1153515 - Firefox crashes OOM after using it 1-4 hours on Windows 32bit via nsNPAPIPluginStreamListener

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Atanas Dimitrov]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:37.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/37.0
Build ID: 20150402191859

Steps to reproduce:

The browser has been crashing for me probably for a year now, if not longer. I even tried reinstalling everything, disabling Hardware Acceleration etc...

The usual symptoms are the following:
- Suddenly it starts having page rendering issues with elements being rendered at the wrong place, not at all or multiple times on the screen. Black regions appear on the page, backgrounds disappear. etc..
- The browser gets less and less responsive.
- It suddenly crashes. The crash reports look different every time.

I haven't found an exact way to reproduce it. Usually I have my website open (mksecrets.net), all the common Social Websites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc... It usually takes about an hour of usage to crash.

I will provide more crash reports as they happen.

I am using Acer Aspire 5920G with Windows 7 32bit. Graphics: NVidia GeForce 8600M GT with drivers that are always up to date.

Current crash reports:
bp-c67a17b8-3b1b-405f-8320-be0f02150411
bp-549d9a82-5a79-4fcd-ba23-083dc2150410

More to come. I will include screenshots when it happens next time.


Actual results:

Each browsing session ends with a crash.


Expected results:

I expect a clean operation. Don't really want to change the browser.

Comment 1

[Loic]

could you type about:support and paste the section "graphics" here.

Comment 2

[Atanas Dimitrov]

Graphics
Adapter Description	NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Adapter Drivers	nvd3dum nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
Adapter RAM	512
Device ID	0x0407
Direct2D Enabled	true
DirectWrite Enabled	true (6.2.9200.16571)
Driver Date	2-3-2015
Driver Version	9.18.13.4144
GPU #2 Active	false
GPU Accelerated Windows	1/1 Direct3D 11 (OMTC)
Subsys ID	01211025
Vendor ID	0x10de
WebGL Renderer	Google Inc. -- ANGLE (NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT Direct3D11 vs_4_0 ps_4_0)
windowLayerManagerRemote	true
AzureCanvasBackend	direct2d 1.1
AzureContentBackend	direct2d 1.1
AzureFallbackCanvasBackend	cairo
AzureSkiaAccelerated	0

Comment 3

[Loic]

Sometimes, when your browser crashes frequently with various signatures, it could be an issue with your hardware like broken RAM or HDD failure.
You should check if a third-party software/add-on is not the root cause too.

Comment 4

[Atanas Dimitrov]

RAM should be fine since nothing else is crashing. I can run the linux MemCheck when I get home in a couple of days but I haven't sen any other symptoms that point into that direction.

The HDD was replaced with an SSD and the problems existed before and after the upgrade.

I can try disabling all addons and see if that corrects the problem. I don't have a lot though:

Adblock Plus	2.6.9	true	{d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}
Bulgarian Dictionary	4.3	true	[e-mail]
Firebug	2.0.9	true	[e-mail]
Video DownloadHelper	5.1.2	true	{b9db16a4-6edc-47ec-a1f4-b86292ed211d}
Web Developer	1.2.5	true	{c45c406e-ab73-11d8-be73-000a95be3b12}
E-Web Print	1.21.00	false	[e-mail]

PLugins:
OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc.
Adobe Acrobat
VLC Web Plugin
Google Update
Silverlight Plug-In
Windows Activation Technologies
Java(TM) Platform SE 8 U40
Java Deployment Toolkit 8.0.400.25
Shockwave Flash
Unity Player

Btw I just got another crash while Facebook was trying to resolve a posted url and get the content of the third party website:

bp-337ae0e0-9342-4fdb-9fd2-154292150411

Thanks for the help. I will post more as soon as I have more info and/or crashes.

Comment 5

[Atanas Dimitrov]

Attachment: Rendering glitch -> Missing background

Comment 6

[Atanas Dimitrov]

Attachment: Lots of rendering glitches.

Comment 7

[Atanas Dimitrov]

Attachment: Another tab, same rendering glitches.

Comment 8

[Atanas Dimitrov]

I disabled all plugins and extensions. The only one left active is the OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc.

Still several hours later, the above mentioned rendering glitches that usually happen before a crash appeared again. I didn't wait for the browser to crash but made a few screenshots instead and restarted it. I attached the images for all of you to see. The above part of each image is the website with the rendering glitches and the lower one is how the website was rendered after the browser was restarted or before the glitches appeared.

