265458 - Missing plug-ins cause 100% CPU crash regardless of plug-in type

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Bryan Copeland]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1

Any missing plug-in/helper app causes a 100% CPU spike that hangs the process
and requires me to kill the process via task manager in XP or the command line
in Linux.  There are several tickets already with regards to this problem but
they are very specific and only relate to a given page or given plug-in or given
platform.  I've duplicated the problem with Acrobat, Flash and QuickTime on both
Linux and Win XP.  Once the plug-in is installed the problem vanishes so it's
likely a problem with the way in which FireFox handles plug-ins that aren't
installed.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Load a fresh FireFox install with no plug-ins
2. Visit a Flash site or try to open a PDF in the browser
3. Watch it hang

Actual Results:  
100% CPU utilization hang requiring a kill from the OS

Expected Results:  
The browser should have either marked the plugin as unavailable, given a message
with a link to a way to install the plug-in, or auto-installed the plug-in after
getting user approval but it is unacceptable that it simply breaks.

There is no acutal crash so I don't get any debug info.  I have to kill the
process to get out of the 100% utilization cycle.

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.