Firefox 39 keeps crashing

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Hello,

i have the same problem. Deleting ./mozilla or using safe mode didn't help
Using firefox 40 (beta) seems to solve this problem

Despite trying at various points throughout the day, I've not been able to make it crash at all. I've been using it on Trusty/x86-64 for the last hour and a half or so and it's not crashed once.

There must be something I'm missing here. Have you installed any third party software at all? We had a problem a couple of weeks ago where people were reporting Firefox not starting, and it turned out to be caused by a dodgy Sophos AV update.

Really annoying. Keeps crashing and crashing. Not usable to surf through the web here.

Only two extensions are Adblock Edge and NoScript. Flashplayer and H264 plugins have to be enabled to load.

There were no problems until I installed the updates yesterday.

Can confirm this behaviour on Ubuntu 14.04. I'm using Firefox 39 with only one addon (ublock origin) and all plugins either disabled or set to ask for permission to run. Experiencing crashes in both Firefox 39 and Firefox 40 Developer Edition, but Firefox 38 is fine.

Playing flashplayer video for 0 - 20 seconds is a guaranteed way to crash Firefox 39, but it also can happen on pages with no flash content and with flashplayer completely disabled. In fact, it can even happen on pages with no HTML content at all (eg. a .png image)

I should mention that my crashes have the exact same stacktrace as the one in the posted bug here.

If I go to the modules tab in the crash reports viewer, libpulsecommon and libpulse (the pulseaudio libraries) are highlighted in red, as are libgio, libglib, libstdc++, and libpthread. There's no indication of what the red actually means, but I assume it means that the crash involves those assemblies in some way?

@chrisccoulson
AFAICT there is no relation between profile state and crashes.
Users tried all kind of workarounds but only using different binaries seems to be helpful.
I see something SSE.cpp in stack trace, might this be related to CPU SSEx instructions?
Maybe the problem triggered by invalid optimization or CPU errata?
Also maybe CPU of builder was "fresh" enough to trigger usage of optimizations incompatible with older CPU revisions we all use?

Could someone experiencing this please run:

NSPR_LOG_MODULES="IPCPlugins:4" firefox > firefox.log 2>&1

...make it crash and then send me the file?

Here is mone.

Here's mine.

Here is another one for you.

Thanks for the logs. I have a pretty good idea what's going on now

One thing I'd like to understand is what causes the plugin process to crash. Would somebody mind helping me with this?

What I'd need you to do is:

- Install debug symbols by running "sudo apt-get install firefox-dbg".
- Run Firefox and navigate to a page that embeds a plugin object (I assume that this is Flash that you're experiencing these crashes with?).
- Attach gdb to the plugin-container process running Flash by running "gdb -p <pid>" (where <pid> is the process ID for the relevant plugin-container). You might need to do this as root, depending on your configuration.
- Navigate away from all pages embedding plugins (best to close all but one tab and then navigate that to http://start.ubuntu.com/)
- Wait half a minute or so - until either plugin-container exits or crashes.
- If plugin-container crashes, please provide the stacktrace from gdb by typing "t a a bt f".

Chris, I'm trying, but now Firefox just greys out and does nothing anymore.

With ps -A I only see a <defunct> after the plugincontainer process. So it died already? Nothing happens since minutes, no cpu-usage, it just hangs.

Even killing the plugin-process doesn't work.

The last gdb message is:

Reading symbols from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so.1...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so.1
0x00007f5beb71d12d in poll () at ../sysdeps/unix/syscall-template.S:81
81 ../sysdeps/unix/syscall-template.S: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/gdb/auto-load/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.19-gdb.py", line 63, in <module>
    from libstdcxx.v6.printers import register_libstdcxx_printers
ImportError: No module named 'libstdcxx'
(gdb) t a a bt f
Cannot find new threads: generic error
(gdb)

I don't know if that's related to this...

It greys out, after closing the tab with the loaded flash plugin!

Update: Firefox greys out when gdb stops at the message above. Quitting gdb let's Firefox awake immediately.

I have libstdc++-dev package installed..

That's a bug in the Ubuntu version of gdb.

