Sunday, March 17, 2013

How to debug crashes in FireFox

Below are some tips about the resolving browser problems.

I investigated a problem in Mozilla FireFox, however some useful info for Google Chrome is also added here

  • Upgrade your browser and flash player to the recent version
  • Clean up the cache (select "Ctrl+Shift+Del", select "Empty all cache" and restart browser) and try to reproduce the problem again
  • Make sure that your plugins are up-to-date
  • Observe logs on the server and client side. Browser log can be accessed using F12 key
  • Run your browser in the safe mode and check if the problem disappears or not. Select "Help" -> "Restart with Add-ons disabled". Probably, the reason of your problems is in add-ons installed for your browser.
  • If your flash application hangs, try to disable flash response timeout: goto addresss bar, type in "about:config" and set the "dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs" key value to -1
  • Turn video acceleration off and check if the problem disappears or not
  • Turn the crash report sending on. In Select "Tools" -> "Options" -> "Advanced" and turn the "Submit crash reports" switch on the "System defaults" section on.
  • If you get a crash, in the browser address bar type in "about:crashes" and observe your crash report list. To do the same in Google Chrome type "chrome://crashes/" in the address bar. Then click the recent item in the list and observe your report. If you are unable to open the report from the list in the FireFox window, inspect your "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports" directory where such reports are really located.
  • Google some info from crash report, for example "Crash Reason" value is a good candidate. Most probably, Signature field will contain the name of the module where the crash happened.
  • File a bug in Mozilla bug tracker. If you’ve got a crash, insert your crash report there
  • Check your video drivers
  • Some other useful links: Flash tracer, Google Chrome debugging

Known OpenMeetings issues:

  • Bug #559 (Client works unstable). Crash of the flash plugin happened 3 times from 10 approximatelly for me when I entered a room. FFDShow update helped me. Please see Mozilla bug #850614 for more details.
  • FFDShow bug #3608586: Flash plugin crashes if there are two or more browser tabs with OpenMeetings at the same time.

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