Bug 370194

Summary:	Random plasmoids can make plasmashell to crash
Product:	[Plasma] plasmashell	Reporter:	Maximiliano Curia <maxy>
Component:	general	Assignee:	David Edmundson <kde>
Status:	RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Severity:	crash	CC:	bhush94, plasma-bugs
Priority:	NOR
Version:	5.8.0
Target Milestone:	1.0
Platform:	Debian unstable
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:

Description Maximiliano Curia 2016-10-06 12:37:23 UTC

plasmashell currently provides most of what the users consider their desktop, a plasmashell crash leaves the user with blank screen and little or no way to recover it. Sadly, crashing plasmashell is easier than it should, for example:

https://bugs.debian.org/839710


Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
plasmashell should be resilient to crashing plasmoids.

Comment 1 David Edmundson 2016-10-07 10:30:21 UTC

If you have a specific crash we'll fix it.

A bug report saying an application should not crash is not a useful report.

Comment 2 Maximiliano Curia 2016-10-07 11:43:02 UTC

(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #1)
> If you have a specific crash we'll fix it.

> A bug report saying an application should not crash is not a useful report.

There is specific crash in the Debian bug report:
 - Add the comic plasmoid
 - Install the phdcomics in the comic plasmoid
 - Go back in the comic history till you hit
    http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=188

This causes a segfault in plasmashell, probably caused in plasma_applet_comic.so

The problem here is that while it might be straight forward to fix the plasma_applet to avoid the crash, the underlying issue is that the plasma_applet_comic is running in the plasmashell process, and as such it's impossible to avoid a crashing applet to crash plasmashell.

I don't expect this issue to be solved easily, maybe only considered for the design of plasma 6. But I wasn't expect the issue to be closed as invalid, when it's clearly reproducible.

Comment 3 Maximiliano Curia 2016-10-07 11:47:35 UTC

(In reply to Maximiliano Curia from comment #2)
>  - Go back in the comic history till you hit
>     http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=188

Typo, it's actually: http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1889