581272 - When using Flash debug player, the error pop-up freezes firefox until plugin-container.exe is closed

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(External Software Affecting Firefox Graveyard :: Flash (Adobe), defect)

Description

[thanhbv]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:2.0b1) Gecko/20100630 Firefox/4.0b1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:2.0b1) Gecko/20100630 Firefox/4.0b1

Flash plugin debug version (10.0 or 10.1) in FF 3.6.4, 3.6.6, 3.6.7, 4.0b1: Errors in flash cause FF not responding

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install flash plugin debug version (download from http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html)
2. Browse a page with flash error. Or open the attached file
3. There will be flash error popup window (with 2 buttons: "Dismiss All" & "Continue"
4. FF crash
Actual Results:  
FF crash

Expected Results:  
We can click "Dismiss All" or "Continue" to continue browse that page.
We can switch to other tab,..

FF version <= 3.6.3 not have this error
Error occur with both flash plugin 10.0 & 10.1

Comment 1

[thanhbv]

Attachment: error flash file

This is an empty flash file, with the following code:
{{{
import flash.net.*

var req: URLRequest = new URLRequest("not available!");
var loader: URLLoader = new URLLoader();
loader.load(req);
}}}

Comment 2

[thanhbv]

Ah, Steps to Reproduce:
1,2,3 as above.
4. + Wait until the plugin crash report page is shown
   + Or, switch focus out of the popup window (switch focus to other program window, or to FF main window)
(In reply to comment #0)

Comment 3

[timeless]

this is a bug in Flash.

Comment 5

[Roman T]

I guess this is not bug in Flash, because in earlier versions of Firefox all was ok.
Trouble was begun after plugin-container include

Comment 6

[timeless]

roman: it's not your job to guess. you're a guest here.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

We, mozilla.org developers are *telling* you this is a bug in Flash. What flash is doing is wrong. And Adobe needs to fix it.

roman: please consider reading bug 58339, yes it's long, but it's long because of people like you.

Comment 7

[tobyfi]

I cannot see how it is a bug in Flash, but I am not surprised that people start second guessing if their bug is effortlessly dismissed as a "this is a bug in flash". 

Bug 58339 is something completely different. This bug occurs with Flash debug player, when the Flash error dialog box pops up and Firefox does not let me close that dialog box. It does not occur every time a Flash error box pops up, but it seems to occur every single time if the dialog box pops up as a result of navigating away from the page. 

The way it usually happens for me is that I am browsing on a page (hey, let's try newgrounds for example, where you virtually have a flash on every page), decide I don't want to wait for a Flash loading, and navigate away. If a Flash is using ActionScript to download content, it catch events for successful and failed downloads. If it does not handle them properly, an ActionScript error will occur ("Load never completed") and the Debug Player will show an error dialog. 

When this dialog pops up while navigating from one page to another, that is it. Firefox will not let me close the dialog box, and clicking anywhere will behave identically to clicking anywhere else on a window that is (for example) displaying a message box (as in, no action, and Windows will beep). 

Firefox will become unresponsive to closing the window from the task bar (sends WM_CLOSE if I'm not mistaken?), and killing the plugin_container.exe will switch any Flash object rendered on the page to a "The Flash plugin has crashed!" (yeah right) message, however Firefox will still remain unresponsive (same as above). 

The only way out at this point is killing the firefox.exe process.

At any time, Firefox produces no CPU load, it simply doesn't let me interact with it anymore. 

Now:

- This bug never occurred before Firefox started advertising being more robust against Flash crashes. In the version where this feature was introduced, I noticed this bug occurring immediately. I rarely report bugs, because my experience is that bugs get bashed, the blame shifted to other people, or even the reporter themselves. Because of that, I never reported it, and hoped that some version would fix it eventually. Seeing it's not fixed, and I again lost a lot of work, here's the report.

- This bug does not occur with the regular Flash player, as it will not pop up a dialog box and fail silently. It will occur with the Flash Debug player, which does not silently ignore errors and instead display the dialog box the OP mentioned.

