74295 - launch delayed until starlogo 1.2 is closed

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 53952

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect)

Description

[Kent Paul Dolan]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; 0.8.1) Gecko/20010323
BuildID:    2001032319

When the StarLogo 1.2 software from
http://www.media.mit.edu/starlogo/
is operating, Mozilla, when launched, produces no screen output,
pauses until the StarLogo project is closed, _then_ continues
launching.  This can be hours later, it still comes up.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.On an MS-Windows 98b system, install Mozilla 0.8.1 and StarLogo 1.2
2.Bring up an empty StarLogo 1.2 project from the Start > Programs
  menu.
3.Click the Mozilla desktop icon, hear disk noises
4.Wait a very long time, see nothing useful happen
5.Close the StarLogo project, even hours later
6.See Mozilla complete launching as if it had just been evoked

Actual Results:  Mozilla delayed launching until StarLogo was closed.


Expected Results:  Launched immediately despite other software competing for
resources.


This can be worked around by starting Mozilla _before_ StarLogo, but
that's a PITA when a 24 hour runtime StarLogo project is in mid-run.

Also from [e-mail] I received this comment:

I don't know what the StarLogo is, but I think you might report it.
There's a similar problem when I have Apache with PHP as a module
on Windows that does the exact same thing you described.
There might even be a chance that the two problems could be related.

Comment 1

[timeless]

please try following the steps in the above url. run dependency walker for both 
mozilla and starlogo (is it related to staroffice? can you give us a url for 
it?), zip the dwi files and attach the zip file as application/zip.

Comment 2

[Kent Paul Dolan]

The closest I can get you to a download URL for StarLogo (it's a massively
parallel version of the Logo programming environment, no relation to StarOffice
at all; it is implemented in Java), is the login screen for accessing the
MS-Windows version download:

http://www.media.mit.edu/starlogo/getstar-new-windows.html

timeless said, in email at least:

> please try following the steps in the above url. run dependency walker for 
> both mozilla and starlogo (is it related to staroffice? can you give us a
> url for it?), zip the dwi files and attach the zip file as application/zip.

If that was directed at me, I'm so far over my head I don't even know what
most of the words there mean.  What is a dependency walker?  I'm not usually
an MS-Windows user, this is my wife's computer; my skills are in Unix and
family, so normal tools here are completely strange to me.

xanthian.

Comment 3

[timeless]

please read http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/dependency-walker.html

fwiw, this is only an email because bugzilla sends you a copy of my comments, 
I'm just adding them to the bug report itself (just like you).

re logo, ok, i'm familiar w/ that.

if i have free time, i'll try to reproduce, however the fact that it's java 
based is interesting.

Comment 4

[Kent Paul Dolan]

Try three at getting this in; guess what, Mozilla crashes when I try to log into
Bugzilla, so this is via drecky old IE.

Dependency Walker was a no-go.

I brought up StarLogo 1.2 under Dependency Walker, and Dependency Walker 
crashed Windows 98b hard enough to require a manual power-down to recover.

The failure occurred at the point where the StarLogo empty project windows
were beginning to be painted on the screen, but not yet complete.

There is thus no log file to forward.

The only useful thing I gleaned was a message:

  RSRC32.dll  File not found ...

from the Dependency Walker window, but I don't know if that was a fuss from
Dependency Walker or from StarLogo 1.2.

I do know that StarLogo 1.2 comes up fine when started outside of Dependency
Walker.

Comment 5

[Keyser Sose]

Possible relnote fodder?

Comment 6

[Kent Paul Dolan]

Here is one for the journal of irreproducable results: StarLogo 1.2 is _not_ the
only program for which Mozilla will delay completion of launch until the other
program exits.

Trouble is, I don't know what that other program is.  After rebooting Windows 98b
from a StarLogo run that got Windows 98b as close to dead as I've ver seen it
while still able to fog a watchglass, and before running any StarLogo projects
again, I saw Mozilla wait for another program to die before Mozilla put up its
splash panel and tried to complete its launch.

Problem is, so far as I could tell there was no other program running, but when
I went to shut down Windows for a restart, the "this program is not responding",
kill it now or wait (or some such) requestor from Windows came up.  Since I
figured I was killing Mozilla, whose failure to launch was the reason I was
rebooting, I clicked "end task", and when I did, Mozilla put up its splash panel
and continued with its launch process. 

Since I'd just told the machine to reboot, this launch attempt did not bear
fruit, but what is important is that there is something besides StarLogo, and
therefore a _class_ of programs, that causes Mozilla to delay launching.

For whatever that extra bit of information might be worth.

xanthian, now up to build id 2001040604.

(What's it mean to be "relnote fodder"?)

Comment 7

[timeless]

ok, hrm, the error you got indicates that the problem is probably casued by a 
hung dde app. the next time mozilla doesn't run, please run ps or wintop.
wintop from kerneltoys from microsoft: 
http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/wutoys/w95kerneltoy/defau
lt.asp

ps.exe [i've never used this] is 
probably included in http://lbrisar.1coolpage.com/cmdline.zip

relnote means that we would mention the problem in our release notes (in this 
case i think the starlogo problem is relnote worthy)

Comment 8

[Kent Paul Dolan]

I've just encountered a new instance of this delayed launch behavior with
Mozilla, using the autoinstalling 2001041804 build for win32.

This same launch delay behavior was also encountered when the "script-fu"
component of the win32 version of The Gimp, available from www.cygwin.com,
was left launched but both not responding and also invisible after a session of
GIMPing.

I'm moderately sure, for another data point, that I've seen Netscape 4.7 launch
when StarLogo 1.2 was running, launch when Mozilla was running, but refuse to
launch when both StarLogo 1.2 and Mozilla were running (accomplished, of course,
by launching Mozilla first, since StarLogo has no problem launching with Mozilla
running, just vice versa).  Of course, even with 128 Mbytes of ram, this latter
behavior could fairly be described as a possible "out of everything" case.

Both of these data points are useful in exculpating StarLogo 1.2 from being the
(sole) guilty party in this bug.

Comment 9

[Ken Snider]

Betting that this again is a DDE Issue, related to bug 53952 - Good news is
there's a patch in the works over there. :)

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 53952 ***

Comment 10

[Kent Paul Dolan]

Nope, not the same situation. In this case, Mozilla fails to come up even though
the other app (StarLogo 1.2.1, most recently) is percolating along just fine.  I'm
taking the liberty of reopening this bug, as it doesn't seem to require the base
system to be as badly wedged as 53592 seems to require.

Comment 11

[Ken Snider]

bug 53952 has a somewhat misleading Summary. As evidenced in the dupes of the
bug (namely bug 76043, bug 78347, bug 70799, and others) - the applications in
question don't actually have to be *hung* to cause the problem. Instead, they
simply have to be *running*.

If you go through the (vast!) list of dupes on this issue, I think you'll see
this is the case for this bug as well.

cc'ing in law@ for some clarification on this one. :)

Comment 12

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

re-marking duplicate.  The misbehaving application need not be hung -- it need
merely be blocking DDE requests.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 53952 ***

Comment 13

[Kent Paul Dolan]

I confirm the fix to 53952 cleared this problem, Mozilla now launches with
StarLogo running.

Comment 14

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

mass verification of duplicate bugs: to find all bugspam pertaining to this, set
your search string to "DuplicateBugsBelongInZahadum".

if you think this particular bug is *not* a duplicate, please provide a
compelling reason, as well as check a recent *trunk* build (on the appropriate
platform[s]), before reopening.