168871 - Repeatable crash when opening news.bbc.co.uk

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 154699

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Craig Rae]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020909
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826

Something on news.bbc.co.uk causes the OS X version of Mozilla to crash.

When the user surfs to http://news.bbc.co.uk, the bulk of the page loads, then
the browser crashes. I don't have the first clue what causes it to bomb, but
this appears to be reproducible on both Mozilla 1.1 (build 20020826), and
Chimera 0.5.0, so it appears to be something common to both the 1.0 and 1.1
baselines.

I don't know if it's any help, but I found a mention about loading
news.bbc.co.uk described in bug # 120565. However, this complained of delays
while loading, and made no mention of a crash.

I read that submitting a bug that basically says that the browser crashes when
surfing to foo.com is a bit of a risk, but I've now seen this every time I've
visited news.bbc.co.uk in the last few weeks, so although their content always
changes, whatever causes the crash appears to remain the same.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Type news.bbc.co.uk into the address bar and press return.
2. Wait while the page loads.
3. The bulk of the page images will be loaded, and then the browser will then crash.
Actual Results:  
The browser crashes before the page finishes loading, and displays the following
dialogue box:

"The application Navigator has unexpectedly quit.

The system and other applications have not been affected."

Expected Results:  
Not crashed? :) If the crash is due to a really badly coded webpage, then I
would expect Mozilla to handle the problem much more gracefully.

The problem is seen on the following browsers/platforms:

- Mozilla 1.1 for OS X (build 20020826)
- Chimera 0.5.0  for OS X (build 2002090913)

I don't believe that this is reproducible on the equivalent 1.1 release build of
Mozilla for Win32.

I have no talkback data (Mac version - sorry), and I've never used Macsbug and
wouldn't feel comfortable installing it on my fiancee's machine. Sorry.

Comment 1

[Gunnar Kaestle]

crash not reproducible with linux 2.4.10,  Mozilla 1.1 (build 20020826)

Comment 2

[wighta]

Attachment: MacsBug stdlog file from JavaScript in scrolling news headlines

Comment 3

[wighta]

I confirm this crasher bug.

Mac OS 9.2.2 English-North American. Have ‘Modern’ theme installed.
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC; en-US; rv:1.2a) Gecko/20020915
Build ID 2002091503.

This is a dupe of Bug # 154699 which supposedly fixed some weeks ago, but
plainly has still to be fixed---in the sense that it actually works, as distinct
from being fobbed off as Netscape's bug as it is their plugin(s) that is at fault.

Also see bug # 168649, bug # 168856, and bug # 168872

Comment 4

[Greg K.]

WorksForMe using FizzillaCFM/2002091014 on 10.1.5.

Craig, please attach the crash report generated when Mozilla crashed.

([e-mail], the scrolling headline is generated by Java, not JavaScript.
Also, bug 154699 is fixed. There may be some other problems with Java on OS X
10.2, but that bug is fixed, and has been proven to be so many, many times over.)

Comment 5

[Craig Rae]

I'd be happy to attach a crash report. Newbie question time - where does Mozilla
write crash reports when it bombs? I had a bit of a look about, and couldn't
find anything.

Comment 6

[Greg K.]

See [http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/osxinfo.html], particularly "Enabling Crash
Reporter in OS X *10.1*."

Comment 7

[Craig Rae]

Thanks for the info. I'll get a crash report attached asap.

I've been poking around, and I've discovered that this problem only occurs when
Mozilla is run under a non-Admin account. When the user is logged in as admin,
the ticker on the Beeb's site loads normally, and nothing unexpected happens. 

This applies to both Mozilla 1.1 and Chimera 0.5.0.

Hopefully that might be of some use to you.

One additional comment - the problem appears to be similarly reproducible on
other sites that make use of the Java runtime. Random examples:

games.yahoo.com (sign in and go to the likes of word racer)
www.checksix.fr.com (java used for menu on left-hand side)
liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html

These all work fine on a Win2k box running Mozilla 1.1 with the J2SE 1.4.0
runtime installed, and also on OS X with Mozilla 1.1 and Chimera 0.5.0 under an
Admin account.

Comment 8

[Craig Rae]

Attachment: OS X crash log for Mozilla bug #168871

Comment 9

[Greg K.]

Craig, does it also happen using Mozilla 1.2a or a recent nightly?

Comment 10

[Craig Rae]

Greg, I'll try the 1.2 alpha tonight and I'll let you know.

Cheers,
Craig

Comment 11

[Craig Rae]

Greg, I tried the 1.2 alpha build (2002091014) for OS X and everything appears
to work as expected. I haven't had a chance to test it much, but news.bbc.co.uk
and yahoo games both loaded and ran their java applets without any problems on a
couple of tries on each page.

Hardly exhaustive, but definitely an improvement over the 1.1 build. Obviously
something changed in the 1.2 alpha in the way that java applets are handled.

I'll hopefully get a chance to beat on it a bit more over the next couple of
days - I'll let you know if I run into any problems.

Cheers, Craig

Comment 12

[Greg K.]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 154699 ***