Open /usr/share/gdb/auto-load/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.19-gdb.py in your favourite text editor.
RIght before the 2nd last line (which should be "from libstdcxx.v6.printers import register_libstdcxx_printers"), add the following line indented by 4 spaces to line up with the previous line:
sys.path.insert(0,'/usr/share/gcc-4.8/python/')

Attached is log from debugging the plugin container. Interestingly, when plugin container crashed while gdb was attached to it, firefox froze for a few seconds, then continued working. The flash video kept playing even after the plugin container process terminated. The crash report window did pop up when I closed Firefox though.

You're using a wrapper that loads the Chrome PPAPI Flash plugin - is everyone using this?

All Ubuntu 14.04 or newer users are. The old "normal" flashplayer plugin stopped being supported on Linux and Solaris a while ago and will never be updated past version 11.*.*. (Current version is 18.0.0)

Actually, maybe the pepper flash player was part of the System 76 install of Ubuntu and not Ubuntu in general. Either way, the normal flashplayer plugin isn't really viable anymore.

No, not all Ubuntu 14.04 users are using that, and Flash Player 11.2 currently *is* supported on Linux (it's still receiving security updates).

Why did nobody care to mention this when I asked "Have you installed any third party software at all?" in comment 3? I've wasted a significant amount of time this week trying to reproduce this crash.

@Matt: Thanks.

@Chris: Sorry for not mentioning the pepperflash plugin. It wasn't my intention to let you work hours for no reason.

On my notebook Firefox 39 with the same plugins/extensions run fine. I only have this problem my workstation at home. The only difference is that the notebook uses onboard Intel graphics and the workstation Nvidia propritary drivers. With my 14.04 workstation with Xcfe 4.10, two AMD cards with propritary driver and four monitors connected there's also no problem.

Btw. 11.2.* may be still supported and gets security updates, but why shouln't we enjoy the much much better performance of the newer flash versions..

So you think it's a pepperflash bug?

I'll provide a gdb logfile from my workstation at home this evening, when I find the time for it.

The Xfce 4.10 is my machine in the office, not at home.

Sorry too, i didn't think to mention pepper as firefox crash in safe mode too as i said in #2

So, little update here. As I've sent #24 Firefox 39 crashed on my notebook, too!

I googled for the freshplayer Bug, but only found https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1071421 which suggest, that Firefox 40 developer doesn't crash with freshplayer.

After downloading I copied all my profile data into the dev-profile, started FF40 and it crashed.

Created a new profile without any data import -> Firefox 40 crashed.

Downgraded to Flash 11.2 from the official repo -> Firefox 40 crashed.

Tried Firefox 39 from the repo with 11.2 from the repo -> Firefox 39 crashed!

So this is a Firefox bug, because it exists since the update to 39 from the official Ubuntu 14.04 repos.

Downgraded to Firefox 38 from the Trusty repo, still no crash with pepperflash and 18.0.0.209 since half an hour...

Which PPA is it it that has Firefox 38, and how do you prevent the newer version from the official repositories from taking precedence? It's getting annoying having to switch from Firefox to Chromium when I want to use Twitch.

I don't know if there is a ppa for Firefox 38.

- Purge Firefox 39
- Download and install Firefox 38 (https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-security/+archive/ubuntu/ppa/+build/7412429)
- Open a terminal and hold the package with "sudo apt-mark hold firefox"

Don't forget to unhold, when we know what's causing the issue.

@chrisccoulson
Regarding Freshplugin, I am too using it, but:
1) Flashplugin 11.2 is crashing at the very same pace as Freshplugin is, the difference is that it does not take the browser with it.
2) Both Flashplugin and Freshplugin are perfectly fine with Mozilla's binaries.
3) Firefox crashes on every shutdown even without Flashplugin and Freshplugin installed.

Can you test this with the latest Firefox beta (in https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/firefox-next)?

This issue seems to be resolved for me on the build of Firefox 40 from the above ppa.

Confirming FF40, build fixes the problem.

Update: Seems like 39.0.3 is also ok (even with freshplugin enabled).

Nothing has changed in 39.0.3 that would fix this. The fix for this only landed in 40.0

Sorry if this is no the same bug.

freshplayerplugin has been updated in the begining of august and i have no more crash with firefox 39 now.

This was fixed in Firefox 40