185839 - RFE: Run plugins in separate process so crashes don't bring down browser

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 156493

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, enhancement)

Description

[JoSH Lehan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130

RFE: Many plugins are not as well written as the Mozilla browser itself.  They
frequently freeze or lock up.  Unfortunately, this brings down the Mozilla
browser as well.  This is a request to run plugins in a separate process.  It
would bring increased stability.

A failure in this separate process would simply prevent plugins from running
until a new page is loaded, and would not otherwise affect the Mozilla process.
This would have other advantages as well, such as being able to run plugins at
lower priority than the rest of the browser, and allowing the user to kill an
annoying plugin without affecting their browser session!


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Freeze or crash a plugin, using one of the many known bugs associated with
that plugin.  For example, run a "denial-of-service" Java program that simply
creates many threads in an infinite loop.
2. Mozilla will freeze as well.
3. User has no choice but to kill the Mozilla process, losing their browser
session, and start over.

Actual Results:  
The plugin brings down Mozilla.

Expected Results:  
The plugin should have ran in a separate process.  The user could then kill that
runaway process, without affecting Mozilla.  Also, this would have allowed
Mozilla to continue accepting user input, without being blocked by the plugin.  

If the separate process ran at a lower priority than the main Mozilla browser
process, then even a runaway plugin (such as a Java infinite loop) would not
cause browser performance to degrade, and the user would be most thankful for
the increased robustness of Mozilla!

Comment 1

[Peter Lubczynski]

please search bugzilla for existing reports before opening new bugs

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 156493 ***

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

v

Comment 3

[JoSH Lehan]

Sorry for reporting this dupe.  I did a search on "plugin process" and did not
find 156493.  I'm a software developer too and hate dupes as much as you....