10 ms·

while it's certainly not a very good example of good network citizenship to send 2 megs of NULL bytes, I think Opera shouldn't be crashing here. The fact that i

by pilif 14y ago

while it's certainly not a very good example of good network citizenship to send 2 megs of NULL bytes, I think Opera shouldn't be crashing here. The fact that it does points to a bug in the code that might potentially be exploitable beyond the simple denial of service which it already is. AFAIK Opera still runs all tabs in one shared process, so spamming one tab with 2MB of NULL will cause the whole browser (and with it all other tabs) to crash.

pygy_ 14y ago
Your point is actually acknowledged by the author of the post.
ygra 14y ago
They said so in the post: “We should fix that”. There are other browsers out there that have the same problem regarding tabs, namely Firefox. A misbehaving tab causes the whole browser to stall and you can't even kill that single tab. So Opera isn't alone in that regard.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  I thought Firefox had already isolated tab processes a couple releases ago?
  - Skalman 14y ago
    Nope. The major fix that they did was to eliminate memory leaks in extensions when the user closes a tab.
  - mh- 14y ago
    no, there is still no meaningful isolation in that regard.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    They isolated plugins (like Flash), but the project for tab process - called Electrolysis - was put on hold last year. http://lawrencemandel.com/2011/11/15/update-on-multi-process-firefox-electrolysis-development/ http://lawrencemandel.com/2011/11/15/update-on-multi-process...
Tyrant505 14y ago
aside from Chrome, do ANY other browsers handle tabs separately?
- notimetorelax 14y ago
  Even Chrome reuses processes for child tabs. As far as I remember it is done to allow JavaScript to access child window from parent.
  - bconway 14y ago
    Which, to me, is one of its biggest annoyances. Opening a slew of tabs from a Google Reader page results in very clear resource contention (one of 8 CPUs pegged at 100% and nothing moving, etc).
- kevingadd 14y ago
  Internet Explorer has some degree of tab separation. I'm not sure if it's processes or threads, but it can recover a crashed tab.
  - ygra 14y ago
    Internet Explorer uses processes but may opt to pack more than one tab into a single process to reduce system load by too many processes. Funnily enough it publicly supported isolated tabs before Chrome did (in a beta release of IE8) :-)
    - javert 14y ago
      > Internet Explorer uses processes but may opt to pack more than one tab into a single process to reduce system load by too many processes. What is it about having too many processes that causes extra system load?
      - ygra 14y ago
        It's a rendering engine and JS engine per process, I guess. Those tend to consume memory (as overhead apart from the actual stuff needed for the page), for example.
Tomis02 14y ago
Right now I have 101 tabs running, and only 6 cores in my CPU. Do you know how much context switching costs in terms of performance? Do you know what the overhead would be if I were using Chrome? So spare me, please. When general purpose computing moves to GPUs then we'll revisit the idea of "one tab per process". Until then, out of "Chrome, many tabs, performance", pick any two, drop the other.
- LockeWatts 14y ago
  That sounds like a personal problem. Your brain can't possibly handle anywhere near the amount of information 101 tabs provides at once, there's no reason to do that.
  - ygra 14y ago
    Often it's just mis-used as a “read later” list.
    - rplnt 14y ago
      I have forum threads, stackoverflow tags, manuals, ... opened. Not exactly a read later list, although I do use tabs for that as well. I use bookmarks for things I want to save for later. Usually something I've already read (at least partially) to know it's worth saving. (I know a bookmark folder/tag would be enough)
  - anonymous 14y ago
    I use tabs like bookmarks - sites that I might need now or a bit later. I GC them from time to time. Actual bookmarks are used for things like sending a link to myself at home using firefox sync or bookmarking sites I need to visit again and again, like docs sites, the internal bugtracker, etc. I don't open those from the bookmarks menu though, I just type in the awesome bar and firefox always shows bookmarks first, i.e. I use bookmarks as a manual way to bubble up search results in the awesome bar.
    - jameswyse 14y ago
chj 14y ago
If I were opera, I would quietly suck it up. This is more of their own fault. Even if someone sends you 20M of NUL, you should not crash.
robbles 14y ago
It's not very hard to crash a browser or browser tab. There's a certain point where all situations can't be reasonably handled by the browser, and it makes more sense to crash when something unexpected happens. Here's an example I posted a while back of how to crash most major browsers with a link: http://blog.doteight.com/blog/2011/08/24/this-link-will-crash-your-browser/ http://blog.doteight.com/blog/2011/08/24/this-link-will-cras... * Just checked, it only seems to work with Chrome these days. I guess the other browsers have figured that one out.

