[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Load web page with Flash movie --> System freeze?



Carl Fink wrote:
This is deeply weird and should be impossible.

On an HP DV6100 laptop running a freshly-updated Lenny, I use Iceweasel 3
and the Flash library from Adobe, also updated today.

I reinstalled Lenny last week.  Starting Friday (I didn't use the laptop
over the weekend) and continuing today (Monday), if I open any web page with
a Flash movie on it, the computer freezes.  I don't mean that X freezes, I
mean the entire system.

As a test, I ctrl-alt-F1'ed to a VT and ran "sleep 3m; killall xdm".  I've
tested that invocation, and it does in fact kill X when the sleep expires. Then in an xterm I ran "script iceweaselfreeze.txt ; iceweasel &".

Iceweasel loaded.  I navigated to YouTube and tried to play a Captain
Disillusion video.  The first frame loaded, and then everything froze.  The
command in the VT failed to kill X, and I was forced to power-down to reset. The file "iceweaselfreeze.txt" is empty.

I can see a badly-behaved Flash plugin killing Firefox/Iceweasel.  I can
even see it freezing X.  How can it freeze the script running in the VT?
It's a really solid freeze--not only do ctrl-alt-f1 and ctrl-backspace stop
working, so do Caps Lock and Scroll Lock and the rest.

A test with konqueror freezes the entire system BEFORE the first frame of
the Flash movie displays.

The system remains stable indefinitely in Windows Vista, so if it's a
hardware problem it's a subtle one.  I haven't done extensive tests, but it
seems to work far more stably in Knoppix, too.

Nothing suspicious in syslog, not surprising considering how sudden and
total the freeze is.

Kernel issue? 2.6.24-1, FWIW. Xorg issue?
Any debugging suggestions?  Install another distro as a test?  Is there an
easily-accessible debug kernel or debug version of xorg?  I'm a very
experienced Linux user and former sysadmin, but not a systems programmer.
Iceweasel plus swfdec on an amd64 works like a charm here too...(testing/unstable)...youtube and all that.


Reply to: