504378 - Need a better way to test facebook apps and reproduce frequent Firefox crashes there.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[chris hofmann]

In the crash data we see a high pct. of crashes coming as the result of interaction with facebook and facebook apps.

Here for example are crash counts for the top facebook apps that crashed in the last week for Firefox 3.5 users.

1565 http://apps.facebook.com/farmtown
 790 http://apps.facebook.com/inthemafia
 202 http://apps.facebook.com/texas_holdem
 199 http://apps.facebook.com/mindjolt
 152 http://apps.facebook.com/petsociety
 151 http://www.facebook.com/friends
 131 http://apps.facebook.com/livingsocial
 110 http://www.facebook.com/video
  95 http://apps.facebook.com/restaurantcity
  95 http://apps.facebook.com/givinggarden
  80 http://apps.facebook.com/onthefarm
  56 http://apps.facebook.com/friendsforsale
  54 http://apps.facebook.com/yoville
  50 http://apps.facebook.com/rock_legends
  46 http://apps.facebook.com/typing-maniac
  45 http://apps.facebook.com/buddypoke
  43 http://apps.facebook.com/streetracinggame
  40 http://apps.new.facebook.com/ea_scrabble_closed
  17 http://apps.facebook.com/ea_scrabble_closed
  40 http://apps.facebook.com/vampiresgame
  39 http://www.facebook.com/find-friends
  39 http://apps.facebook.com/piratesrule
  38 http://apps.facebook.com/quizdoyouknowme
  35 http://apps.facebook.com/sororitylife
  35 http://apps.facebook.com/flixster
  33 http://apps.facebook.com/waka-waka
  30 http://apps.facebook.com/happyfarmers
  28 http://apps.facebook.com/egghunt
  24 http://apps.facebook.com/biotronic
  22 http://apps.facebook.com/wordchallenge
  22 http://apps.facebook.com/bejeweledblitz

right now we have no real way to create the kind of profile or sequence of possible events to reproduce crashes on these apps.

lets figure something out in an automated way and/or maybe just organize brute force community efforts to go pound on these apps to see what we can find.

Comment 1

[chris hofmann]

Attachment: top 100 facebook crashes

top 100 apps on facebook where we saw crashes during the week preceeding  7/15/09.

There were about 900 apps and frequently viewed pages where we see crashes

Comment 2

[chris hofmann]

irc conversation with tomcat

<chofmann>	maybe we need a facebook group for facebook crash hunters.  ;-)
<Tomcat>	yeah
<chofmann>	facebook crash defence team
<Tomcat>	sounds also like a good qa project :) 
<chofmann>	facebook crash defense team

Comment 3

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

yup will look into this...hm FCDT Team :) sounds good

Comment 4

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

I see reports on hendrix quite a bit of crashes. I think this is a great idea.

Comment 5

[cmtalbert]

Comments from the Mozilla QA Meetup -- they see a bunch of crashes while using the Facebook chat feature.

Comment 6

[chris hofmann]

the farmtown crashes have a high pct. of incidence around flash.  here are counts and signatures of farmtown crashes recieved on July 30th.

218 NPSWF32.dll@0x77540
 136 NPSWF32.dll@0xbbff7
  76 memmove
  40 Flash Player@0xe4a5f
  23 user32.dll@0x18c08
  19 Flash Player@0x157338
  15 NPSWF32.dll@0x775b1
  12 NPSWF32.dll@0xbb597
   8 NPSWF32.dll@0x7768f
   5 RealDefWindowProcWorker
   5 NPSWF32.dll@0xa0977
   5 GraphWalker::DoWalk(nsDeque&)
   5 GoogleDesktopNetwork3.dll@0x3bef
   5 @0x0
   4 kernel32.dll@0x984e
   4 \N
   4 NPSWF32.dll@0x77b60
   4 NPSWF32.dll@0x776a5
   4 NPSWF32.dll@0x2155ee
   4 GoogleDesktopNetwork3.dll@0x3dfb
   4 Flash Player@0xdacf0
   3 kernel32.dll@0x4be08

Comment 7

[chris hofmann]

inthemafia crashes have a different and more scattered profile.