- As a USER I see that Firefox does not let me close the Flash error dialog, and henceforth I see the problem in Firefox and not in Flash. On top of all, the bug started occurring when *Firefox* introduced a new feature, and not when *Flash* introduced a new feature. Managing to somehow shifting the blame to Flash with this in mind is .. quite a feat.

- In fact, I cannot possibly see how this is a "bug" in Flash. The Flash Debug player is doing what it's supposed to do, it's displaying a dialog box when an error is occurring. It does not crash or block your browser, and in fact it does not know what you are doing with it. It displays a dialog box (which I, as the user, requested it to do, by installing the debug player instead of the regular player), and expects me to close it. I cannot close it, because Firefox does not let me access the dialog box. Remember that even when the plugin_container.exe dies (in this case the Windows Task Manager is simulating the "crash" which you readily detect), Firefox remains unresponsive and will not let me click anything, as if a modal dialog box were still displayed. At this point Flash is dead though, and it is no longer displaying *anything* at all. 

- Also, this bug does not occur in Internet Explorer. I am aware they use a different plugin, yes. It's just some more information that may or may not help you isolate the cause.

Comment 8

[timeless]

the npapi doesn't really allow for someone to hog the event loop. it's a cooperative model. flash in debug form is sitting on the event loop while it talks (or waits to talk) to a debugger, that isn't legal. thus it's a bug in debug flash.

the fact that it happens to work in some configurations is irrelevant. it's a bug in flash.

bug 58339 is an example of a bug which was a bug in flash. this bug is *another* example of a bug which is a bug in flash.

If we don't properly handle you killing plugin container, that indeed would be a bug on our side. However if you want a bug to be fixed you need to provide a stack trace:

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/How_to_get_a_stacktrace_with_windbg

Do yourself a couple of favors:
1. don't rant in any bug, not this one, not any you choose to file.
2. include a concise set of steps to reproduce.
3. include a stacktrace (see url above for detailed instructions) as an *attachment* (there'a button when you file your bug and a link 'add an attachment' for later).
4. don't speculate about causation, that isn't your job and it will not result in better results.

Comment 9

[thanhbv]

@Roman,
@tobyfi,
@FF users:
I fixes this bug!

The solution is realy simple! & completly solve this bug & all other "this is a bug in Flash" bugs!

That is:
use Chrome :D

Comment 10

[Roman T]

O rly?
Give me a ChromeFlashBug, please

Comment 11

[tobyfi]

Thank you, thanhbv. I have tried your workaround and it has indeed fixed my problem.

@timeless: The problem has never occurred before Firefox introduced the plugin container. While I see your point, I also understand that you ask Adobe having to change the behaviour of their plugin reactively to some change in Firefox. Essentially, Firefox broke Flash Debug Player support, and asks Adobe to fix it. The one who loses out on this internal tug-of-war between Firefox and Adobe is the user.

In addition, the bug does not only occur in "some configurations". It occurs in every configuration I have tried, with the "Flash Debug Player" plugin. Finally, I did notice that leaving the Flash Debug dialog open for 30ish seconds will cause Firefox to kill the plugin, as if it had hung, but Firefox would still remain unresponsive to user input.

Comment 12

[Alex Haan]

Though I think something else is also at play here (and I don't doubt that Adobe did something wrong in this case), I've reported a similar issue before: bug 561075 

There the browser hangs after Flash has opened a dialog window, which is somewhat similar to this situation. Maybe the information in there is of help in this issue too.

Comment 13

[tobyfi]

A quick solution that completely fixes this problem is going to about:config and setting "dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll" to "false".

This configuration change in Mozilla Firefox somehow fixes the Adobe Flash plugin so that it no longer causes Firefox to hang. Pure magic, you say? It works. 

It has saved me so many crashes (seeing any debug box popping up would equal a hang), and it's finally working again like it should. Unstable? Not really. I'm working with Flash daily, and I haven't had a crash for well over a year (whereas I had daily hangs with FF's "crash protection").

