Does anyone know why a Flash-heavy site crashes my Firefox?
 

Hi, all:

I love www.atom.com; it's got my funny videos on it. When I try to navigate to it, the site crashes my browser. I have Firefox 3.0.1. I installed the Flash plugin from the .rpm download option on Adobe's site, and Hulu.com works just fine (although the resolution is CRAPPY compared to my old Windows resolution). Why would something like this happen?

I'm using Mandriva 2008.1, KDE4.1. (Also, the flash plugin worked fine when I was using Ubuntu and KDE3.5)

That's interesting; I've only had the crashes when using one of the free Flash players. All I can suggest is:

1. Set a shell to take a core dump: ulimit -c 5000 (5000k core dump)
2. Run FireFox from the shell
3. Run 'gdb' (the GNU debugger) and attach to FireFox
4. Visit that website and see if the debugger discovers anything interesting; the problem may be with either FireFox or the plugin.

The Flash player is probably stripped of symbols so you might not get anything useful from the debugger. Unfortunately you'll need to read about the debugger as well - an old programmer would have a good idea what to hunt for, but you might find yourself with pages that resemble the ancient minoan laguage.

(1) What does it mean to set a shell to take a core dump, and why would I do it?
(2) How do I attach gdb to firefox and why am I doing it?

I think Macromedia.com might have a flash player for Firefox in Linux. If they do you might wand to try it.

Macromedia IS Adobe now. I have the latest plugin installed, but Atom still crashes my Firefox.

The problem is probably in the plugin, which is -like it has always been- unstable. It just works depending on the versions of the browser, the plugin, and, if in x86_64, nspluginwrapper.

I doubt you will get any useful debug info from the -closed source- adobe flash player plugin, since you can't make a debug build (since you haven't the sources).

Which version of the plugin are you using?

I am using firefox 3.0.1, nspluginwrapper 1.0.0 and flash 10_beta20080811. It seems to work ok here.

I would also try disabling ALL the rest of plugins. Just in case. The more plugins the more candidates we have to cause a problem.

I seem to have screwed something up. I tried uninstalling my previous flash plugin, installing the new one, and rebooting. Flash still doesn't work (I get the "you need flash to view this site" message when I go to the Watchmen site to check, since I know it's flash-heavy), and now, firefox is somehow in full-screen mode (there's no title bar at the top, and no min,max,close button set). Any idea how this happened or what to do?

Fullscreen mode can be switched with f11.

Oh, thank you!! Fixed it.

So here's something weird. I just tried to go back to the Watchmen site, and I'm still getting the utter lack of flash. Also, as soon as I go to any site that has flash, firefox does the weird move to fullscreen. How the heck does that happen? At least now I know to use the f11 to fix it, but why is it happening?

I've never seen a similar thing.

Anyway, things to try:

1.- another wm, just in case it's triggering some keybindings or something
2.- a clean config, mv ~/.mozilla ~/moz-backup, then start firefox again, install flash again if needed and see if you can replicate the same exact problem

A 'core dump' is an image of the memory used to run your program; UNIX supports writing such an image before removing your program when it crashes. If you have the right tools you can often find out where a program crashed and why - or at least find clues about where to look next.

A debugger can be 'attached' by specifying the program name (and path) and the Process ID (PID) of the running program. For example, on my computer I'd have to do:
gdb /usr/lib/iceape/iceape-bin $(pidof iceape-bin)

Attaching a debugger allows you to stop the program as you please and look at variables (to find out what's causing the problems). It's most useful for programmers, so if you're not a programmer then just ignore it. You'll have to talk a programmer into trying to replicate the problem and see what's going on.

To check which plugins are active in firefox, enter this URI:

Java is very popular, so you may check if Java is installed (although if that's a problem, you usually get the message "did you install java").

How did you install your Flash plugin? Did you do it as 'root' or as a normal user? What questions did the installer ask you and what did you answer?

I would make sure you don't have mplayer-plugin installed, I've found that this can cause FF to crash on Flash sites. I would also use the firefox extension Flashblock, it will block all flash unless you allow them one by one, it helps on sites where flash = ads, it also helps stability and prevents your CPU from being hogged by the flashing ads. Finally, if you want better quality try flash player 10: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/ it's in beta, but it seems to work well and at much better quality.