After upgrading to firefox 3.6.6 flash plugin crashes

Bug #600158 reported by miguelquiros
62
This bug affects 11 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
Hardy
Expired
High
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: firefox

Today a bunch of updates arrived and were installed through update-manager. Among these, firefox was upgraded from 3.0.19 to 3.6.6. After this upgrade, any page using flash is not loaded, a banner with "flash plugin crashed" appearing instead. When loading a page that needs the javaplugin, it does not work either with a lot of error messages appearing in the java console.
Googling a little, it seems that firefox 3.4 introduced something called "anti crash plugins" or something like this that deactivates plugins that take a certain amount of time to be started. This makes that plugins that are somewhat slow in showing up are not activated at all. If I have understood well, this amount of time was increased in version 3.6 trying to avoid this behaviour but apparently it does not work (or perhaps it needs to work a computer faster than mine).
I had to downgrade back to 3.0.19 to get flash and java working again. (By the way, downgrading was a painful task: many packets need downgrading including language packs, and in the upgrade-downgrade movement, the firefox icon has been lost and firefox has dissappeared from the menus and need to be started from the console).
From my point of view, this new feature, instead of avoiding crashes, generates a lot of new crashes. At least, an easy way to deactivate this unfortunate "anti crash feature" should be provided.
By the way, I am using hardy.

Revision history for this message
Micah Gersten (micahg) wrote :

Thank you for reporting this to Ubuntu. There's a preference, dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs, set to 45 seconds by default that should allow most pages to load. Also, which Flash and Java plugins are you using?

Changed in firefox (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Micah Gersten (micahg) wrote :

Moving to firefox-3.0 since this is for Hardy

affects: firefox (Ubuntu) → firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
Joop (jpvm) wrote :

I have the same problem. Even reInstalling Flash doesn't resolve the problem

Revision history for this message
Peter Meyer (petermeyer69) wrote :

Also having this problem. Tried reinstalling latest version of flash. Using Hardy release.

Peter

Revision history for this message
Peter Meyer (petermeyer69) wrote :

Here is what I am using:

firefox 3.6.6+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
adobe-flashplugin 10.1.53.64-1

Revision history for this message
miguelquiros (mquiros) wrote :

Thanks for the reply. The plugin packages I am using are:
adobe-flashplugin 10.1.53.64-1
sun-java6-plugin 6.20dlj-0ubuntu1.8.04
I assume that if I set dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs to a very large number (say 1000), I am virtually deactivating this feature (when I find time for it, I will re-upgrade and test this).
However, I think the "crashed plugin" takes less than 45 seconds in appearing.

Revision history for this message
Thomas (tjustleft) wrote :

Pretty much the same for me. Since yesterdays updates I keep getting "You need to upgrade your Adobe Flash Player". Here I was ready for a new firefox and now it's messed up. It has crashed more today than in the last few months. I've tried reinstalling adobe flash and non free and then even firefox. Tried flash-aid-1.0.5-fx-linux.xpi but no help.

Though this sucks I admit this is the first time in the year or so of using ubuntu that an update caused problems :)

Ubuntu 8.04 Firefox 3.6.6 Sorry I don't know enough linux to tell you more about my system.

affects: firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu) → ubuntu
affects: ubuntu → firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu)
Changed in firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Invalid
Changed in firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu Hardy):
importance: Undecided → High
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Marcus Walther (c-launchpad-marcus-walther-de) wrote :

I can also confirm these issues. The flash 9.x plug-in was still listed at about:plug-ins, but did not work at all (but I got no "crashed" note).

I got Flash working by performing these steps:

1. Purged every flash related package (*flash*, *gnash*, ...)
2. Cleaned manually all remains (find /usr/lib/ -name flashplugin-alternative.so | xargs sudo rm)
3. Cleaned my ~/.mozilla/plugin/ directory.
4. Installed fresh Flash 10 .deb from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

The Java issue remains. The plug-ins are not listed at about:plugins

I even reinstalled sun-java6-plugin and the files seem to be installed correctly:

# find /usr/lib/ -name '*java*so'
/usr/lib/xulrunner/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
/usr/lib/kde3/kjavaappletviewer.so
/usr/lib/midbrowser/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
/usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
/usr/lib/iceape/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/lib/i386/libjavaplugin_nscp_gcc29.so
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/lib/i386/libjava.so
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/lib/i386/libjava_crw_demo.so
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/lib/i386/libjavaplugin_jni.so
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/lib/i386/libjavaplugin_nscp.so
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/plugin/i386/ns7-gcc29/libjavaplugin_oji.so
/usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins/libjavaplugin.so
/usr/lib/xulrunner-addons/plugins/libjavaplugin.so

But Firefox does not recognize the plug-in. Any suggestions?

Revision history for this message
Thomas Ribbrock (emgaron+ubuntu) wrote :

I can also confirm the Java problem. We're running Kubuntu 8.04.4 (32bit) on our workstations and since the Firefox upgrade, Java is no longer working on any of them (no problems with Flash, though). All machines are installed in the same way:
firefox 3.6.6+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.2
sun-java6-plugin 6.20dlj-0ubuntu1.8.04

The Java plugin is not listed in Firefox anymore (though it used to work fine with 3.0.x) and no error message is shown.

