Consistent crash when visiting flash sites

Bug #35942 reported by Gabriel Bauman
78
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
flashplugin-nonfree (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Low
Unassigned

Bug Description

Whenever I visit a flash-enabled site, my browser crashes hard with the following message:

=====================
The program 'epiphany' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)'.
  (Details: serial 118 error_code 8 request_code 146 minor_code 3)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)
=====================

The message is identical between Firefox and Epiphany, with the exception that the first line reads "The program 'Gecko'..." for Firefox.

I've tried manually installing the plugin from the Macromedia-provided tarball in my ~/.mozilla/plugins folder, but that crashes just the same.

The crash occurs any time I try to view a site that contains an embedded Flash file. I see a light-grey 'placeholder' rectangle where the flash movie should appear and my disk chatters a bit, then my browser crashes and exits. I would guess this means that there is a problem during plugin initialization.

Would a backtrace be helpful in this situation? The problem appears to be inside the Macromedia binary, which does not appear to have debugging symbols.

I'm using an up-to-date Dapper.

Revision history for this message
Loïc Corbasson (cnb) wrote :

I'm having the same problem on Dapper.

Are you using the X server extensions in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf?
If your file has a section with any of the following options:

Section "Extensions"
        Option "Composite" "Enable"
        Option "RENDER" "true"
        Option "DAMAGE" "true"
EndSection

then comment them and restart your X server or try starting firefox/epiphany from a console like this:

XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 firefox
-- or --
XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 epiphany

and see if flash works.

Using konqueror the browser doesn't crash but animations are replaced by a grey array (you can still use the right-click menu, click buttons, select text etc. but you won't see anything).

(Seems like an incompatibility between the new X server extensions and the Flash plugin.)

BTW, which driver are you using (maybe it's somehow related; I use the nvidia non-free drivers)?

More info at: http://www.mepislovers.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=13767&forum=8&post_id=95376

Revision history for this message
Loïc Corbasson (cnb) wrote :

I looked for more info about this bug and found this page:
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/X11R6.8.0/doc/RELNOTES5.html

It appears that only the Composite extension seems to cause problems with applications which try to use it in a wrong way. Maybe a wrapper script around the flash plug-in would work (but is it possible as it is a plug-in?), I'm looking for more info about that.

Changed in flashplugin-nonfree:
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Gabriel Bauman (gabrielbauman) wrote :

I had the composite plugin enabled (although I wasn't using a composition manager)... Disabling the Composite extension fixed the issue for me.

Revision history for this message
Davim (davim) wrote :

I still have this problem but I'm not using the composite plugin

Revision history for this message
Bart Martens (bartm) wrote :

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=320849

Reproducible in Debian with:

ii firefox 1.5.dfsg+1.5.0 lightweight web browser based on Mozilla
ii flashplugin-no 7.0.63.4 Macromedia Flash Player plugin installer

Revision history for this message
Carlos Perelló Marín (carlos) wrote :

I see this error too with Edgy but I don't see any reference to the Composite extension in my Xorg configuration so the only solution I have found is to remove flash plugin.

Revision history for this message
Carlos Perelló Marín (carlos) wrote :

Bart, I don't think that's the same bug, I did such report in Firefox's bugzilla (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307645) because I have that problem too with www.banesto.es but other flash websites were working.

In this case, any web page with flash content kills Firefox/Gecko

Revision history for this message
Florent Mertens (givre) wrote :

I have the same problem.

I also think that it's related to the composite extension, which is default in edgy now (so not mention in xorg.conf).

The XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 firefox
works well for me.

I think simply add this line to the /usr/bin/firefox script
should be enough.

Revision history for this message
Florent Mertens (givre) wrote :

Just try and adding

XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS

at the begining of the firefox script works well.

Revision history for this message
Daniel T Chen (crimsun) wrote :

Workaround exists. Flash (plugin) 9 purportedly addresses this issue.

Changed in flashplugin-nonfree:
importance: Medium → Low
status: Confirmed → Rejected
Revision history for this message
Laurent Suchet (laurent-s3) wrote :

Nope, problem exists with Flash 9 (immediate crashing for example on www.yahoo.fr) (using FF 2.0)

I'll try this two lines in firefox script

Revision history for this message
Laurent Suchet (laurent-s3) wrote :

XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUAL

+1

It works well. I confirm that even Flash 9 made FF 2 crashy.

I think Firefox pkg should be updated to correct this ?

(I use a S3 Savage card, I even desactivated DRI and this had no effect)

Revision history for this message
Carlos Parra Camargo (carlospc) wrote :

Same problem installing manually 7 and 9 beta flash. Also with flashplugin-nonfree package.

Two things:

  * It's very common to have flashplugin-nonfree package installed or installed manually (same problem), so i think that the importance of this bug should be, at least, "medium".

  * Since there is fix that affects to firefox, it shouldn't be changed the package "flashplugin-nonfree" to "firefox"?

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