364052 - Crash playing embedded Real media using RealPlayer 10.1 v400 [@ CFStringGetLength]

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 336211

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Morris-moz]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20061215 Minefield/3.0a1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20061215 Minefield/3.0a1

Overview Description:
A crash occurs on Mac OS X 10.4.8 PPC when trying to open pages with embedded (Real?) media streams. The BBC News site crashes a lot for me but is not the only one according to Talkback data. Furthermore, it might not be only a Realmedia problem.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
In the right column under 'Watch now' follow one of the three links:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/news/index.shtml
or
Direct crashing link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3662494.stm
Actual Results:  
Spinning 'beach ball' resulting in Crash.
Firefox 2.0 + 2.0.0.1 RC3 (usually only first time, after crash and starting FF again it usually works)
Firefox 1.5.x had behaviour similar to FF2 IIRC.
Minefield 20061215 (always crashes, even after restart)

Expected Results:  
Not crash, error message at worst.

Talkback data appears to suggest  'CFStringGetLength()' to be the centre of the issue. A search on this gives >500 crashes in the last three months with most of the comments mentioning trying to play media files. http://talkback-public.mozilla.org/search/start.jsp?search=1&searchby=stacksig&match=contains&searchfor=CFStringGetLength%28%29&vendor=MozillaOrg&product=All&platform=MacOSX&buildid=&sdate=&stime=&edate=&etime=&sortby=bbid&rlimit=500

Comment 1

[Hiro]

WFM.
10.4.x only ?

Mac OS X 10.3.9
Real Player 10.1.0 (v412)
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20061216 Minefield/3.0a1

Comment 2

[Morris-moz]

Yes, it seems to be mostly a 10.4.8 issue. All but three crashes in TB that mention media playing are happening on 10.4.8.

Furthermore, after going through the aforementioned TB query, affected versions are definitely:
FF1.5.x 			(TB27032768, TB26419878)
FF2.0 				(TB27287694, TB26665637)
FF2.0.0.1 			(TB27439792, TB27333626)
Latest trunk (build 20061217) 	(TB27439733, TB27440718, TB27439693)
Camino 1.0 			(TB27152102, TB26636762)
Camino (build 2006120322) 	(TB27403966, TB26423598)

These are not all the related TB's, there are plenty more where they came from, especially for the more common products.


Regarding my steps to reproduce, apparently my 'direct crashing link' is not working. The first step is still valid though. Other crash prone links are:
http://www.cbs.com
http://nfl.com
http://movies.yahoo.com
http://www.amazon.com/gp/music/clipserve/B000003TA4001001/1/ref=mu_sam_ra001_001/104-9596515-7927949

Comment 3

[Morris-moz]

ouch... I wrote Mac OS X 10.4.8 but I meant 10.4.x

Comment 4

[philippe (part-time)]

Specific to some versions of Real Player ? (updating to the latest one should fix it)
See this Camino bug 336211.

Comment 5

[Morris-moz]

That bug 336211 certainly looks interesting. I'm not quite sure the issue is the same though. To rule out causes like that I had checked and RealPlayer 10.1 said I had the most up-to-date version (I can't check which version it said now because I'm not at home). 
Furthermore, autoupdate in RealPlayer is on by default so most people will have the most recent version automatically, it doesn't explain why, according to TalkBack, so many crashes still occur on a relatively small platform like OS X.

If it would turn out to be an issue on Real's side, is there a way to make Mozilla's code less vulnerable to the 'misfortunes' of third party developers? Can the data from external sources be checked for sanity?

Comment 6

[Morris-moz]

I thought I'd follow up on this one.

The issue is indeed related to an older RealPlayer version. Build 400 to be precise. The reason I still used that version and a lot of other people still are, judging from talkback data, is because apparently Real doesn't think the newer build is a proper update. The automatic update mechanism won't update to the newer build and choosing a manual 'check for updates' will return the older build as the most recent version.

I tried to find a way to contact Real about this but it seems one can only tell them about issues with their own software after getting the credit card out and buying a support package.

Could be set to 'fixed' now although it would be nice if someone with better connections could contact Real about this to resolve the crashes for other users as well.

Comment 7

[Simon Howes]

Works fine on trunk here.  Real version 10.1.0 (412).

Running OS X 10.4.8.


Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.9a2pre)
Gecko/20070206 Minefield/3.0a2pre

Comment 8

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

This is in fact bug 336211 still showing up :(

Does MoCo/MoFo have any resources it can use to either:
 
a) get Real to publicize the v412 update, either publicly or through their in-client updater 

b) add this issue to the Firefox relnotes (it's been in the Camino relnotes for over a year, but we're still getting a fair number of crashes from it), or

c) blacklist v400 (I thought there was once a plug-in blacklisting bug, but I can't find it now)