1346847 - Throttling content shutdownkill crashes [@ IPCError-browser | ShutDownKill]

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Socorro :: General, task)

Description

[[:philipp]]

those content shutdownkill crashes won't be noticed by users most of the time and are difficult and low-value to act on - they are also discarded in the main measurement (m+c-s) of the telemetry stability dashboard.
but the [@ IPCError-browser | ShutDownKill] signature is a very frequent one (around a third of all crashes in beta and half of all reports on aurora/nightly in the last week).

if there is a way to throttle the submission and processing of those kinds of crashes it might be beneficial to ease the burden on the infrastructure.

Comment 1

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

Pardon my ignorance but I only see ~5K crashes, all on 54.0a2 that match that signature. 

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/search/?signature=IPCError-browser%20%7C%20ShutDownKill&product=Firefox&version=54.0a2&date=%3E%3D2017-03-06T18%3A20%3A00.000Z&date=%3C2017-03-13T18%3A20%3A00.000Z&_sort=-date&_facets=signature&_facets=version&_columns=date&_columns=signature&_columns=product&_columns=version&_columns=build_id&_columns=platform#facet-version

Also, what do you mean by "discarded in the main measurement (m+c-s)"?

Comment 2

[[:philipp]]

(In reply to Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe] from comment #1)
> I only see ~5K crashes, all on 54.0a2 that match that signature. 
~5k out of 9.5k total reports on that channel... 

on beta we have 380k at the moment: https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/search/?signature=IPCError-browser%20%7C%20ShutDownKill&release_channel=beta&product=Firefox&date=%3E%3D2017-03-06T18%3A20%3A00.000Z&date=%3C2017-03-13T18%3A20%3A00.000Z&_sort=-date&_facets=signature&_facets=version&_columns=date&_columns=signature&_columns=product&_columns=version&_columns=build_id&_columns=platform#facet-signature

> Also, what do you mean by "discarded in the main measurement (m+c-s)"?
at https://telemetry.mozilla.org/crashes/ afaik the "m+c-s" measurement is the main rate we look at in order to determine and compare the stability of a channel, so that's also testament to the low priority/value those content shutdown reports have. therefore submitting and processing them all may not be the best use of resources.

Comment 3

[Will Kahn-Greene [:willkg] ET needinfo? me]

There isn't a way to throttle incoming crash reports based on the signature since the signature is generated during processing. While it's nice to reduce resource consumption, I don't think this is defined well enough to pursue effectively, so I'm going to WONTFIX it.

If someone wants to flesh it out into a tangible action item with a compelling reason to do it, I'm game for reopening it.