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 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
