219116 - Browser unstable when used from VNC, Exceed, diskless workstations

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 208947

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Janyne Kizer]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

We have a setup of linux servers and diskless workstations and we have started
to migrate from an older version of Netscape to Mozilla 1.4.  We are seeing a
lot of web pages that will not load -- either get "stuck" or crash the browser.
 In many cases the intial site loads and the browser becomes unstable once a
link is clicked.  Many of these sites work if I go directly to the server and
sit in front of it but they do not work from the diskless workstation (NCD
thinstar, hmx and nc900 for the most part).  These sites work under the older
version of Netscape that we were using as well.  

The browser appears to be unstable in this environment.  Are there any settings
that we can change that might improve this situation?  Are their any other
suggestions?

Sites that appear to be problematic:
- anything at go.com including espn, abcnews and disney
- cnn.com
- hamptoninn.com
- nhl.com (odd since msn and msnbc work fine)

Any suggestions would be appreciated. 

The servers are running Red Hat Linux 7.2 on Intel based hardware, the terminals
are NCD HMX, NCD Thinstar and NCD NC900 diskless workstations.  The problem is
even worse when accessing via VNC but if you tried to use Mozilla via VNC or
Exceed, I think that you would see the problem.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Access certain website such as abcnews.go.com via XDMCP
2.  Click any link
3.  Browser will lock or disappear.  In most cases the abcnews site locks up
Mozilla, requiring that the processes be killed
Actual Results:  
 Browser will lock or disappear.  In most cases the abcnews site locks up
Mozilla, requiring that the processes be killed

Expected Results:  
Loaded page in link

Comment 1

[Andrew Schultz]

The sites you mentioned all use flash.  Flash5 crashes very consistently on
remote displays.  Make sure you have flash6, which works fine.

If the pages crash with flash6, try removing the plugin.

Comment 2

[Janyne Kizer]

Yes, we are currently running Flash 5.  I upgraded one server to Flash 6 but
that did not resolve the problem.  I confirmed that Flash 6 was installed by
going to about:plugins where it reports "Shockwave Flash 6.0 r79" is installed.  

Under VNC the entire Mozilla applications disappears when I access www.wral.com
or www.cnn.com.  Thank you for the pointers.

Comment 3

[Janyne Kizer]

Using Flash6 does not resolve the problem of using Mozilla 1.4 on remote
displays under Linux.  We have experienced a lot of crashing on our diskless
workstations as well as when using Exceed and VNC.  Removing Flash does
stabilize the browser but of course this causes a problem of not being able to
utilize Flash content.  

Comment 4

[Andrew Schultz]

dupe of "Mozilla accessed over VNC is crashing when invoking the flash-plugin"

this is almost certainly a flash problem (Macromedia's fault).

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 208947 ***