The glitches worsen on a page when you scroll up and down or switch tabs.

Comment 9

[Atanas Dimitrov]

And here is another crashid: f27d4d08-b93b-43c0-b6db-1f62b2150414

Comment 10

[Atanas Dimitrov]

Wrong id. Here is the correct one: bp-f27d4d08-b93b-43c0-b6db-1f62b2150414

Comment 11

[Loic]

2 things:

1) can you test with HWA disabled
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/forum-response-disable-hardware-acceleration
(restart FF to apply)

2) do you think TortoiseSVN could be ilplied in the crash? (maybe by hooking firefox.exe)

Comment 12

[Atanas Dimitrov]

I will try to disable it again, but last time it didn't really fix the situation.

TortoiseSVN, how can this crash Firefox? The TSVNCache process is indeed running, but how can this cause all this strange behavior? I can also disable the process, see if that helps.

Comment 13

[Atanas Dimitrov]

I uninstalled TortoiseSVN and another crash with the same graphic glitches, missing backgrounds, etc...

bp-30cd63d7-f1f4-45c9-aa1c-000512150421

Can Comodo or something like this cause trouble?

Comment 14

[Atanas Dimitrov]

Two crashes in 4 hours after I uninstlled Comodo:

bp-51f7d58f-eec6-483e-b263-00d602150423
bp-2c6750f6-1c01-411c-8af7-f3f0a2150423

Something is seriously messing things up for Firefox.

Comment 15

[Paul Pasca[Away. Please needinfo? Paul Oiegas [:pauloiegasSV]]]

I did encounter this issue many times on the 42.0 release version of Firefox, and on latest release(43.0) once or twice. This only occurred for me on Windows 7 x32 version. After more than ten tabs were opened and a few hours of browsing, Firefox begin to display black windows, and render websites incorrectly. I assume that this is because on 32 bit version of Windows 7, no matter how much RAM memory you have, you can only use 3.5 GB. When lots of tabs are opened after a long period of time, the available 3.5 GB of memory become insufficient and Firefox begins to behave incorrectly and eventually crashes.

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0
Build ID: 20151216175450

Considering this, I will mark this issue as New and assign the appropriate component.
If anyone considers that the component is not the right one, please change it to a more appropriate one.

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Atanas, 
I do not see any more crashes reported with your email address.
Did you determine the cause of crashes?  OR did it just go away on its own?

Comment 17

[Atanas Dimitrov]

Hi Wayne,

No, the problem is still there, I just don't submit the reports. I can start submitting again. Normally I don't let it crash, so I restart it once the it starts showing signs of the problem (the black areas).

I have the issues for several years now and can confirm everything PaulMircea wrote. The problem seems to me to be RAM related as well. Once the RAM gets low on system level and Firefox requires a lot the problems start.

Rendering of images in the background seems to be the first thing to go.

My Laptop also has a dedicated GPU (NVidia) that can also use the system RAM next to its own memory.

Now that someone is looking into this I will start sending reports each time the browser crashes.

Comment 18

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I missed that this is 32bit windows. That's pretty limiting, and not surprising. I'm familiar with the territory - I was on vista 32bit till about a year ago.

I would be helpful to get a couple reproducible testcases that each involve just one specific website.

Comment 19

[Atanas Dimitrov]

Here is one more: bp-834506d2-983c-44b5-9d89-d9f442160115
Although I am not really sure the reason here was the same.

Getting something reproducible and that with just one website seems rather impossible as one website isn't capable of using so much RAM. My usual scenario is the 4 big Social networks which I use for my own websites and my websites. They should be in the reports. Number of tabs are probably about 10-15.

Comment 20

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Atanas Dimitrov from comment #19)
> Here is one more: bp-834506d2-983c-44b5-9d89-d9f442160115
> Although I am not really sure the reason here was the same.

It's still OOM, via nsNPAPIPluginStreamListener.
All your old crashes have aged off, so I cannot compare them :(

If you were on 64bit and crashing then we'd be more mainstrean and perhaps have something more attractive

Comment 21

[Atanas Dimitrov]

I updated the OS of my laptop to Windows 10 64bit. Still the same Hardware (with 6GB of RAM instead of 3GB) and everything seems to work OK. It has been so for the past few months.

Comment 22

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

WFM per comment 21