To the moderator who has marked his bug as "Incomplete": Please provide sufficient information as to what is missing!

Revision history for this message
Thomas Ribbrock (emgaron+ubuntu) wrote :

Additional info: Installing the sun-java5-plugin in addition to java6 did not make any difference - still no Java plugin shown in Firefox.

Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

Can we please not mix flash and java issues on the same bug report, else it is going to become a nightmare. Can people experiencing java issues please open a separate bug report. I'm keeping this one for tracking flashplayer crashes

summary: - After upgrading to firefox 3.6 java plugin and flash plugin do not work
+ After upgrading to firefox 3.6.6 flash plugin crashes
Revision history for this message
Thomas Ribbrock (emgaron+ubuntu) wrote :

I've opened an additional bug for the Java problem:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/600642
All those who are affected by this, please add your information there. Thank you!

Revision history for this message
Marcus Walther (c-launchpad-marcus-walther-de) wrote :

Maybe the issues also apply to other plug-ins. Flash and Java are widely used, so that the users recognize these first.

Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

No, the Flash and Java issues are 2 separately unique problems. People are reporting that Flash crashes more often (which is OOPP related, and doesn't affect other plugins). Java is not recognised after the upgrade for some users because they have a Java plugin selected as an alternative which is not supported by FF3.6 (which can be fixed by uninstalling the unsupported plugin or selecting an alternative which works, using update-alternatives).

These issues are unique to only the Java and Flash plugins

Revision history for this message
miguelquiros (mquiros) wrote :

I have reupgraded firefox 3.6 and changed the dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs variable to 1000. This does not solve the problem. The crash banner still appears. As told before, the crash appear well before the previous 45 seconds deadline.
It seems that I have to downgrade back.

Revision history for this message
Thomas (tjustleft) wrote :

I don't get a crash banner. Firefox just crashes. That or a page loads but flash videos say I need to upgrade flash. I am using chrome now for sites that use flash. I hope this is fixed soon because I like firefox better :).

Oh by the way. How do i report certificate problems with launchpad? Firefox gave me the untrusted certificate error when trying to come here just now. launchpad.net was fine but not bugs.lanchpad.net

Revision history for this message
emmakezza (mkeswani) wrote :

This bug also affects me. I upgraded to 3.6.6. on Hardy this morning and noticed that any Flash content crashes the plugin. I deleted the pluginreg.dat file (following the Firefox troubleshooting guide) as well as upgrading to the latest adobe plugin but it still failed to work. Funnily enough, the Mozilla Seamonkey browser works fine.

Revision history for this message
Peter Meyer (petermeyer69) wrote :

Upgraded firefox after receiving an upgrade notice this morning for my Hardy installation. Unfortunately this did not fix the flash crashing issue.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100630 Ubuntu/8.04 (hardy) Firefox/3.6.6
ii adobe-flashplugin 10.1.53.64-1 Adobe Flash Player plugin version 10
ii firefox 3.6.6+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.2 safe and easy web browser from Mozilla

Peter

Revision history for this message
Péter Károly Juhász (stone-midway) wrote :

This bug isn't affects me on x64 but can confirm on i686.

Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

Could somebody post a link to some example content that crashes the plugin?

Revision history for this message
Helmut (heli-tzv) wrote :

Go to
   http://www.wetteronline.de/
and select 'Deutschland' on the left side (in 'Vorhersagen').
Or go directly to
   http://www.wetteronline.de/deutsch.htm
which looks a bit different.

Revision history for this message
Peter Meyer (petermeyer69) wrote :

another example that causes the flash crash:
http://www.cbc.ca/sports

I first noticed the crash while attempting to read Google mail.

Peter

Revision history for this message
emmakezza (mkeswani) wrote :

Reply to #20 - As an example, any flash content on www.boingboing.net crashes in Firefox under Hardy.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/05/four-lions-this-is-s.html

Other sites with flash produce the same message.

I have three flash plugins on Firefox - the old 9.0 r31, the current 9.0 r100 and GPLFlash 0.4.12. Of these, Firefox only seems to recognise 9.0 r31 because disabling this version and enabling the others using the Add-on control panel in Firefox gives a message that the "plugin for this content has been disabled" on any flash content. Enabling the r31 version gives the message that the Adobe Flash plugin has crashed. I only added the r100 and GPLFlash plugins (via Synaptic) after the r31 version failed to work after the upgrade but Firefox doesn't appear to be able to use them and keeps reverting to the r31 version.

I have a laptop with Ubuntu Netbook Remix on which there is no such problem so this seems to be limited to Hardy.

Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

I can reproduce the crashes quite reliably with your link Peter, but the crash is happening deep inside the flash plugin, making the stacktrace completely uselss unfortunately. This is with adobe-flashplugin from the partner repository too.

Turning off OOPP makes the flash player work properly again though

Revision history for this message
Peter Meyer (petermeyer69) wrote :

Turning off OOPP? What is that?

