543646 - Dramatic increase in crashes [@nsEventTargetSH::PreCreate(nsISupports*, JSContext*, JSObject*, JSObject**) ] starting 2010-01-25, associated with YSlow and Firebug extensions

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 542203

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Starting on 2010-01-26, there has been a dramatic increase in the
number of crashes at nsEventTargetSH::PreCreate(nsISupports*,
JSContext*, JSObject*, JSObject**) on OS X in Firefox 3.5.7 and 3.6.
This crash is currently the topcrasher on OS X in FF 3.6, and the
number 4 topcrasher in all FF versions.  But (as best I can tell) not
one of these crashes predates 2010-01-26.  (I got my figures doing
searches at http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/.)

Recent interesting-modules and interesting-modules-with-versions files
(https://wiki.mozilla.org/CrashKill/Signatures) associate these
crashes pretty strongly (33%) with a module called GearsEnabler.  As
best I can tell this is a bundle installed to /Library/InputManagers/,
which is associated with Google Gears.  But the current version of
Google Gears (0.5.32.0, from August 2009) doesn't have any file or
bundle with this name.

So there's pretty strong evidence that these crashes are due to either
a bug in Google Gears, or a bad interaction between it and Firefox.

I don't use Google Gears, and am not at all familiar with it.  I did
notice, though, that a patch was landed on the Google Gears trunk, on
2010-01-26, to "Make Gears work on FF 3.6 / os x"
(http://code.google.com/p/gears/source/detail?r=3417).  Could this
have anything to do with these crashes?

Comment 1

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Crash-stats reports these crashes on all current versions of OS X -- 10.6.X, 10.5.8 and 10,4,11,

Comment 2

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Interestingly, there are only two days with truly horrendous numbers
of these crashes -- 2010-01-27 (1714), 2010-01-28 (1192).  2010-01-29
has only 302, and the reduction continues apace (today there are only
28).

Comment 3

[chris hofmann]

I found a few crashes on the 25th.

date nsEventTargetSH::PreCreatecrashes
20100120-crashdata 0 nsEventTargetSH::PreCreate
20100121-crashdata 0 nsEventTargetSH::PreCreate
20100122-crashdata 0 nsEventTargetSH::PreCreate
20100123-crashdata 0 nsEventTargetSH::PreCreate
20100124-crashdata 0 nsEventTargetSH::PreCreate
20100125-crashdata 238 nsEventTargetSH::PreCreate
20100126-crashdata 1774 nsEventTargetSH::PreCreate
20100127-crashdata 1317 nsEventTargetSH::PreCreate

they seem to span a variety of releases, but are hitting 3.6 users hardest

checking --- 20100127-crashdata.csv nsEventTargetSH::PreCreate
release total-crashes
              nsEventTargetSH::PreCreate crashes
                         pct.
all     275566  1317    0.00477925
3.0.15  1582            0
3.0.16  1005            0
3.5.5   4267    10      0.00234357
3.5.6   3398    10      0.00294291
3.5.7   132346  490     0.00370242
3.6     79803   769     0.00963623
3.6b5   2331            0
3.6b4   1346    4       0.00297177
3.6b3   512             0
3.6b2   684             0
3.6b1   995             0

all releases
  14 3.5
   5 3.5.1
   2 3.5.2
   9 3.5.3
   1 3.5.4
  10 3.5.5
  10 3.5.6
 490 3.5.7
 762 3.6
   2 3.6.1pre
   1 3.6a1
   4 3.6b4
   7 3.7a1pre

seems to affect both mac and linux

os breakdown
527     0.400152        Mac OS X10.6.2 10C540
336     0.255125        Mac OS X10.5.8 9L31a
211     0.160213        Mac OS X10.5.8 9L30
40      0.0303721       Mac OS X10.4.11 8S2167
21      0.0159453       Mac OS X10.4.11 8S165
18      0.0136674       Mac OS X10.6.2 10C2234
17      0.0129081       Linux0.0.0 Linux 2.6.31-17-generic #54-Ubuntu SMP Thu Dec 10 16:20:31 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
12      0.00911162      Mac OS X10.5.7 9J61
12      0.00911162      Linux0.0.0 Linux 2.6.31-17-generic-pae #54-Ubuntu SMP Thu Dec 10 17:23:29 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
10      0.00759301      Linux0.0.0 Linux 2.6.28-17-generic #58-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 1 18:57:07 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
9       0.00683371      Linux0.0.0 Linux 2.6.32-trunk-686 #1 SMP Sun Jan 10 06:32:16 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux
8       0.00607441      Linux0.0.0 Linux 2.6.28-11-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:57:59 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
7       0.00531511      Linux0.0.0 Linux 2.6.31-16-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 8 04:01:29 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
6       0.00455581      Linux0.0.0 Linux 2.6.28-16-generic #55-Ubuntu SMP Tue Oct 20 19:48:24 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
5       0.00379651      Mac OS X10.5.4 9E17


the most frequent urls are gmail

domains of sites
 288 \N//
 128 about:blank//
  48 https://mail.google.com
  41 about:sessionrestore//
  27 http://www.google.com
  24 http://www.facebook.com
  20 file://
  13 http://localhost
  10 http://www.apple.com
   9 http://www.engadget.com
   8 http://www.youtube.com
   8 http://twitter.com
   8 http://live.gizmodo.com
   7 http://www.mozilla.com
   6 http://en.wikipedia.org
<long tails snipped>

Comment 4

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Oops.  All my dates should be one day earlier -- I misinterpreted the
results crash-stats gave me when I asked it for crashes "one day
before" a given date.

Comment 5

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

And another oops -- there are a few of these crashes on Linux, too.

Comment 6

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

(Following up comment #0)

> I did notice, though, that a patch was landed on the Google Gears
> trunk, on 2010-01-26, to "Make Gears work on FF 3.6 / os x"
> (http://code.google.com/p/gears/source/detail?r=3417).  Could this
> have anything to do with these crashes?

Since the crashes actually started on 2010-01-25, the answer is pretty
clearly "no".

Comment 7

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Turns out these crashes are much more strongly associated with the
YSlow and Firebug extensions than they are with any module, on both OS
X and Linux.  "YSlow for Firebug" (http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/)
appears to be a Firebug extension.

I should have been looking at the interesting-addons files, not the
interesting-modules ones.  These are at
http://people.mozilla.com/crash_analysis/ (not at the URL I gave in
comment #0).

I got my data from the interesting-addons files for Firefox 3.5.7 and
3.6 for 2010-01-26 and 2010-01-27 (the dates on which we've had by far
the largest number of these crashes ... so far).

Comment 8

[John J. Barton]

Very likely a dupe of Bug 542203