ADL in Adobe AIR 3.1 crashes then works then crashes then works

[TonyFreixas]

Hi,

I'm using Adobe AIR 3.1 to create an HTML/Javascript application.

Whenever I go to run the application using "adl", I'll get the message "Adobe AIR Debug Launcher has stopped working".  If I repeat this several times, the application will eventually come up and run normally. The next time I try to run it, it may crash again, even if I've made no changes.

I'm on Windows 7 x64. In the event viewer, the errors seem to occur in either RASAPI32.dll or rtutils.dll.

Faulting application name: adl.exe, version: 3.1.0.4880, time stamp: 0x4eb7612e

Faulting module name: RASAPI32.dll, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bdad7

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x000017e9

Faulting process id: 0x1f54

Faulting application start time: 0x01cd07c139760fb3

Faulting application path: C:\PF86\Adobe\AirSDK\bin\adl.exe

Faulting module path: C:\Windows\system32\RASAPI32.dll

Report Id: 7b7c9ecc-73b4-11e1-ace3-bcaec51b8285

Faulting application name: adl.exe, version: 3.1.0.4880, time stamp: 0x4eb7612e

Faulting module name: rtutils.dll, version: 6.1.7601.17514, time stamp: 0x4ce7b9ac

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x000012c8

Faulting process id: 0x1df0

Faulting application start time: 0x01cd07bd9cfe7082

Faulting application path: C:\PF86\Adobe\AirSDK\bin\adl.exe

Faulting module path: C:\Windows\system32\rtutils.dll

Report Id: de3b1cf6-73b0-11e1-ace3-bcaec51b8285

I downloaded the AIR 3.1 SDK, copied over a few Javascript files and only use "adl" for running the program. I haven't tried to build an application yet.

[chris.campbell]

Hi Tony,

I'm sorry you're running into this crash.  Would you mind generating a crash dump so we can take a look at the call stack?  See this post for details.  Once generated, please open a new bug report at bugbase.adobe.com and provide both the crashlog and sample code/application if you can.  Please post back with the bug URL or number once done.

Out of curiosity, does this occur if you try running your app on a new user account?

Thanks,

Chris

[TonyFreixas]

Hi, Chris,

Thanks for helping. The bug is 3148469.

I tried running the program in a freshly created account. The first 3 times it worked. The fourth it crashed.

[TonyFreixas]

Hi, Chris,

I was able to create a small test program that reproduced the problem and I attached it to my bug report. The person handling the bug report seems to keep asking for something else and I don't understand what else is needed. Perhaps you might be able to explain what's I'm missing.

A direct link to the bug is https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3148469

[chris.campbell]

I don't think you're missing anything.  Hopefully Yuzhong will understand with your comment instructing them with the ADL command.  Please let me know if that doesn't help.

Chris

[TonyFreixas]

Hi, Chris,

Well, I tried to work with the Adobe bug team (or at least, one member), but it's become pretty clear that they are (he is) going to be of no help. I'm not sure what's going on, but the Adobe bug team member put in charge of the problem appears to be interested only in expending the minimal effort to look at the information I've provided or to help in tracking down the problem.

For example, in his last response, he tells me to make sure I downloaded a specific version of the Adobe AIR SDK. In my prior message, I had uploaded a picture of the test case, running "adl" with no arguments so that he could see exactly which version I was running. Plus, he keeps posting responses to the bug which never reach my email, so I have to keep checking back to see if anything has happened.

I've got a bug which is pretty darn consistent. It either affects only some small number of systems or only occurs when you perform a specific combination of steps. I can always get my program to run with adl; sometimes it runs right away. Today, I think I set a record of 16 attempts before it ran. This makes for a lousy development system. Along with the general lack of debugging tools, it's certainly leading me to question my investment in and my future use of Adobe Air.

Do you happen to have any suggestions for anything I could to track down the problem?

[chris.campbell]

Hi Tony,

I tried your test application out by running it 100 times on a Win 7x64 system.  Unfortunately I could never get it to crash.  I also took a look at your crash logs.  Here's the stack trace against the AIR 3.3 beta:

>	rasapi32.dll!_memset()
	rasapi32.dll!_DebugInitEx@12()  + 0x2f bytes
	rasapi32.dll!_DebugInit@8()  + 0x15 bytes
	rasapi32.dll!_RasApiDebugInit@0()  + 0xc bytes
	rasapi32.dll!_RasConnectionNotificationW@12()  + 0xb bytes
	wininet.dll!InitRasWorkItem()  + 0x13 bytes
	shlwapi.dll!_ExecuteWorkItemThreadProc@4()  + 0xe bytes
	ntdll.dll!_RtlpTpWorkCallback@8()  + 0xdf bytes
	ntdll.dll!_TppWorkerThread@4()  + 0x5a4 bytes
	kernel32.dll!@BaseThreadInitThunk@12()  + 0x12 bytes
	ntdll.dll!___RtlUserThreadStart@8()  + 0x27 bytes
	ntdll.dll!__RtlUserThreadStart@8()  + 0x1b bytes

You'll notice that neither AIR nor Webkit are in this stack trace, which leads me to believe that you might be having a problem with your network stack.  Have you seen this crash on other systems?

[TonyFreixas]

Hi, Chris,

100 times! Wow, that ought to cover it! Again, no surprise at your not being able to reproduce—there would be a lot more screaming if this were common.

The information you dug out of the crash log is really not much different than the info I posted in my very first message. What you've added is that the crash is outside any of the AIR and Webkit modules—I don't necessarily recognize what is and isn't part of AIR.

Nothing else on my system seems to be having a problem running. All my network connections seem to run OK. It's quite possible something is corrupt on my system but a full virus check and a sfc /scannow don't reveal anything. I could bore you with a long list of DLL version numbers, but I don't know that you could figure out if something is broken from the list. I have WinPCap installed so that I can run Wireshark, a network packet sniffer. Could that cause a problem?

Are there any know incompatibilities with certain tools or libraries?

If you don't have any ideas, I guess I'll keep poking at this on my own. Thanks for taking the time to check on this.

[TonyFreixas]

I thought I would post my little test application. Maybe someone else has run into this same problem and knows a work-around. The application works fine when packaged up, it only fails (sometimes) when using adl.

All the code does is to try to read a URL using URLStream. I've tried using URLLoader instead. Same problem. I've tried delaying the read with a five second timeout. I tried adding a button and initiating the read only after the button was clicked. I tried adding all the event handlers for the URLStream.load() method.  None of this helped. The programs sometimes finished OK and sometimes didn't. Once it starts up OK, I have no further problems (in my real application). There's clearly a race condition in the the first attempt to load a URL when using "adl".

Since there aren't a lot of people yelling about this, I am either doing something unusual or my environment is unusual (Windows 7 x64) or both.

Crash.js

var ready = function()

{

    // Display the window

    nativeWindow.activate();

    // Causes crash

    crash();

};

var crash = function()

{

    try {

    var url = new air.URLRequest('http://www.google.com/');

    var stream = new air.URLStream();

    stream.load(url);

    alert("Done");

    }

    catch (error) {

    alert(error);

    }

};