[Bug 614861] Re: Unprovoked shutdowns of Firefox

[shanen (Shannon Jacobs)]

Working on a reliable Windows computer now, so I can comment in a bit
more detail. Sad to report it, but I used to think of Ubuntu as more
reliable than Windows.

Because this shutdown bug was so annoying and unpredictable and
undiagnosable, I finally decided to upgrade the machine in question from
9.10 to 10.4 in the belief that this should cure the Firefox problem--
and even though I suspect 10.4 may have more problems with the ancient
white screen of death problem, which remains undiagnosed after several
years. Unfortunately, I must report that this bug survived the upgrade,
and Firefox may still close down without any provocation or warning. (I
haven't seen the WSOD yet, but it's usually a rare crash.)

This suggests the bug is fairly serious and deep within Firefox. I use a
number of computers on a regular basis, with Firefox as the primary
browser on all of them. The configurations and plugins are (predictably)
quite similar on all of my machines, and only one of them is showing any
suspicious behavior in Firefox. However, that behavior is on Windows and
seems to involve Adobe's software, so I doubt it is related to the
problem I am reporting here.

It is possible that this is some kind of browser-based security
vulnerability. In that case, it is quite likely that many people may be
at risk and that the Firefox and Ubuntu security people should be
looking for the problem. In that context, and even though I have
abandoned all hope for Ubuntu's future, I do have a constructive
suggestion for this case.

There should be a security-threat-state-preserving re-installation
utility. Obviously the browser is the primary application of concern,
but it should probably be generalized to cover any program that is at
risk--the BitTorrent client obviously comes to mind. This utility would
archive the current state of the application program in question, then
fully uninstall it, and finally download and reinstall a reliably clean
copy. If the new copy does run without the problems, then the user may
want to report the event as a possible security threat, explain the
basis for thinking so, and send the archived version to the support
people for investigation of the threat.

Right now I don't feel like I have sufficient evidence to conclude that
it is a security threat. I don't see anything clearly suspicious within
Firefox, but I would assume that any competent black hat hacker would be
motivated to devise some way to hide an unauthorized extension or
plugin. A regular re-installation of Firefox and some related components
using Synaptic did not fix the problem.

Overall, I just classify it as one of the increasing number of reasons
Ubuntu is getting worse and less plausible as a replacement for the
despicable Windows of Microsoft.

-- 
Unprovoked shutdowns of Firefox
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/614861
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