272969 - Java applet / Javascript communication can cause Firefox crashes

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 260478

(Core Graveyard :: Java: Live Connect, defect)

Description

[s.marshall]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

If you visit the URL given (and allow popups so that the test can work), Firefox
1.0 will usually crash after showing the applet popup once or twice.

Mozilla 1.7.3 does not crash even after showing the applet ~100 times (I got
bored). I didn't try using the latest Mozilla build - sorry. IE6 does crash, but
it didn't crash with my real-life applet.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Ensure you have Java 1.5 installed (http://www.java.com/)
2. Visit given URL
3. Enable popups
4. Sit back and wait

Actual Results:  
Firefox crashed, on both my machine and another one.

Expected Results:  
Not crashed.

The full source of the Java applet is included on the linked URL (remember to
leave/set lyceum.open.ac.uk popups blocked so it doesn't crash, if you want to
view it in Firefox).

The applet creates 100 threads and uses each of them to call Javascript that
sets the document title. All the threads run before the start() method has exited. 

While not exactly typical behaviour, 100 threads should not be enough to bring
down any system, and indeed the applet works correctly on other browsers. I only
made it 100 threads because this increases the chance of the problem occurring
(to nearly 100%); this applet was created to reproduce a problem that occurred
with a real applet I was writing. The real applet did not do anything 100 times. 

Applet authors trying to work around this problem might wish to avoid calling
Javascript from their applet, rearranging program logic so that Javascript calls
into the applet instead of the other way around.

Comment 1

[Logan Owen]

I did not look over your code, but it failed to stop at 100...in fact, it was at
113 when I blocked it manually.  Also, it did nothing to my Firefox.  I suggest
you check your java plugin version, and make sure it is the most current.

Comment 2

[s.marshall]

I have also now tried this on my home machine - just wondered if the problem
might be due to an extension, as both of the machines I tested on at work have
the web developer toolbar installed. My home Firefox does not have that (it only
has the 'location navigator' extension, which the work machine doesn't). It
crashes my home machine too.

The home machine is Windows 2000 SP4, also with Java 1.5.0.

Comment 3

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Here the applet also sometimes makes the whole browser just disappear (but
without the mozilla.exe crash alert!). In the other cases it just crashes with
some not-so-useful stacktrace.

Comment 4

[s.marshall]

Some people's comments lead me to believe this bug may only affect Java 1.5.0;
although this is not a beta version, I believe it is at present only available
as part of the SDK. If anybody needs to obtain a copy to test and doesn't wish
to download the SDK, I have put a copy of the installer here:

http://lyceum.open.ac.uk/temp/jre-1_5_0-windows-i586.exe

(obviously please don't spread this link elsewhere, thanks).

Comment 5

[Kyle Yuan]

confirmed crash on windows with firefox trunk debug build. Sometimes it crashed
@js_AllocStack, sometimes jvm crashed. very weird.

Comment 6

[Kyle Yuan]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 260478 ***