Revision history for this message
Edorta (tecno-edorta) wrote :
Revision history for this message
T A Becket (thomasabecket) wrote :

I'm running 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-23-generic. The Firefox 3.6.6 upgrade was accomplished and the first page it pulled up urged an upgrade to Adobe Flash v.10.1 with a link. I didn't upgrade Flash -- it still is reporting npwrapper.libflashplayer.so, version 9.0 r277 which seems to running okay.

Should the 10.1 upgrade be avoided or is there a work around?

Thanks.

Revision history for this message
Peter Meyer (petermeyer69) wrote :

Installed Adobe's latest flash plugin. This also seems to crash.

 adobe-flashplugin 10.1.53.64-1

Revision history for this message
Peter Meyer (petermeyer69) wrote :

Just to be sure, I purged the old copies of flash and flashplugin-nonfree before installing adobe-flashplugin. No success.

Revision history for this message
Peter Meyer (petermeyer69) wrote :

Found this in another forum:
The recommendation was to run an add-on called FLASH-AID (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/161939/)

The add on runs the following script.

I ran this, re-installed flash and now have it working!!!! Based on this code, the crashing may have been a conflict with any locally stored ($HOME/.mozilla/plugins) .so files. Can someone confirm this.

#!/bin/bash

echo "Please wait...DON'T CLOSE THIS TERMINAL!"
sudo apt-get --yes purge swfdec-mozilla
sudo apt-get --yes purge mozilla-plugin-gnash
sudo apt-get --yes purge adobe-flashplugin
sudo apt-get --yes purge flashplugin-nonfree
sudo apt-get --yes purge flashplugin-installer
rm -f $HOME/.mozilla/plugins/*flash*so
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/libflashplayer.so
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
rm -rf $HOME/.wine/dosdevices/c:/windows/system32/Macromed/Flash

echo -n "Finished! You can close this terminal. You must restart Firefox now." && read

Revision history for this message
Marcus Walther (c-launchpad-marcus-walther-de) wrote :

These remove operations are basically what I did manually (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/600158/comments/8).

Revision history for this message
Stefano Bodini (stevewiz97) wrote :

Running the script didn't solve the problem for me
It removed the old version of flash, then I restarted Firefox, reinstalled the plugin but nothing.
I'm using the Ubuntu 8.04LTS
Very very annoying bug. I don't know if it is related, but after the update to the 3.6.6 many default fonts used by Firefox changed.
Of course I didn't changed any font.

Revision history for this message
Stefano Bodini (stevewiz97) wrote :

Many links reported in this thread are working just fine on my machine. i.e. I can see the video, like http://www.wetteronline.de/
I still have problems with Facebook videos though.
No crash but Firefox continue to ask for the new release fo the flash. I installed/reinstalled it hundreds of times but continue to pop up.

Revision history for this message
Stefano Bodini (stevewiz97) wrote :

Ok, fixed.
I re-run the suggested script to remove old versions of flash AND then "Disabled" the flash version 9.xx indicated in the add-ons/plugins.
Running the script alone was not enough. about:plugins still was indicating the flash 9.x version present, even if the 10.x version was present.

So to fix my firefox I had to :
- close firefox
- run the script posted by Peter
- start firefox (about:plugins was still indicating the presence of 9.xx flash plugin)
- disable the flash plugin from Tools/Add-on/plugins
- close firefox
- start firefox (abou:plugins now is indicating NO flash plugin present)
- install flash plugin

it works now.

Revision history for this message
Helmut (heli-tzv) wrote :

Although it's great to have a workaround, these instructions are not that comfortable for a setup with several terminalservers and about 60+ users. Will it be likely to get a fix based on the packages in the near future?

Revision history for this message
Helmut (heli-tzv) wrote :

A question to the packages.
On your Ubuntu Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS installation, we have these packages installed:

firefox 3.6.6+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.2
firefox-3.0 3.6.6+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.2
firefox-branding 3.6.6+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.2

ii flashplugin-nonfree 10.0.1.218+really9.0.277.0ubunt
ii libflash-mozplugin 0.4.13-9ubuntu1
ii libflash0c2 0.4.13-9ubuntu1

Are these the most recent for Hardy or do you use any special ppa backports?

Revision history for this message
Daniel Omar Castañeda Ruiz (danielcastaneda2010) wrote : Re: [Bug 600158] Re: After upgrading to firefox 3.6.6 flash plugin crashes

I'm using a package downloaded from adobe called adobe-flashplugin
version 10.1.53.64. Firefox packages are the same for me.

Revision history for this message
Trino (trino-martinez) wrote :

Hello everybody,
I had a similar problem, I upgraded Firefox to 3.6.6 version, I upgrade the flash version to adobe-flashplugin_10.1.53.64-1_i386.deb and the plugins crashes.
After reading this bug report, I followed the instructions of Peter Meyer and Stefano Bodini (above)
and now firefox runs OK. No more plugin crash.
Thanks for your help

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

[Expired for firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu Hardy) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

Changed in firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu Hardy):
status: Incomplete → Expired
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