637127 - Firefox 4 regularly crashes when CPU use is high

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Tony Green]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686 on x86_64; rv:2.0b12) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b12
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686 on x86_64; rv:2.0b12) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b12

Firefox 4 betas are more stable now than earlier, but I still see a regular problem that the browser will crash when other processes are using a large amount of CPU.
For example, just now I was using mplayer to re-encode an aac file to wav, so CPU was running pretty much at 100%. Even though I wasn't actually DOING anything with Firefox, it crashed.
It doesn't seem to matter what's using the CPU resource, but the one thing consistent about Firefox 4 crashes now is that they all happen at times when CPU use is high. Which makes no sense to me...

I'm running the 32-bit beta (haven't seen a 64-bit one) on an AMD-64 bit Mandriva Linux system with twin cores.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Launch Firefox 4
2. Run processes that use LOTS of CPU
3. Watch while Firefox gives up the ghost...



Copied from crash report pop-up.

Add-ons: {B17C1C5A-04B1-11DB-9804-B622A1EF5492}:1.2.1,{d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}:1.3.3,[e-mail]:1.19.1,{7d575baa-b543-11dc-8314-0800200c9a66}:2.0.5,{66E978CD-981F-47DF-AC42-E3CF417C1467}:0.4.3,{1f91cde0-c040-11da-a94d-0800200c9a66}:4.1,{c45c406e-ab73-11d8-be73-000a95be3b12}:1.1.9,{8620c15f-30dc-4dba-a131-7c5d20cf4a29}:3.1,{3d7eb24f-2740-49df-8937-200b1cc08f8a}:1.5.14.2,[e-mail]:6.10.1,[e-mail]:2011.01.17.02.3,{c07d1a49-9894-49ff-a594-38960ede8fb9}:3.1.4,{b9db16a4-6edc-47ec-a1f4-b86292ed211d}:4.8.3,[e-mail]:2.0.9,[e-mail]:0.8,[e-mail]:1.0.6,{972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd}:4.0b12
BuildID: 20110222205441
CrashTime: 1298802697
EMCheckCompatibility: false
Email: [e-mail]
FramePoisonBase: 00000000f4d57000
FramePoisonSize: 4096
InstallTime: 1298718065
ProductName: Firefox
ReleaseChannel: beta
SecondsSinceLastCrash: 61485
StartupTime: 1298797221
Theme: classic/1.0
Throttleable: 1
Vendor: Mozilla
Version: 4.0b12

This report also contains technical information about the state of the application when it crashed.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

We need the crash ID and not the technical details
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/How_to_get_a_stacktrace_for_a_bug_report

Comment 2

[Tony Green]

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-4bbdeaf5-f0e6-4c14-9ef8-abcaa2110227 is one example.


The Linux-specific instructions on the page referenced by Matthias all seem somewhat out-of-date. I'm not sure how to run Firefox with GDB as it (not surprisingly) doesn't work when calling the wrapper-script. When I try running "gdb /path/to/firefox-bin" it doesn't like it:

-------------------------------------------------------------------
$ gdb firefox-bin
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.1-1mdv2010.1 (Mandriva Linux release 2010.1)
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "x86_64-mandriva-linux-gnu".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>...
Reading symbols from /usr/local/firefox/firefox-bin...Missing separate debug info for /usr/local/firefox/firefox-bin
(no debugging symbols found)...done.
(gdb) run
Starting program: /usr/local/firefox/firefox-bin 
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
symfile.c:1326: internal-error: find_separate_debug_file_by_debuglink: Assertion `i >= 0 && IS_DIR_SEPARATOR (dir[i])' failed.
A problem internal to GDB has been detected,
further debugging may prove unreliable.
Quit this debugging session? (y or n) 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Are betas with debugging symbols available somewhere? Even if I can get it to run with GDB, I'm guessing my current binary isn't going to help.

Comment 3

[timeless]

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Using_the_Mozilla_symbol_server#Downloading_symbols_on_Linux_.2f_Mac_OS_X

Comment 4

[Tony Green]

(In reply to comment #3)
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Using_the_Mozilla_symbol_server#Downloading_symbols_on_Linux_.2f_Mac_OS_X

Thanks for the link.
Annoyingly, the 32-bit debug versions won't run on my 64-bit machine for some reason I don't understand (firefox-bin.dbg: cannot execute binary file), so I suspect I'm not going to be able to get any more useful information out of it.

However... I've managed to find a 64-bit build of beta 12, so at least I can test to see if the problem's something to do with running 32-bit on a 64-bit machine. Seems there are no debug symbols available for the 64-bit build, but I'll see what I can get without if it still keeps crashing with 64-bit binaries.

Comment 5

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

This bug was reported using a pre-release version of Firefox 4. Now that Firefox 4.0.1 final has been released, can you please update and retest your bug? A fresh profile would be a good starting place to test, 
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles. If you continue to see the issue, can you please update this bug with your results?

Filter: firefox4prebugsunco