecwh (alecwh)]

Can someone offer an update on this issue, and the progress of fixing it? Above (at the top), it says that fixes were already released, but others and myself are still having issues. Sorting through all these comments is painful.

Also, because the FeatureFreeze for Intrepid was on Aug 28th, will a fix (or upgrade to Flash 10 RC) make it to Intrepid? If not, I urge Ubuntu Developers to make an exception. This bug will seriously detract regular users from using Ubuntu. Probably the most used application - Firefox - is completely unstable with a content medium used EVERYWHERE on the net. To me, this seems like a disaster!

Thanks in advance for responses, and thanks to all the developers and programmers working on this bug.

[wvarner (winshipvarner)]

alecwh,

I was having the same problems with Flash on Hardy as you were, so I recently went ahead and updated my system to Intrepid (in part because I was continuously annoyed with this bug). From my experience it appears that this problem has been entirely fixed for 8.10 (at least on my i386 machine) - I've been surfing flash embedded websites for the past couple of days, and I've yet to have a single unwanted crash. Yay!

The setup I have is straightforward: Flash has been updated to 10.0.1.218+10.0.0.525ubuntu1, libflashsupport is uninstalled, and I don't have anything like nswrapper installed (which was mentioned above as a possible fix, but never seemed to work for me).

So it appears your problems will be fixed when intrepid comes out - which is just around the corner!

[Robert Persson (ireneshusband)]

With regard to alecwh's request above, could I suggest that a page about this issue be created, perhaps on the ubuntu wiki, explaining what the problem is and what procedures are currently believed to resolve it?

Ascertaining what the problem is is getting extremely difficult, given that pulseaudio, libflashsupport and flash 9 (not 10) seem to have been involved in flash/firefox misbehaviour at some point, yet don't seem to be any more, despite the fact that the problem persists. To be honest, I have no idea which bug I am dealing with any more when flash continues to pack out on me every day. This means contributing meaningfully to bug reports is getting pretty hard.

Likewise I suggesting that the procedures that are supposed to solve the problem be described simply at this page, such as the one involving the packages conn uploaded not too long ago, so that their success or failure can be more easily reported, perhaps with a separate bug report for each procedure. I know it is not standard practice to have bug reports for things that are not yet part of Ubuntu, but I think we have an exceptionally serious situation here.

[Robert Persson (ireneshusband)]

@warner: 32-bit or 64-bit?

[Michael Rooney (mrooney)]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 11:52 AM, Robert Persson
<email address hidden> wrote:
> With regard to alecwh's request above, could I suggest that a page about
> this issue be created, perhaps on the ubuntu wiki, explaining what the
> problem is and what procedures are currently believed to resolve it?

It is a wiki so, why not create it, stub out the basic structure you
want to see, and link here so people can fill it in. I would also
highly recommend that you send an email linking to it explaining your
intention for it, to <email address hidden> and
<email address hidden>. I think this can help you and Ubuntu
along! Just remember with free software, if you are having an issue,
you are the best person to put some work into it, instead of expecting
people less affected than you to care more about it :)

You also may want to check out Intrepid as someone else mentioned. If
some of your issues are solved there then the scope of the wiki page
might change. But still, I think you have a good idea and would
recommend going through with it, or at least emailing those two lists
together and asking for their suggestions on how to proceed.

[alecwh (alecwh)]

Acting on Robert Persson's suggestion, I have created an Ubuntu Wiki
page that I hope will be populated with information and fixes:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FirefoxFlashCrashes

The wiki page only contains a brief template, introduction, and problem
description. I don't know much about this specific bug, the packages
that cause it, or even which fix proposed will work, so I can't add much
beyond that.

PLEASE go to the wiki page and contribute what you can. Hopefully, this
can be used as a reference for the problem, and will significantly
reduce confusion in this discussion.

- alecwh

[alecwh (alecwh)]

> It is a wiki so, why not create it, stub out the basic structure you
> want to see, and link here so people can fill it in. I would also
> highly recommend that you send an email linking to it explaining your
> intention for it, to <email address hidden> and
> <email address hidden>. I think this can help you and Ubuntu
> along! Just remember with free software, if you are having an issue,
> you are the best person to put some work into it, instead of expecting
> people less affected than you to care more about it :)
>

I have just created the wiki page, and I have dispatched emails to those
lists with the appropriate information. Here is the wiki:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FirefoxFlashCrashes

Please contribute!

[Robert Persson (ireneshusband)]

Mike Rooney wrote:
> Just remember with free software, if you are having an issue,
> you are the best person to put some work into it, instead of expecting
> people less affected than you to care more about it :)
>
I do put effort into free software, for instance by trying to file
informative bug reports when I hit a problem. However it is not
reasonable to expect me to create an informative web page about
something I have already made it clear I just don't understand. I am
also about to become busy because I am starting a new job tomorrow and I
won't have time for a lot of messing about with software. I do what I
can do. Please don't put me down for not doing more than that. The above
comment is patronising. If you want ordinary users to stop filing bug
reports or seeking help on the forums, this is the way to go about it.

[Conn O Griofa (psyke83)]

I've edited that wiki page to describe the situation - please, try to understand the complexity in getting all the pieces working with Hardy. The focus must be on Intrepid *first*, and when all the issues are ironed out, then it can be considered for Hardy.

