Re: Load web page with Flash movie --> System freeze?
On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 11:50:02AM -0400, Carl Fink <carlf@panix.com> was heard to say:
> 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.
It sounds to me like the kernel is locking up or the hardware is
being wedged somehow (by which I mean a privileged driver is putting it
into a "bad" state). It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but this
is usually a sign of a bad driver somewhere: since you're playing a
video, likely either your video or your sound driver, but your network
driver is an outside possibility since you're using Youtube. And of
course it could be an interaction between two of those...but I would
suspect the video driver, just because those have a history of
flakiness. What video card do you have and what driver are you using?
Do you have DRI and/or Xv enabled, and can you disable them?
Do programs like mplayer / totem work? Even if you enable all the
bells and whistles? (Xv, etc) What about video games that use DRI or
other forms of acceleration? e.g., something like Neverball.
Is there any way to download the video and play it offline (to
eliminate the network variable)? I don't know flash well, but
selectively disabling video and audio would help too if it's
possible.
> A test with konqueror freezes the entire system BEFORE the first frame of
> the Flash movie displays.
I'd guess then that it's probably not the network.
> 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.
If you have the wherewithal and a spare system, you could try sending
syslog messages to another computer, but I doubt you'd get much out of
it.
HTH,
Daniel
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