 10 _PR_MD_SEND
   7 nsGenericElement::cycleCollection::Traverse(void*, nsCycleCollectionTraversalCallback&)
   6 \N
   6 ICF.dll@0x223a4
   6 GraphWalker::DoWalk(nsDeque&)
   5 xul.dll@0xa7724
   5 NPSWF32.dll@0x3d447
   4 xul.dll@0xa78f6
   4 nsGlobalWindow::cycleCollection::UnmarkPurple(nsISupports*)
   4 JS_CallTracer
   3 xul.dll@0xb668d
   3 radhslib.dll@0x3b6f
   3 memcpy | fillInCell
   3 SGPrxy.dll@0x258e
   2 strstr | FILTER35.DLL@0x8d6a
   2 shlwapi.dll@0x1a9b8
   2 nsXPConnect::Traverse(void*, nsCycleCollectionTraversalCallback&)
   2 memmove
   2 js_GC
   2 dtoa
   2 ageSelectionCallback
   2 QuickTime.qts@0x6f3a4

Comment 8

[chris hofmann]

texas_holdem is both flash and quicktime

  15 NPSWF32.dll@0x2ad3b
   8 memmove
   4 NPSWF32.dll@0xa0977
   3 RealDefWindowProcWorker
   3 QuickTime.qts@0x6f3a4
   3 NPSWF32.dll@0x5b2c8
   3 NPSWF32.dll@0x137f26
   2 wcslen
   2 user32.dll@0x18c08
   2 nsCycleCollector::MarkRoots(GCGraphBuilder&)
   2 gfxWindowsNativeDrawing::EndNativeDrawing()
   2 _PR_MD_SEND
   2 ScanBlackWalker::ShouldVisitNode(PtrInfo const*)
   2 QuickTimeWebHelper.qtx@0x12acd
   2 QuickTime.qts@0x7fd6b
   2 NoteJSChild
   2 NPSWF32.dll@0x96e13
   2 NPSWF32.dll@0x775b1
   2 NPSWF32.dll@0x5896a
   2 NPSWF32.dll@0x28bec
   2 NPSWF32.dll@0x21619f
   2 GraphWalker::DoWalk(nsDeque&)

Comment 9

[chris hofmann]

interesting that memmove shows up in all three of these facebook application top crash lists.  #2, #3 and #18.

Comment 10

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

memmove is the #20 topcrasher, and from what I understand, kind of a generic signature :(

http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/list?product=Firefox&version=Firefox%3A3.5&version=Firefox%3A3.5.1&version=Firefox%3A3.5.2&query_search=signature&query_type=exact&query=&date=&range_value=5&range_unit=days&do_query=1&signature=memmove

Comment 11

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

chris re: comment #7, do we know if the latest flash update fix this ?

Comment 12

[chris hofmann]

re: comment 11

not sure.

there isn't a way to get a survey of flash version numbers associated any particular stack signature at this time.  hopefully that report or analysis tool might come soon.

Comment 13

[cmtalbert]

Are there any security/publicity implications if we go out to our networks on facebook and ask people who are using these applications to write down their steps and send them to us when they crash?

I'm thinking in particular with farmtown.  I installed it on my profile and found that about a dozen or so other people on my network are playing this game.  If we had a good blog post that helped people understand the steps they needed to capture, and just have them send us steps taht cause a repeatable crash, then that would be a huge win.

Only I'm not sure if this would be a bad or good thing to do w.r.t. the flash devs, the application developer and the facebook platform.  A lot of moving parts there.  Chofmann, any thoughts?  Our motives are certainly good, but I don't want us to be seen as abusing the platform.  Perhaps that's really not a concern if we do it in a targeted fashion like this.

Comment 14

[chris hofmann]

right now I think its more a matter of the facebook app platform abusing us, rather than us abusing the platform and apps. ;-)

we have tried a couple of different routes to try and get facebook involved with this, but so far with no success.

I don't see any problems along the lines of comment 2 which would try and organize facebook members to try and find the things that lead to instability and get those things fixed.

seems like there a facebook groups doing similar kinds of information sharing
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=93287653694&topic=9889

http://www.facebook.com/board.php?uid=75142829409

Comment 15

[chris hofmann]

jesse found this thread on facebook about farmtown crashes

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=56748925791&topic=13977

Comment 16

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

I just created a Facebook group - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=136013683179&ref=nf

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

chris, is there a way forward for this / still needed?

you also have meta Bug 637512 - Facebook app problem tracking

links from comment 14 and 15 are dead. and http://www.facebook.com/groups/136013683179/ is dormant.