Object (flash) blocking not reliable

[MMlosh]

Since 1.9.9.81 (lastest relase) I am having troubles with flash objects being launched sometimes on not-displayed tabs.
Some flash games are launched without my consent (usually not the first 4)
Additionally firefox pops up a tool-bar-alike message about blocked redirect.

Steps how to possibly reproduce
go here: http://www.kongregate.com/games?sort=newest
middle-click open bigger ammount (>9 ?) of games (try launching some from 2nd page too - not a trigger, but still please do that)

configuration:
Scripts allowed for "kongregate.com" permanently, rest disallowed.
Embeddings restrictions applied to whitelisted sites too.

Now I have upgraded to latest dev build (1.9.9.85), "blocked redirect" message seems to be gone, waiting for bug to trigger (or not)
This message is more or less only a reminder for me to report it.

[Giorgio Maone]

Can't reproduce here.
Did you manage to reproduce on 1.9.9.85?
Can you try to reproduce on 1.9.9.81 with no extension installed except NoScript?

[MMlosh]

Confirming with that development build.
Panels have to be opened quickly (and probably on slower computer) in a way, that they are all loading in the same time.
Ratio pass:fail depends probably on the paralelism reached. Today 1st,3rd,6th and 7th panel from 7 launched a flash game.

note: pipelining is enabled in firefox (it is said to reduce page loading times on servers that are compatible)

[MMlosh]

wow.. I launched different game in tab that failed to block... and it ran without questions too...
something is wrong with the tab

[Giorgio Maone]

Again, did you manage to reproduce on a clean profile, with NoScript as the only installed extension?

[MMlosh]

I apologize for ignoring your message. You were too quick and I failed to notice it.

I succesfully reproduced with clean firefox & current release version (81).

I tried twice
1st:
realy clean profile, launched from profile manager -> without GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1 -> broken flash
loaded current noscript config, played some games on kongregate from "newest" section.

2nd:
I made some modifications to make life easier, nothing important I guess:
starting firefox like "GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1 firefox" to make flash usable
General settings: "always ask to where to save downloaded files", homepage (ipv6.google.com)
Privacy: "ask me every time" for cookies, denied cookies for everything that asked (permanently)
Security: disabled "Block reported attack sites" and "Block reported web forgeries" and "remember passwords for sites"

Opened quite a lot games by middle button (probably including 1-2 of those I played on 1st run)
results: all but those opened&not allowed last time were launched without my consent.

note that my computer was really overloaded and nearly unresponsive (two CPUs clocked under 700MHz)

[Giorgio Maone]

Looks like something Lucid-specific...
Are you using the plugin from Adobe or something else?
What about latest development build?

[MMlosh]

plugin that is installed by package flashplugin-installer (preferred *buntu way),
Happens with lastest dev build too.

note: it I opened the tabs (>10), it did "nothing with graphics" for more than a minute, then it repainted once when everything was loaded.
I checked for ubuntu firefox plugin "ubufox", it's not installed

[MMlosh]

One final thought (before I try to find "mail me replies" feature)
That computer was really overloaded and firefox was completely unresponsive for more than a minute.
Affected TABs remain broken even when clicking another link.
Sometimes, when unblocking a flash object on one page, some objects in pages in other TABs are loaded as well.
hint?: is there some universal ID assigned to those?

btw: Happens with recent "stable" version too..

[Giorgio Maone]

One final thought (before I try to find "mail me replies" feature)
That computer was really overloaded and firefox was completely unresponsive for more than a minute.
Affected TABs remain broken even when clicking another link.
Sometimes, when unblocking a flash object on one page, some objects in pages in other TABs are loaded as well.
hint?: is there some universal ID assigned to those?

btw: Happens with recent "stable" version too..

Have you got any idea of why your browser (or system) was so unresponsive?
Maybe you were really low on memory?
The only (scary) idea I can think of is some out-of-memory error making either Firefox or the plugin to fast-skip content policy checks...
Never seen anything like that before, though.

