How to find out WHY Flash Player 11.2.202.236 plugins crash in Firefox ESR 10.0.6 on 64-bit Linux

[RockSockDoc]

Flash crashes dozens of times a day and I am trying to figure out WHY.

I have the recommended latest player & browser for my operating system.

The only diagnostic information I have is that the crashes seem to occur when a few tabs are open with videos loading in them and when any one video is closed, flash then locks up the browser for about 30 seconds, and then ALL the videos that were loading in separate tabs are dumped & say that the plugin crashed.

Details about the system from http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html

1. Flash player version: 11.2.202.236

2. Operating System: Linux 2.6.32-279.2.1.el6.x86_64 (64-bit)

3. Browser: Firefox Firefox ESR 10.0.6

This is the correct set of components.

Debugging, I've modified the about:config dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs to any value of 10 seconds to 45 seconds (the default), but it doesn't seem to make a difference in the number of crashes.

Any idea how to get more diagnostic information?

[RockSockDoc]

Unfortunately, there's nothing in "/var/crash" after the numerous flash crashes so I'm not sure where to look next.

The 'dmesg' command reports:

npviewer.bin[16884]: segfault at 340 ip 00007f26bda22ab0 sp 00007fffa8abbe78 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[7f26bd68d000+1179000]

Bringing up the CentOS 6 "Applications->System Tools->System Monitor", I see the numerous Flash crashes appear to have some relationship with "npviewer.bin", which uses the "/usr/lib64/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so" shared object module and which has numerous "open files", one of which is "/home/<username>/.xsession-errors".

Looking at "/home/<username>/.xsession-errors", we find these lines, which may be useful.

Here are some excerpted errors & warnings:

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** WARNING: unhandled variable 18 (<unknown variable>) in NPN_GetValue()

NOTE: child process received `Goodbye', closing down

failed to create drawable

(firefox:5813): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_clipboard_set_with_data: assertion `targets != NULL' failed

NOTE: child process received `Goodbye', closing down

(firefox:5813): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_clipboard_get_for_display: assertion `!display->closed' failed

failed to create drawable

*** NSPlugin Viewer  *** WARNING: unhandled variable 18 (<unknown variable>) in NPN_GetValue()

Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Gdk-ERROR **: The program 'npviewer.bin' received an X Window System error.

This probably reflects a bug in the program.

The error was 'BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)'.

  (Details: serial 857 error_code 8 request_code 140 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.)

aborting...

*** NSPlugin Wrapper *** ERROR: NPP_HandleEvent() wait for reply: Connection closed

*** NSPlugin Wrapper *** WARNING:(../src/npw-wrapper.c:2537):invoke_NPP_HandleEvent: assertion failed: (rpc_method_invoke_possible(plugin->connection))

*** NSPlugin Wrapper *** ERROR: NPObject 0x7f71eb734a00 is no longer valid!                                                                                                                                                               93,43          0%

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Q: Where do we look to find the cause of numerous flash crashes on Linux?

[RockSockDoc]

Nobody can help with how to debug flash crashes on Centos Linux?

[chris.campbell]

Asking our Linux expert for ideas...

[RockSockDoc]

I'm not sure what that means to 'ask our Linux expert' ... nor how to find that linux expert ... but I've been working the problem in the meantime.

For example, I've removed nsplugin-wrapper altogether, which eliminated the related warnings in ~/.xsessions-errors:

$ sudo yum remove nspluginwrapper

Amazingly, I haven't seen any adverse effects (yet) from eliminating the nspluginwrapper - but it didn't solve the Adobe flash crash problem.

Running a 'locate' command, I find

/usr/share/doc/flash-plugin-11.2.202.236/readme.txt <== this is an Adobe readme file

/usr/lib64/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so <== this is the Adobe 64-bit flash plugin

Interestingly, the /.usr/share/doc/flash-plugin-11.2.202.236/ directory has nothing in it but the readme (which makes it kind'a useless).

But running a 'file' command on the shared object module proves it's a 64-bit binary:

$ file /usr/lib64/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so

REPORTS:

/usr/lib64/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, stripped

I might re-install the flash-plugin-11.2.202.236-0.2.el5.rf.x86_64 from RPMforge, but really, that won't make any difference.

I'm not sure what do do next as all I want is to debug numerous flash crashes.

[pwillener]

RockSockDoc wrote:

I'm not sure what that means to 'ask our Linux expert' ...

What Chris meant that he's going to ask their Linux expert.  Just sit tight...

[RockSockDoc]

What Chris meant that he's going to ask their Linux expert

Ah. Now I understand. Thanks.

The good news is that removing nspluginwrapper (which reputedly wraps 32-bit applications in 64-bit systems) has reduced the number of error messages in the ~/.xsession-errors file.

I do not know if these errors are related (hence my main topic question of HOW TO DEBUG FLASH CRASHES) ... but this is the main error I see in the ~/.xsession-errors file:

(firefox:3364): Gdk-WARNING **: XID collision, trouble ahead

Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I have confirmed that my Lenovo W510 (with the Nvidia "Quadro FX 880M" GPU) does not have this Nvidia "Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix" shared object module installed.

So I 'may' have to install a different graphics driver (if that indeed is the root cause of Adobe flash crashes in Firefox); but I have no evidence that's the case (which is the point of this thread):

sudo yum --enablerepo atrpms install nvidia-graphics169.07 nvidia-graphics169.07-kmdl-`uname -r`

In the meantime, I did uninstall & reinstall the 64-bit flash plugin, but, of course, it didn't make a difference (as I had done that long ago also).

A while ago, I had downloaded & installed the YUM RPM for adobe flashplayer:

    http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/completion/?installer=Flash_Player_11.2_for_other_Linux_%28YUM%29_6...

More recently, to see if it mattered, I removed & re-installed the 64-bit flash plugin:

1. $ sudo yum remove flash-plugin
2. $ sudo yum install curl compat-libstdc++-33 glibc nspluginwrapper alsa-plugins-pulseaudio libcurl
3. $ sudo yum install flash-plugin

But I'm just guessing.

We're still left with the dilemma of HOW to properly debug flash crashes on CentOS 6 Linux.

[libflashplayer_so]

our linux experts have long gone, but we hope to be a stop gap in the mean while...

the first suggestion woud to uninstall nspluginwrapper, which you have already done. it is not needed when you are using a 64-bit browser and flash player plugin.  it actually causes instability when installed.

the scond suggestion would be to disable hardware acceleration.

1. right-click flash content
2. in the first tab, unselect the checkbox "enable hardware acceleration"

i'm not able to suggest any troubleshooting tips...  if you have reproducible steps for a crash, it would be best to enter them in our external bugbase @ http://bugs.adobe.com.  the only problem for linux is that development has stopped on that platform with Flash Player 11.2.  the pepper implementation will be available in the future and will work on browsers that support it, which would be chrome to date. 

[chris.campbell]

libflashplayer.so is being modest, he's definitely my Linux expert