58725 - XML throws garbage due to garbage character(s)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: XML, defect, P3)

Description

[Wilbur Killebrew]

For What It's Worth Department

Problem Statement:

No Mozilla build (of the many that I have tested) since the 10-19-11-Mtest build
will install on my SuSE Linux 6.2 system.  Very few builds since September 1
will install.  The 10-19-11-Mtest build appears to be location sensitive.  It
frequently fails to install, with a message similar to the above.  Unlike the
other builds, however, I can usually, but not always, get it to install by
starting or killing other programs (an xterm or Netscape).  Memtest86 did not
find any memory failure problems, but that does not necessarily rule them out;
no other programs seem to be affected, however.

The following messages are for the 10-31-14-MN6  build, but they are typical:

XML Error in file .../.mozilla/Default%20User/localstore.rdf', Line Number: 71,
Col Number: 0, Description: not well-formed
Source Line: </NC:child>
./run-mozilla.sh: line 72:  8656 Segmentation fault      $prog ${1+"$@"}

=====================

Resolution:

The localstore.rdf file had a ^Q in it, apparently put there by the mozilla
build I was using September 8.  After removing the control character, the
10-31-14-MN6 build starts normally.

I did not recognize that this file was not build-specific; sometimes things
worked and sometimes they didn't and I didn't look at the file until recently.

The XML parser appears to need greater robustness to handle off-the wall
problems like this, or at least not throw garbage around causing seemingly
unrelated problems.

=====================

Comment 1

[Keyser Sose]

Reporter are you still seeing problems in the latest nightlies like this?

Comment 2

[Fabian Guisset]

Localstore.rdf got corrupted in a bad build. If you did not remove it from that
build, then it's "normal" that you crash/hang. I'm leaving this open so the QA
can mark this whatever he likes best, or investigate the robustness of the XML
parser.
Thanx,
Fabian.

Comment 3

[Keyser Sose]

I am going to mark this INVALID. If this is still a problem, please reopen the bug.

Comment 4

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

Reopening. We should NEVER segfault.

Marking qawanted since it would be nice to be able to reproduce this.

Comment 5

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

setting bug status to New

Comment 6

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

really setting to New

Comment 7

[Nisheeth Ranjan]

Re-assigning to Chris Petersen.  Please follow up with Wilbur to see if we can 
still reproduce this.  If we can, please describe how and re-assign this to 
Heikki Toivonen, the Tech Lead of the XML/DOM group.  Thanks!

Comment 8

[Nisheeth Ranjan]

Adding heikki to the cc list.

Comment 9

[Wilbur Killebrew]

Mozilla builds no longer use the specific file in which this problem was
discovered, /.mozilla/Default%20User/localstore.rdf', but do use two apparently
similar localstore.rdf files.  I will try sticking a ^G in one or both to see
what happens.  I'm not usually a practicioner of the arcane art of putting
control characters in text files, though ...

Comment 10

[Kris Ven]

Build: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030104

I tried to reproduce this error by adding ^G (hex: 07) and ^Q (hex: 11)
characters into the localstore.rdf file. I tried it several times by adding them:
- between two tags
- between attributes in a tag (instead of spaces)
- in the value part of an attribute

In none of these cases did mozilla crash. Since I changed the file near the
definition of the sidebar, the layout was not as it should, but pressing F9 two
or three times solved the problem. Even when editing some values for the
navigator.xul file, did not cause any problems.

After closing Mozilla, the special characters were removed from the file (by
Mozilla).

I couldn't reproduce this error. Maybe the current builds aren't vulnerable to
this bug any more (last update for this bug was one year ago)?

Comment 11

[Dominik Stadler]

Please close this bug or at least remove keyword qawanted, I was searching for
bugs to help with but this one seems to be fixed and WORKSFORME since a long
time ago...

Comment 12

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

Closing as worksforme based on comments.