[MMlosh]

It shouldn't be the memory issue.
The computer has maximum (1GB) of memory installed.
It might be related to unusual conditions on that two Pentium III processors (really, not cores!) clocked at (weak) 850Mhz.

my opinion: that computer is simply slow for such things.. flash usually fails to provide video framerate over 20FPS with 2+ objects launched (non-flash video players have never issues, though), fullscreen mode is a lost case for flash.
There is no direct rendering available, graphics is driven by standard VESA module to reach 100% compatibility.

I'll try on slightly faster, single core computer standing next to it tomorrow (equal on the software side)
There is one more unusual thing in my setup: I'm using only one IPv6-only DNS server.

[MMlosh]

I am not sure.. Perhaps the objects launch only if you unblock others in other tabs or something (would be an ID issue)
But it's only a guess.. I haven't tried properly (yet).. But I intend to

[Alan Baxter]

Since 1.9.9.81 (lastest relase) I am having troubles with flash objects being launched sometimes on not-displayed tabs.
Some flash games are launched without my consent (usually not the first 4)
Additionally firefox pops up a tool-bar-alike message about blocked redirect.

Steps how to possibly reproduce
go here: http://www.kongregate.com/games?sort=newest
middle-click open bigger ammount (>9 ?) of games (try launching some from 2nd page too - not a trigger, but still please do that)

configuration:
Scripts allowed for "kongregate.com" permanently, rest disallowed.
Embeddings restrictions applied to whitelisted sites too.

I'm unable to reproduce this issue using:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.4) Gecko/20100611 Firefox/3.6.4
NoScript 1.9.9.90 with the same settings as above
Flash 10.1.53.64
Dual 600 MHz PIII CPU
1GB RAM
ATI Rage 128 video card

I tried to load ten games by middle-clicking them in succession quickly. I was quick enough that all ten were loading simultaneously.
Six of them loaded with Flash blocked by NoScript, as expected.
Twenty minutes later the other four are still "Transferring data from" http://www.kongregate.com or cdn2.kongregate.com or cdn3.kongregate.com
Those four haven't displayed anything in their respective tabs yet.
Closed the six that had loaded and stopped each of the other four. Reloaded each of the other four with F5, but waited for each of the them to load before moving on to the next one. Each of them loaded with Flash blocked, as expected.
Max RAM used by Firefox was about 140MB with over 400MB of physical memory still available, i.e. insufficient RAM was not a problem.

I don't know what to conclude except that trying to start ten games simultaneously on a very slow computer doesn't work. That's expected too.
Flash works fine for me as long as I try to view only one video at a time.

note: pipelining is enabled in firefox (it is said to reduce page loading times on servers that are compatible)

Turn pipelining off. It can cause slow performance and unexpected results on some servers.
It's off by default for a good reason.

[linuser]

It shouldn't be the memory issue.
The computer has maximum (1GB) of memory installed.

I don't know if this could help , anyway I had quite similar issues too after upgrading to Lucid Lynx on an old P-m 1400MHz system with 512MB.

With Mindfiled I have never had any low memory problem while I was on Hardy , even while having lots of tab opened ( the most of them has indeed scripts execution disabled by Noscript anyway ) : simply I've reserved a relatively big swap partition when I've installed hardy , to be filled when using programs that require more memory than the physical memory installed on my system.

I started to have problems after upgrading to Lucid : even if the swap partition wasn't modified , it seemed Mindfiled wasn't able to properly fill it over a certain value : it was like the browser seemed to enter in a free-alloc memory loop over the same memory area.

I definitely solved my problem after disabling the "Memory Resource Controller Swap Extension" kernel option, which is a sub-feature of the option "Memory Resource Controller for Control Cgroups" and then recompiling the kernel.

They are basically kernel based resource controllers in opposition to the PAM based resource controllers ( which configuration file is /etc/security/limits.conf )



I've supposed this controller beeing locked swap memory to a predefined value even if the program wasn't running in a cgroup environment and honestly I didn't investigate the thing anymore , since I've solved by disabling that option.

[MMlosh]

Good point.. it might be related to apparmor(reports that firefox profile is not used during bootup, though) or something like this.

Do you think that disabling swap partition might change anything?