349497 - "Open in new tab" sometimes spawns window with no title and default "X" icon. Closing this strange window kills Firefox.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 263160

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7pre) Gecko/20060820 Firefox/1.5.0.7pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7pre) Gecko/20060820 Firefox/1.5.0.7pre

Sometimes "Open link in new tab" also opens a new window, with no title and the default "X" icon. Closing this "strange" window by means of its top-right "X" button kills Firefox with no warning popup (as in a crash) but also without firing up Talkback.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
This is the second time I've seen this bug in maybe two weeks or so. I "think" I had clicked "Open link in new tab".
Actual Results:  
The link is not only opened in a new tab (whose contents takes forever to show up), an additional window with the link's destination page is also opened in a "new window" which has no title on the titlebar, and no Firefox icon but the default "X" icon. Closing that window kills Firefox with no warning, without firing up Talkback.

Expected Results:  
Link should have opened in a new tab, period. No additional window.

Additional info:
1. I suspect a race condition.
2. This bug appears only rarely; AFAICT, I did nothing different than what I had done when the bug did not show up. Of course, the system load can vary without me being conscious of it.
3. When reloading Firefox, the "session manager" function of Tab Mix PLus tells me that my previous session had "crashed", which seems correct, since it had not closed "properly", even though Talkback had not been fired up.
4. The "theme" in service was "Firefox default".


Sorry for the repeats: I tried to describe what I had seen, and sometimes telling the same thing twice in slightly different words helps understanding.

Comment 1

[Jake Hoban]

I get this too. I don't even have to click on a link - if Firefox has been running for a while with several tabs open, one of them sometimes turns into this floating window, and closing it kills Firefox. Hard to reproduce as it's only occasional, but it's happened several times.

I'm running 1.5.0.4 on Ubuntu, other details are the same as the original post.

Comment 2

[Sarah]

This also happens to me on a random, but regular, basis. I can't reproduce it except by simply using Firefox for a while. It tends to happen either when opening a link in a new tab or, I think, simply clicking a link. The link will open in a new window, but it isn't useable, and the only thing you can do with it is hit the "X" button, which then kills Firefox. It doesn't seem to matter what type of page I'm trying to view (it's happened with complex sites and very simple, text-based pages).

Here's the info on my version of Firefox:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.5) Gecko/20060731 Ubuntu/dapper-security Firefox/1.5.0.5

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Sarah, Jake - any tab extensions?

Comment 4

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Sarah, Jake - any tab extensions?
> 

I have Tab Mix Plus, as mentioned; and a few others. If both of you (Sarah and Jake) use it too, then it will become time (I suppose) to add [e-mail] (the extension author) to the CC list. Bur on only three reports for a rare event I can't exclude the fact that it may come from somewhere else than one widely-used extension.

Comment 5

[Jake Hoban]

I have Tabbrowser Preferences (http://216.55.161.203/theonekea/tabprefs/) version 1.2.8.9.

Comment 6

[Trevor Cordes]

Happens to me every 2-3 days.  Gets worse if you refresh a lot of stock price tables all day long.  Got so bad I use opera for that now.  Seems related to the memory leak that hits at the same time.  I use stock FC5 firefox, no extensions.  Only plugin is flash.

FC bugzilla 193274

Comment 7

[Trevor Cordes]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060808 Fedora/1.5.0.6-2.fc5 Firefox/1.5.0.6 pango-text

Mem leak problem has been around since FF 1.0 on FC3.  Leak led to all RAM being used, led to mozilla crashing.  I do believe the "open new window before crashing" behaviour is new to FF 1.5 if memory serves, but don't quote me on that.

Comment 8

[Trevor Cordes]

I don't know if it's relevant, but I do a TON of page opens with the command line 

firefox -remote 'openURL(...)'

you never know what the commonality will be...

Comment 9

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

Seems to be the same problem as I reported in the Redhat Fedora Bugzilla https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=193274

Comment 10

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

?? this is a wild guess ??

window being created with improper destructor (and constructor?)? making it appear to the OS (when the close-window button is clicked on its titlebar) that closure of the whole firefox-bin application (not just of an object within it, which ought to have been "only" a tab in the first place) is requested?

Repeat: this is a wild guess. Comments by several users seem to imply that the wrong behaviour happens only when scarcity of RAM and/or CPU time makes Firefox's reactions very slow (I smell a race condition).

Tentatively moving this bug to "Tabbed browser" component as it seems to involve spawning a window when it should have spawned a tab.

Comment 11

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

(In reply to comment #10)
[...]
> Tentatively moving this bug to "Tabbed browser" component as it seems to
> involve spawning a window when it should have spawned a tab.

P.S. I suppose "QA Contact" ought to be changed to [e-mail] but I don't have the privileges to do that.

Comment 12

[Trevor Cordes]

I'm pretty positive (others can back me up) that this occurs on a normal left click go-to-link event.  It does NOT require a open-in-new-tab or open-in-new-window event to trigger.  I'm 90% certain of this.

If it involves scarcity of RAM, it's only because of the awful memory leakiness of FF.  My system has 2GB RAM (P-D 3.0GHz) with 4GB swap.  My FF has been running for a couple of days now and it's at 437MB VIRT in top.  I'll keep an eye on it, but I'm sure it grows up to more than that.

I don't think it's a simple race, because the problem NEVER happens right away, or usually during the first day of usage: it waits until you've been hammering it for a couple/few days, then hits.  It's like a slow leak that finally reaches breaking point.

Comment 13

[Trevor Cordes]

I have no idea if this is related, but this morning firefox was taking up 100% CPU and would not quit.  I closed most of the windows I could find but it stayed at 100%.  I used the file->quit option and it hung, at 100% CPU.  Normal kill got rid of it.  As you can see, the firefox memory footprint had grown since my post last night by almost 100%.

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 8557 trevor    25   0  766m 613m  17m R  100 30.3   1068:02 firefox-bin

strace -p 8557
Process 8557 attached - interrupt to quit
[... no output at all, strange ...]

Comment 14

[Jake Hoban]

Attachment: screenshot of untitled window with firefox in background

Comment 15

[Jake Hoban]

Comment on attachment 239010 [details]
screenshot of untitled window with firefox in background

Note that the untitled window is not completely drawn - towards the bottom of the screen you can see a Firefox tab behind it. This did not change despite refreshing a couple of times.

Also, Firefox crashed just after I posted this attachment!

Comment 16

[Joseph Wilhelm]

Attachment: Example of this bug right here on Bugzilla's login page

I've been getting this bug off and on for quite a while. It always occurs after Firefox has been running for an extended period of time, and usually occurs with large numbers of tabs open. (Right now I've got 2 windows with a total of 22 tabs.) I can usually get the page to load inside the appropriate window/tab by selecting that tab and repeatedly reloading the page. Eventually it will show up -- most of the time.

This is on Fedora Core 6, Fedora provided Firefox package.
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.9) Gecko/20061219 Fedora/1.5.0.9-1.fc6 Firefox/1.5.0.9 pango-text

Installed extensions are:
(Numerous language packs)
Adblock Plus
Adblock Filterset.G Updater
Firebug
Beagle Indexer

The only way to stop this from occuring is to restart Firefox.