SeaMonkey/2.1b1

[maniac42]

The Ubuntu supplied version of SeaMonkey is known to be crashy. Something to do with buffer overflows in the hunspell libraries. The linux SeaMonkey version from our official download page doesn't have that crash bug.

Phil

I tried installing the Ubuntu [Canonical] supplied version of SeaMonkey once on an Ubuntu system. It hosed the system so badly that I scrubbed the disk drive and started the whole Linux installation again. Fortunately, I had invested less than 24 hours into that system. Canonical had strangely broken the SeaMonkey installation into separate components - Browser, E-mail, Composer, etc. - and when I tried to uninstall SeaMonkey, it refused, because removal of any one component depended on the other components. The Ubuntuzilla project, maintained by Daniel Folkinshteyn ("nanotube"), installs and removes SeaMonkey on Ubuntu/Debian systems as an integrated suite, in exactly the same way that it's done on Windows systems, so installation, removal and upgrades work seamlessly.

As far as I know, Folkinshteyn gets the SeaMonkey package from the official download page and merely converts it into a .deb package so that it can be installed with the Debian Advanced Packaging Utility (APT), so there shouldn't be any difference whatsoever in the executables and support files. The difference is that the Ubuntuzilla project has the new versions posted within a week, or so, after the official release, whereas Canonical takes six months to a year to put the new version in the Ubuntu repositories.

[Philip Chee]

As far as I know, Folkinshteyn gets the SeaMonkey package from the official download page and merely converts it into a .deb package so that it can be installed with the Debian Advanced Packaging Utility (APT), so there shouldn't be any difference whatsoever in the executables and support files. The difference is that the Ubuntuzilla project has the new versions posted within a week, or so, after the official release, whereas Canonical takes six months to a year to put the new version in the Ubuntu repositories.

O.I.C.

OK then. Go to about:crashes there should be a list of clickable URLs to the crash reports you've submitted. Click on the most recent three or four to open those reports. Come back here and paste those URLs into this thread.

Phil

[Stefan2]

The Ubuntu supplied version of SeaMonkey is known to be crashy. Something to do with buffer overflows in the hunspell libraries.

Just to get some things clear: Ubuntu provides a buggy version of SeaMonkey 2.0.13. Version 2.0.11 didn't have a broken spellchecker (for me at least). Ubuntu decided to skip 2.0.12 altogether and doesn't provide anything later than 2.0.13, so all spellchecker errors are likely to occur only for 2.0.13 users.

[maniac42]

I've been keeping mental notes on the behavior of SeaMonkey 2.x crashes and hangs on Linux for several months now. Here's some information to consider:

• If it's started just after midnight, it can run for days without a futex_wait_queue_me hang or crashing.
• If it happens to crash after about 9:47 a.m. system time, it will probably keep crashing for the next 14 hours until midnight. (It just crashed as I was typing this at 9:48 a.m., even though the browser had run without a crash for over 12 hours.)
• It seems to get worse toward the end of the calendar month.
• When SeaMonkey gets "crashy", Firefox 3.x starts behaving the same way on the same system; it is completely time-of-day dependent. (Other processes on the machine have not been added or removed; the only variable is time-of-day.)
• Rebooting the system doesn't make any difference.
• Clearing the browser cache doesn't make any difference.
• Starting up in Safe Mode (all extensions disabled) doesn't make any difference.
• Starting up in a new, clean profile doesn't make any difference.
• Trying to fool the browser by forcing the system clock to a minute after midnight doesn't work, possibly since the RTC clock in Linux systems periodically gets re-synchronized to a time server.
• It often crashes while restarting from a previous crash, even before the UI window is painted in Gnome.
• It sometimes crashes silently, before the UI window is painted, necessitating a "kill" with System Monitor.
• SeaMonkey shows extremely high CPU usage upon start-up -- 45% to 60% -- for several minutes. If one tries to use the browser during this time, crashing or hanging is highly likely. One must wait and monitor its performance with System Monitor until CPU usage drops to single-digit range or zero and poll_schedule_timeout appears in the Waiting Channel.
• The 2.3 release of SeaMonkey reduced, but did not eliminate the futex_wait_queue_me hang problem.
• Since the 2.3 release of SeaMonkey, I've been seeing script time-out problems for the first time under Linux, a problem that's been there for a long time in the 1.x release series on Windows. Strangely, the time-out warning boxes often pop up on pages that are static and fully rendered, indicating that SeaMonkey is running scripts internally that have nothing to do with Web page rendering or interactivity.
• SeaMonkey 2.3 was supposed to "contain" malfunctioning plug-ins in their respective tabs or windows to prevent the entire browser from crashing. It doesn't, although this may be more a function of the nastiness of the plug-in, e.g. Adobe Flash, than a flaw in SeaMonkey.
• Although plug-ins such as Adobe Flash have been blamed for browser crashes since Netscape/Mozilla days, the evidence is that the problem in the SeaMonkey 2.x series is in the browser, not the plug-in.

