423279 - Firefox 3 hangs on startup since beta4 [libaoss.so and libetc.so]

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[mtunux2]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080222 Epiphany/2.20 Firefox/2.0.0.4
Build Identifier: http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0b4/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-3.0b4.tar.bz2

While beta3 and earlier were working flawlessy, beta4 hangs on startup. Strace stops on "futex(0xb7f171c4, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 2, NULL" and waits infinitely (full strace output included as attachment).

In addition to released beta4, I have checked also nightlies from 2008-02-14-04-trunk (the oldest after release of 3.0b3 I have found) to 2008-03-16-04-trunk; all exhibit the same behaviour.

Removing profile directory and all plugins has shown no improvement. Also building locally from source changes nothing.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Download anything older than beta3
2. Try to start Firefox
Actual Results:  
Nothing happens, Firefox just sits and waits.

Expected Results:  
Running Firefox

Not sure what can be relevant; my system is current Arch Linux:
- kernel 2.6.24.3
- glibc 2.7
- xorg-server 1.4.0.90
- grapics drivers: openchrome 0.2.901

System is 32-bit, running on 32-bit processor (Celeron M 420, to be specific)

Comment 1

[mtunux2]

Attachment: Strace of firefox failing to run

This is strace of firefox 3.0b4 failing to run; it was obtained by simple
strace -f ./firefox
after hang, strace was killed with -9, so the last line is where hang has happened. Version of FF used was http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0b4/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-3.0b4.tar.bz2, but everything I found released after beta3 fails in the same way.

Comment 2

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

There are older builds under "year/month" folders:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/2008/
It would help a lot if you can find the specific build where it first broke.

Comment 3

[mtunux2]

Thank you, how come I did not find them...
2008-02-12-04-trunk and earlier work OK, 2008-02-13-04-trunk and later hang (on
the very same "futex(0xb7f351c4, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 2, NULL" call)

Comment 4

[Sylvain Pasche]

Bonsai changes:

http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsquery.cgi?treeid=default&module=PhoenixTinderbox&branch=HEAD&branchtype=match&dir=&file=&filetype=match&who=&whotype=match&sortby=Date&hours=2&date=explicit&mindate=2008-02-12+04%3A00&maxdate=2008-02-13+04%3A00&cvsroot=%2Fcvsroot

Comment 5

[Glenn E, Washburn II]

I have x86_64 SuSE 11.0 alpha 2 with the identical problem. 

Comment 6

[mtunux2]

I haven't yet discovered, which change did introduce that behaviour, but today I've found that the problem can be worked around by throwing libaoss.so out of LD_PRELOAD. I have yet to find what was my reason to put it there... ;) However, the profile file setting LD_PRELOAD has not been modified since 2006, so earlier versions of Firefox could cope with it.

With changed LD_PRELOAD, builds from 2008-02-13-04-trunk (first to fail before) up to latest 2008-03-24-04-trunk start and work with no problem.

Comment 7

[Sébastien Mazy]

I can also reproduce the problem, using libetc (http://ordiluc.net/fs/libetc/).

> echo $LD_PRELOAD
libetc.so

Firefox launches well after unsetting LD_PRELOAD.

Comment 8

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Given the regression range in comment 4, I'm guessing the enabling of
jemalloc on Linux, bug 417066.

Comment 9

[Jason Evans]

This may be similar to bug #423334.  Problems occur if glibc's malloc is used by some, but not all of the shared libraries.

Comment 10

[Jason Evans]

This bug should be addressed by the reversion of bug #418016.