Comment 14

[IcePanther]

I've also reported a similar bug there : https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647659

Comment 15

[tobyfi]

Yes, it's the same bug.

Comment 16

[IcePanther]

@Tobyfi :

Your workaround works here. It disables completely for Flash, as I understand it; so the bug still stands. Nevertheless, I'll apply this solution until it's fixed, since it works for me.

Comment 17

[Alex Haan]

@ Comment 8 timeless 2010-11-28 07:16:41 PST 

Just to be clear, this isn't just Flash in Debug mode. The same happens when it opens a JavaScript popup in normal mode (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=561075). And it happens in others situations too.

Ok, so long story short (bugzilla isn't the place for debate after all - I'm doing a lot of self-censorship here) it's Adobe's fault.

Is there anything we, the users can do to poke Adobe. Any place you suggest we do that?

Comment 18

[Daniel Swid]

Report the issue here on Adobe's side and add a link to this bugs URL so someone there can review https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP

> @ Comment 8 timeless 2010-11-28 07:16:41 PST 
> 
> Just to be clear, this isn't just Flash in Debug mode. The same happens when it
> opens a JavaScript popup in normal mode
> (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=561075). And it happens in others
> situations too.
> 
> Ok, so long story short (bugzilla isn't the place for debate after all - I'm
> doing a lot of self-censorship here) it's Adobe's fault.
> 
> Is there anything we, the users can do to poke Adobe. Any place you suggest we
> do that?

Comment 19

[Alex Haan]

Thank you Daniel.

I reported the issue. But either "probably because you entered a bug report that details a potential security vulnerability - or is related to a non-public component in a commercial product.", or just because it was my first reported issue, one has no permission to view the issue.

In the hope this will be accessible later, the link to the issue is: http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-6581

Comment 21

[Jim Garrison]

Adobe JIRA reports original issue as fixed, but it still occurs with the latest debug plugin version (11.2.202.235).   Since I could not "reopen" that issue, I created http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-33322 (For some reason their JIRA would not let me create an issue in the FlashPlayer project)

Comment 22

[Jim Garrison]

Workaround: 

In your home directory (in Windows C:\Users\[username]) create a file named mm.cfg with the content

SuppressDebuggerExceptionDialogs=1

This prevents the plugin from displaying the dialog and it appears to allow the plugin to continue.

Comment 23

[Jeromie Clark]

This bug on the Adobe side was filed under the wrong product.  I've opened a bug against Flash Player and we're looking into it now.

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3199201

For future reference, please file Flash Player bugs here: 
https://bugbase.adobe.com/

Also, we monitor the Flash Player forums pretty closely:  
http://forums.adobe.com/community/flashplayer

Comment 24

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Stealing a better title from a dupe.

Comment 25

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Mike, for firefox symbols we have a symbol server which is really easy to set up in vs and windbg. We have a FAQ on it here -

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Using_the_Mozilla_symbol_server

Comment 26

[Robert Kwon]

Is anyone still reproducing this with Firefox version 18.0?  I tried to download the .swf and follow the steps, but experience no crash with the latest Firefox release.

Comment 27

[Alex Haan]

I have it scribbled down somewhere that this issue was fixed for me halfway 2011, but maybe that should have been 2012.

At least I do not encounter it anymore in Firefox 18.

Comment 29

[raph151515]

Hi,

This bug is not solved as of today, like 4 years after it appeared. Firefox or Flash player don't allow to do a simple click on the debug window, it's just 1 event to handle properly, and that's the reason I and many others don't use firefox anymore. Is it so hard for you to solve that you prefer having thousands of developer prevented to work on your browser? Is it so hard for you to contact the dev team at adobe and solve it together?

I know that firefox has become a technical mess, and it transpires on this bug handling.

And it pitty this team that need to lie about the bug status to get rid of it. I'm dev and I work on bug report too, it's pathetic what you do.

farewell

Comment 30

[BMO Automation]

Version and milestone values are being reset to defaults as part of product refactoring.