427024 - Firefox 3.0pre, esp. gmail, unusable under high window/tab loads

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Robert Bradbury]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008032910 Firefox/3.0pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008032910 Firefox/3.0pre

I have a complex Firefox 3.0pre session compiled from CVS, that has been running for over a week.  Currently the sessionstore.js file indicates 84 active windows and 532 active tabs.  I have tried to compose a message in gmail, both in an older window, and after deleting the gmail in that window and creating a gmail in a new window and I get the same result.  I can enter the "To:", "CC:" and "Subject:" fields but in both cases it is impossible to enter any message body text.  Indeed, after switching workspaces and looking at some "top" results and some terminal windows and switching back to the gmail workspace and window, the text from the other workspaces remains in the gmail text entry window (instead of returning to a blank window as it should).

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open up a large firefox session (mine will be provided as an attachment).
2. Leave it running for a week or more (perhaps required to confuse the X server?).
3. Attempt to send a message in gmail.
Actual Results:  
Cannot type in message text field in a gmail window.
Cannot get gmail window to display a blank text field.
Even a new gmail session fails to operate properly.
Firefox log file reveals a number of the classic, still unfixed after several years, "GdkWindow 0x........" unexpectedly destroyed" errors.  These seem to coincide with gmail sometimes springing the classic "untitled windows" (small windows with part of what should be in the gmail window) -- however these usually go away when gmail redraws its screen (something it frequently does).

Expected Results:  
Gmail should be able to compose and send messages as it normally does.
The Firefox log file should not display "GdkWindow ... unexpectedly destoryed" errors and related errors, e.g. "Gdk-CRITICLE **: gdk_window_hide: assertion `GDK_IS_WINDOW (window)' failed".

Attachments will follow.

Comment 1

[Robert Bradbury]

Attachment: Compressed sessionstore.js file

sessionstore.js file contains the active session with 84 windows, 532 tabs, spread across 8 workspaces (though I don't think the sessionstore file records these yet).

It should be noted that to properly restore this session may require a gmail account, a NY Times account, and an account at NCBI, and that even then a complete restore may not be possible (due to the fact that some of the windows may contain BLAST or PubMed results which have limited lifetimes on the servers.

It is also worth noting that that the current state of the system is ~0-5% CPU load, ~78% of 1.5GB of memory in use by programs (mostly ~45% is Firefox+X), little or no network/or disk activity, 5% of 9GB of swap space is used.

But factor which "may" be of interest is that the gmail "untitled window" problem may have begun to crop up when heavily "niced" system compiles (emerges in Gentoo parlance) were being run.  This is consistent with past observations of the Gdk/Gtk/Glib & Firefox untitled window problems (e.g. one usually has to heavily stress the system to produce them).

Comment 2

[Robert Bradbury]

Attachment: Complete log of testing firefox3.0pre

Here is the complete log of a several day firefox3.0 session.

My version of firefox has modified prlink.c to print messages indicating what shared libraries are being loaded.

And for the record, the flashplayer plugin, libflashplayer.so listing is:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 bradbury aeiveos 7040036 Oct 10 04:41 /home/bradbury/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
running "sum" on it yields: 16459  6876
I believe it was downloaded from Adobe but don't precisely recall.
If a copy of it is needed for debugging purposes I can ftp it to someone.

Comment 3

[Robert Bradbury]

Attachment: Difference listing of firefox.log attempting to compose msg

I saved the firefox.log file and attempted to compose a new message in gmail (the behavior was as before).  I can enter the "To:" field, the "CC:" field, the "Subject:" field but it is impossible to enter text into the message field.

I then saved the "draft" message, and returned to my Inbox.  As before, the redrawing of the inbox briefly generated an "untitled window".  I would say the gmail "progress" bar was ~95% complete.  It paused briefly, then completed redrawing the inbox and deleted the untitled window.  Gmail appears to display messages already in the Inbox without problems.

The attached difference file is the result of a "diff" of the old firefox.log file and the current firefox.log file (after only attempting to send a single message in gmail).  As can be seen from examining the file, it does not attempt to reload libflashplayer.so.  I believe this only happens when gmail is restarted in a blank window (I think gmail may use flash to "announce" new messages being received but am not sure).   So you may want to be careful about going off down that path.  I've never gotten any sounds of new mail arriving when I have gmail running so am not sure whether that is a system sound configuration problem, a flash problem or a firefox problem.  Normal sound programs (e.g. mplayer, alsaplayer, etc.) work fine on my system.

Comment 4

[Robert Bradbury]

Also note extensive discussion of the probable causes of the "untitled window" and "window unexpectedly destroyed" problem under Bug #263160.  As noted in my most recent comment to that bug, these are not exactly the same bug.  Most of the bug reports under #263160 are not due to gmail/javascript they are most likely due to high system load conditions.  In Bug #427024, the bug is reproducible using Gmail (within the same firefox session) and can be reproduced under relatively light CPU/memory use but high window/tab (X?) loads.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

this should be retested with newer gmail, flash v10, etc. Preferably with FF 3.1 beta

testcase is of limited or no value without doing some work to make this a far smaller testcase, i.e. fewer tabs/windows

Comment 6

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

This is a mass search for Firefox General bugs filed against version 3.0 that are UNCO and have not been changed for 200 days.

Reporter, please update to Firefox 3.6.10 or alter. Firefox 3.0 is no longer supported and is no longer receiving updates. After you update, please create a fresh profile, http://support.mozilla.com/kb/managing+profiles, and test to see if your bug still exists. If you still the bug, then please post a comment with the version you tested against, and the problem. If the issue is no longer there, please set the RESOLUTION to  RESOLVED, WORKSFORME.

Comment 7

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply from reporter, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.12 or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.