If you're using Hardy, you can get everything working "unofficially" by looking at the guide I posted on the forums and using my PPA - it's linked to the wiki page.

Let's try not to pollute the bug reports with anything except information useful for the developers. Idle chat, speculation and complaints are better reserved for the forums or elsewhere.

[Robert Persson (ireneshusband)]

Conn wrote:
> If you're using Hardy, you can get everything working "unofficially" by
> looking at the guide I posted on the forums and using my PPA - it's
> linked to the wiki page.
This didn't work for me, but it's obviously working for some other
people. That's why I want to be able to be clear whether we are all
talking about the same bug.

[Raúl Eduardo Scalia (magicres)]

Desabilitar FlashBlock para logar ver los archivos Flash

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

we wont be able to fix libflashsupport. setting task to wont fix. In intrepid libflashsupport should not be required anymore and since its even gone from ia32-libs there is no important bug we can fix here anymore.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

flashplugin-nonfree now Conflicts with libflashsupport.

[Michael Nagel (nailor)]

can the last open tasks on this one be closed?

[Alexander Jones (alex-weej)]

I think so.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

<email address hidden>:
Please do not post any type of non related info to bugs. All this does is spam the bug and is not desired.

[teledyn (garym-teledyn)]

I rather suspect that 'spam' is exactly what they'd had in mind, and
what we have witnessed is a whole new species of spam that may spell
the end of nice open-posting bug-reporting systems for free software :(

--
Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym at teledyn.com> =============================
Alice laughed: "There's no use trying, one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.

[Jeroen (c0p3rn1c)]

You're being a bit pessimistic here. To every problem, there is a solution.
For example you could implement a intelligent anti-spam system or do what
every American does: sue there asses off! :-p

2009/4/9 teledyn <email address hidden>

> I rather suspect that 'spam' is exactly what they'd had in mind, and
> what we have witnessed is a whole new species of spam that may spell
> the end of nice open-posting bug-reporting systems for free software :(
>
> --
> Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym at teledyn.com> =============================
> Alice laughed: "There's no use trying, one can't believe impossible
> things."
> "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.
>
> --
> firefox crashes on flash contents when using libflashsupport
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/192888
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “firefox” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in “flashplugin-nonfree” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Released
> Status in “ia32-libs” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Released
> Status in “libflashsupport” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Released
> Status in “linux” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in “pulseaudio” source package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in firefox in Ubuntu Hardy: Invalid
> Status in flashplugin-nonfree in Ubuntu Hardy: Fix Released
> Status in ia32-libs in Ubuntu Hardy: Invalid
> Status in libflashsupport in Ubuntu Hardy: Fix Released
> Status in linux in Ubuntu Hardy: Invalid
> Status in pulseaudio in Ubuntu Hardy: Invalid
> Status in firefox in Ubuntu Intrepid: Invalid
> Status in flashplugin-nonfree in Ubuntu Intrepid: Fix Released
> Status in ia32-libs in Ubuntu Intrepid: Fix Released
> Status in libflashsupport in Ubuntu Intrepid: Won't Fix
> Status in linux in Ubuntu Intrepid: Invalid
> Status in pulseaudio in Ubuntu Intrepid: Invalid
> Status in “libflashsupport” source package in Baltix: Invalid
>
> Bug description:
> Testcase:
>
> use pulseaudio and libflashsupport together with flashplugin-nonfree in
> firefox.
>
> 1. navigate to youtube video
> 2. wait till sound plays
> 3. hit back button
> 4. hit forward
> 5. goto 2 if not yet crashed.
>
> the crash sometimes happens after 2 iterations ... and i can't remember
> that i ever made 10 :) ...
>
> =================
>
> Tested on two machines both with gutsy and hardy (on 32 bit x86): flash
> content very often crashes firefox (both of firefox-3.0 in hardy and older
> versions). I've just tried with other browsers, epiphany-browser crashes as
> well, and even konqueror from KDE (though it's not crashing at a whole,
> since it may run flash and other plugins as another user or something
> similar - I think at least - but it reports the crash of flash). I don't
> know exactly the package I should report this against, but as far as I can
> remember this issue presents since I started to play with pulseaudio: there
> is a wrapper lib to allow flash to play sound via PA right, so it CAN BE
> caused by this single issue instead of problem of the browser or the flash
> plugin itself?
>
> =================
> Workaround for early Hardy adopters:
>
> Manually uninstall the libflashsupport via...

[teledyn (garym-teledyn)]

Heh ... y'know, this is EXACTLY what sendmail heads told me the day I
reported false-bounce spam, and what the drupal guys told me the day I
first reported referrer-spam, and then AGAIN when I first reported
robot-posted comment-spam, none of which have been yet adequately solved :)

anyway, this is all off topic.

>>>>> "J" == Jeroen <email address hidden> writes:

    J> You're being a bit pessimistic here. To every problem, there is
    J> a solution. For example you could implement a intelligent
    J> anti-spam system or do what every American does: sue there
    J> asses off! :-p

--
Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym at teledyn.com> =============================
Alice laughed: "There's no use trying, one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.