In my opinion, the evidence points to a buffer or array overflow, probably caused by un-initialized variables and/or improper computations involving time, e.g. using a WORD variable where a DWORD variable should have been used. This is basic stuff. Most good programmers learn to avoid these problems and, should they occur, track them down quickly and fix them.

I'm also of the opinion that Firefox/SeaMonkey developers are night-owls, only testing their creations between midnight and 7 a.m. If this weren't so, they'd have fixed these problems ages ago!

[Andy Boze]

I'm more familiar with troubleshooting Windows problems than Linux. I'm always surprised by the number of software problems we resolve by defragging the hard drive and running a disk check. Don't know whether doing those could help in Linux. Perhaps another thing to try would be a memory test. On Ubuntu, one of my boot options is to run Memtest86.

[therube]

If it only happens during certain hours or certain times of the month, then it must be PMS .

[therube]

How much memory on your system?
How much memory is SeaMonkey using during these times?
Your Session Restore, how many windows/tabs are being restored?

[maniac42]

How much memory on your system?

4 GB, which is considered more than adequate for Ubuntu, and certainly should be oodles more than the browser needs. Besides, Linux provides virtual memory on disk, just like Windows does.

How much memory is SeaMonkey using during these times?

It varies. At the moment, with 3 tabs open it shows about 68-70 MB.

Your Session Restore, how many windows/tabs are being restored?

Anywhere from one window/no tabs to two windows and a dozen tabs. I don't see any difference. It's as likely to crash with one window and no tabs as it is with a full assortment.

(SeaMonkey crashed no less than 12 times over the space of 5 minutes while I was posting this reply. I had left Firefox running a few hours ago and I noticed that it was also hung with futex_wait_queue_me in the Waiting Channel. The Mozilla team made a big, big mistake to migrate SeaMonkey to the Firefox code base. What a POS.)

[therube]

OK, then that's nothing.
I was looking at things like 1 GB+ or ram usage from 30 or so windows & 100's of tabs.

You're running SeaMonkey from SeaMonkey & not from some Linux distro?

Other then SeaMonkey/FF, any other browsers? Do they crash too?

[Andy Boze]

Perhaps take a look at http://fingergeek.blogspot.com/2009/05/cure-of-notorious-ubuntu-futexwait-bug.html. Sounds like a bug in Ubuntu.

[tqft]

It really sounds like a distro induced problem. been running ubuntu for a long time but building my own seamonkey and it is stable. System monitor is currently showing 1.2Gb - 4 windows, 20 or so tabs each. Even behaves when I fire Chatzilla up as well. Thunderbird is also running (791Mb), and a distributed computing client to suck up any spare cycles. Not crashing. Still responsive until i really stress the machine. 3Gb of ram, 10 Gb of swap.
I build from tip of tree, so not even a stable base to build from and still good.

[vazhavandan]

I have been using seamonkey on various versions of GNOME like 2.30,2.32,3.0.x etc,But the distro is openSUSE.Never had any problems with seamonkey:-)

On a side note :- how do i get alpha versions/beta versions of seamonkey onto my openSUSE/GNOME.Is there is a packager for this ?
If so ,please send me a link.All seem to be using SeaMonkey/2.6a1.

[Andy Boze]

I use the nightly trunk versions from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/seamonkey/nightly/latest-comm-central-trunk/. Just download the appropriate tar.bz2 file and unpack the files to the desired location. Afterwards you can run the updater instead of downloading again. Works great on Ubuntu for me, though you have to understand that it IS a development version and it could really make a mess. Keep your profile backed up just in case, and don't share a profile between different versions. I use the nightlies on both Ubuntu and Win 7 and find it stable enough for daily use.

[vazhavandan]

@Andy Boze-This is more like downloading a binary and using it right?You are not having a ".deb" or ".rpm" from where we can get this?

[Andy Boze]

I'm not aware of any places to get Linux installers for SM alphas/betas. You might try looking at the following couple of pages to see if you can find anything.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ubuntuzilla/index.php?title=Main_Page
https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ppa