by pilif 14y ago

pygy_ 14y ago

Your point is actually acknowledged by the author of the post.

ygra 14y ago

They said so in the post: “We should fix that”. There are other browsers out there that have the same problem regarding tabs, namely Firefox. A misbehaving tab causes the whole browser to stall and you can't even kill that single tab. So Opera isn't alone in that regard.

ricardobeat 14y ago
I thought Firefox had already isolated tab processes a couple releases ago?
- Skalman 14y ago
  Nope. The major fix that they did was to eliminate memory leaks in extensions when the user closes a tab.
- mh- 14y ago
  no, there is still no meaningful isolation in that regard.
- icebraining 14y ago
  They isolated plugins (like Flash), but the project for tab process - called Electrolysis - was put on hold last year. http://lawrencemandel.com/2011/11/15/update-on-multi-process-firefox-electrolysis-development/ http://lawrencemandel.com/2011/11/15/update-on-multi-process...

Tyrant505 14y ago

aside from Chrome, do ANY other browsers handle tabs separately?

notimetorelax 14y ago
Even Chrome reuses processes for child tabs. As far as I remember it is done to allow JavaScript to access child window from parent.
- bconway 14y ago
  Which, to me, is one of its biggest annoyances. Opening a slew of tabs from a Google Reader page results in very clear resource contention (one of 8 CPUs pegged at 100% and nothing moving, etc).
kevingadd 14y ago
Internet Explorer has some degree of tab separation. I'm not sure if it's processes or threads, but it can recover a crashed tab.
- ygra 14y ago
  Internet Explorer uses processes but may opt to pack more than one tab into a single process to reduce system load by too many processes. Funnily enough it publicly supported isolated tabs before Chrome did (in a beta release of IE8) :-)
  - javert 14y ago
    > Internet Explorer uses processes but may opt to pack more than one tab into a single process to reduce system load by too many processes. What is it about having too many processes that causes extra system load?
    - ygra 14y ago
      It's a rendering engine and JS engine per process, I guess. Those tend to consume memory (as overhead apart from the actual stuff needed for the page), for example.

Tomis02 14y ago

Right now I have 101 tabs running, and only 6 cores in my CPU. Do you know how much context switching costs in terms of performance? Do you know what the overhead would be if I were using Chrome? So spare me, please. When general purpose computing moves to GPUs then we'll revisit the idea of "one tab per process". Until then, out of "Chrome, many tabs, performance", pick any two, drop the other.

LockeWatts 14y ago
That sounds like a personal problem. Your brain can't possibly handle anywhere near the amount of information 101 tabs provides at once, there's no reason to do that.
- ygra 14y ago
  Often it's just mis-used as a “read later” list.
  - rplnt 14y ago
    I have forum threads, stackoverflow tags, manuals, ... opened. Not exactly a read later list, although I do use tabs for that as well. I use bookmarks for things I want to save for later. Usually something I've already read (at least partially) to know it's worth saving. (I know a bookmark folder/tag would be enough)
- anonymous 14y ago
  I use tabs like bookmarks - sites that I might need now or a bit later. I GC them from time to time. Actual bookmarks are used for things like sending a link to myself at home using firefox sync or bookmarking sites I need to visit again and again, like docs sites, the internal bugtracker, etc. I don't open those from the bookmarks menu though, I just type in the awesome bar and firefox always shows bookmarks first, i.e. I use bookmarks as a manual way to bubble up search results in the awesome bar.
  - jameswyse 14y ago

chj 14y ago

If I were opera, I would quietly suck it up. This is more of their own fault. Even if someone sends you 20M of NUL, you should not crash.

robbles 14y ago

It's not very hard to crash a browser or browser tab. There's a certain point where all situations can't be reasonably handled by the browser, and it makes more sense to crash when something unexpected happens. Here's an example I posted a while back of how to crash most major browsers with a link: http://blog.doteight.com/blog/2011/08/24/this-link-will-crash-your-browser/ http://blog.doteight.com/blog/2011/08/24/this-link-will-cras... * Just checked, it only seems to work with Chrome these days. I guess the other browsers have figured that one out.