Google Earth Plug-in 6.1.0.4738 crashes intermittently

[Tom Leach]

Hello all,

I'm experiencing an extremely frustrating issue with the GE plugin
since I upgraded to the latest version (6.1.0.4738). I've been tearing
my hair out for two days now so was hoping someone out there might
have a few clues.

I have a web application which I am testing in Google Chrome
15.0.874.54 / Win 7 which contains an instance of the GE plugin and
makes various JS API calls to it:

- Drawing polygons on the globe surface, styled with semi transparent
fills and linear rings
- Drawing line strings on the globe surface.
- Flying the camera to LookAts
- Responding to user mousedown, mousemove, mouseup and click events
associated with the GEGlobe and any of the placemarks which have been
created.

However at apparently random intervals the GE plugin just crashes (the
geplugin.exe process literally just dies) and I get the standard
"There was a problem with the Google Earth Plug-in. Please try
reloading the page. If that doesn't help, you can re-install the
Google Earth Plug-in using this link." error displayed on the page.

Sometimes this happens as I am selecting a polygon on the globe,
sometimes when I am dragging a placemark around the globe, sometime
when just clicking on a separate page element. It seems to crash
asynchronously and doesn't appear to relate to a specific GE function
call.


I have managed to consistently reproduce the issue is to do the
following:

- Load up my page in a Chrome tab (causing the GE globe to be
displayed and various polygon placemarks to be drawn).
- Take the focus away from the Chrome tab (e.g. by selecting another
running application) for at least 10 seconds.
- Go back to the Chrome tab and attempt to click on a polygon. -->
Kaboom!

I have distilled this into a simple test html file which can be used
to reproduce the issue with the steps above. I also have several crash
dumps available if anyone with access to the GE source would find them
useful.


My suspicion is that there is some garbage collection happening
somewhere in the GE Plugin somehow causing a NPE, but I have no way of
knowing.

I have confirmed this behaviour on two other machines, both with the
same version of the GE Plugin (6.1.0.4738). Previously I was using one
of the 6.0.x versions of the GE Plugin (I forget which) and that
encountered no issues.



Has anyone seen this before? Is it a known issue? Is there anyway of
reverting to an older version of the GE Plugin which is more stable?


Any help greatly appreciated.


Thanks in advance,


Tom

[Brendan Kenny]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the great test case. I'm able to reproduce the crash
consistently with it as well. I haven't tracked down the root cause
yet, but, if it helps, the NPObject deleted error crops up when the
parsed KML object is set as the outerBoundary on those polygons. You
might not be able to replace that line, but you might try some
variations on the KML string you generate (maybe replacing the entire
geometry object and not just the boundary object) to see if that lets
you work around the issue. On the other hand, you mentioned being able
to produce the crash in other circumstances, so the problem might not
be avoidable.

For anyone else running into this problem, Tom filed a bug here:

http://code.google.com/p/earth-api-samples/issues/detail?id=677

You can star that issue to get updates.

Thanks again (and sorry for any lost hair),
Brendan

[Tom Leach]

Hi Brendan,

Thanks for the response. I'll have a play with the KML to see if that
makes things any better.

Tom

[khotso majoe]

good day guys

i

 have a similar problem ,when i refresh or reload ge it crashes,how can i over come this problem

i cant use the extension attachment it fails when i download it.

please help

kind regards

khotso