457087 - phpMyAdmin (over https?) causes systemwide panic, even after firefox.exe is killed

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[CLL]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.2) Gecko/2008091620 Firefox/3.0.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.2) Gecko/2008091620 Firefox/3.0.2

Using phpMyAdmin version 2.11.8 hosted on a Gentoo Linux (2.6.24-r3 on PPC) via Apache (API version 20051115) and PHP (PHP/5.2.6-pl7-gentoo). phpMyAdmin is set up to authenticate to MySQL server using a HTTP Authentication. Firefox is running on Windows XP Home Edition SP3 (Build 2600.xpsp.080413-2111 : Service Pack 3).

After running Firefox and using phpMyAdmin consistenly, after an hour of use (with 4 other tabs) certain not-so-common operations such as adding fields to existing tables, etc. causes Firefox to hang while performing the operation. When I use Ctrl+Alt+Delete to bring up the task manager (if its not too late) I can kill firefox.exe, and it goes away. Regardless of whether or not I manage to kill it about 30~60s after it starts hanging (and whether or not I could kill it and goes away) the whole system becomes suddenly unresponsive. The mouse moves smoothly, but windows, Start Menu, other applications, etc. Are EXTREMELY slow to respond. Most often I am forced to reset my computer.


Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
(Happens sometimes... because its hard to reproduce and takes time)
1. Run Firefox and connect to a server/phpMyAdmin setup as described above.
2. Use phpMyAdmin doing normal operations. Test everything you can (USE JUNK DATABASES, NOTHING IMPORTANT) Try everything from making new DBs/tables, altering them, adding new fields, etc., dropping tables, dropping dbs.
3. After around an hour or so of use (from my experience) reloading a page will suddenly hang firefox. Buttons on the interface (Back buttons, for ex.) wont highlight like they normally do.
4. You'll get the hourglass. At this point try to open Task Manager and kill firefox. Whether or not you manage to kill firefox.exe, Clicking the startmenu, using other applications will soon become unresponsive, but will never crash.
5. At this point thing get really harder to control, and eventually you'll be forced to reset the system.


Actual Results:  
I described them as part of the steps above.

Expected Results:  
The page (phpMyAdmin) should have loaded showing that the changes I made would have either succeeded or failed.

I had like four tabs open while doing this. Two of them was a script I was developing and MIGHT have minor errors in it like inconsistent tables etc., but they showed up okay. Also, I was using phpDesigner 2008 6.1, and uTorrent was running in the background. I was also using Pidgin 2.5.1.

Severity is critical only by going what the dropdown box says it does. Plus its really hard to save work in other applications when this happens. Its just as drastic as a BSOD on windows, because it pretty much cripples the system forcing the user to reset it.

Comment 1

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Does Firefox use 100% cpu when you kill it? How many MB of RAM are used on the system while Firefox is still running?

Comment 2

[CLL]

Turns out this problem wasn't directly related to Firefox. The computer started exhibiting similar behavior in other applications alone but in increasingly worse conditions and more randomly. This particular installation of Windows was 4 years old and was likely "deteriorated." Data backup, disk wipe and reinstall was planned and performed for many reasons including but not limited to this particular issue affecting all software, not just Firefox.

As for the individual who questioned about CPU usage, no, CPU usage was normal, like 0%-20%, but the MB of RAM went up to around 130MB, even with just two tabs open, which I thought was unusual. Other software that triggered random system instability issues like this showed similar signs of failure, including increasing memory usage and rather idle CPU usage. System Idle Process was pretty much the only thing using most of the CPU, which I assume means the CPU is mostly idle, just that everything seems unresponsive.  Also, Hard Disk activity is normal, nothing unusual.

Thank you.