412762 - Ajax request with Prototype js lib from js onclick handler crashes browser

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core :: General, defect)

Description

[Ben Summers]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/523.12.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.4 Safari/523.12.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9b2) Gecko/2007121014 Firefox/3.0b2

An Ajax request using the common Prototype library will crash the browser if initiated from an onclick handler. Example attached.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Decompress the attached files, place on web server.
Fetch firefoxcrash.html
Click the button
Firefox crashes.
Actual Results:  
Firefox crashes, crash reporter appears.

Expected Results:  
Ajax request made without crashing.

Changing 'post' to 'get' in the script will stop the crash.

Comment 1

[Ben Summers]

Attachment: Example files which cause Firefox to crash

Comment 2

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

I'm not able to reproduce what you report.

On OS X I tested with today's Minefield nightly (2008-01-18-04-trunk)
and one from around the time beta2 was released (2007-12-10-04-trunk).
On Windows XP and Linux I tested with the trunk nightlies from
2007-12-13 (just after beta2).

I'm not entirely sure your test works properly, or that my server
(Apache2) is set up appropriately to run it:  Every time I click the
"Click to crash" button, my server logs an error that the file
/srv/www/htdocs/test doesn't exist.

Comment 3

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Please attach a crashreporterd crash log for one of your crashes.  (By
"attach" I mean use the "Add an attachment" link above.)

Comment 4

[Ben Summers]

I can't seem to get a crashreporterd log for the crash because the FF Crash Reporter gets in the way. However, here's the URL of one it reported, which I hope is sufficient.

http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/5326303a-c532-11dc-a8aa-001a4bd43e5c?date=2008-01-17-19

I created a new clean profile, and that one doesn't crash. But one of my profiles does completely reliably. Is there any way I can usefully attach a profile? Perhaps best not to publish it though, given it contains logs etc.

In case it makes any difference, the server is on port 3000 on a different machine, and Firebug is installed.

Comment 5

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

> I can't seem to get a crashreporterd log for the crash because the
> FF Crash Reporter gets in the way.

Here are two things you can do that (together) should stop this from
happening:

1) Make sure crashreporterd is enabled:

   defaults write org.mozilla.firefox OSCrashReporter -bool true

2) Run Firefox from the command line, after having set the following
   environment variable:

   export MOZ_CRASHREPORTER_DISABLE=1

> I created a new clean profile, and that one doesn't crash.

This makes your problem a lot harder to resolve, and (frankly) a lot
less urgent.

> In case it makes any difference, the server is on port 3000 on a
> different machine,

Shouldn't make any difference.

> and Firebug is installed.

I assume this isn't installed in your clean profile.  If so, try
installing it there, and see if this makes your crashes start
happening again.

Comment 6

[Ben Summers]

With Firebug installed in the clean profile, I do NOT get the crash. So it's not Firebug.

Looks like a corrupted profile, but an odd effect. Let me know if you need anything more; I agree it's not a high priority bug.

Comment 7

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

> Let me know if you need anything more

It'd be nice to see a crashreporterd crash log (attached).

Comment 8

[Ben Summers]

Attachment: Crash log from Minefield 2008-01-17

Comment 9

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Thanks for the crashreporterd crash log.

As it turns out, the Breakpad crash report (from comment #4) actually
has better information (the entries at the top of the crashing
thread's stack in the crashreporterd crash log are probably all
spurious).

The Breakpad crash report is also consistent with your description --
the crash happens as an http connection is being closed.

Since your problem isn't reproducible (by anyone but you), we'll
probably have to let the matter rest here.  But it's good to have your
Breakpad crash report on file, associated with the relatively full
report of your problem in this bug.  It might help to resolve a
related problem, in the future.

Comment 10

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Attachment: Local copy of Breakpad crash report from comment #4

For the record (since I don't know Breakpad crash reports are kept on
their server), here's a copy of your Breakpad crash report.

Comment 11

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

> since I don't know Breakpad crash reports are kept on their server

->

since I don't know how long Breakpad crash reports are kept on their server