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Re: opera crashing

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ro...@invalid.net

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Jan 3, 2007, 11:26:43 AM1/3/07
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Jim Sherman <roadkil...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>I'm using Opera 9.10 build 8679 under Win XP Pro. I get frequent crashes of
>Opera. It'll re-start at the place it left off but it's a pain in the ass,
>particularly when it happens in the middle of a business transaction. I've
>completely uninstalled and re-installed Opera and it still happens 2-3 times a
>day. It happened the day I re-installed the entire system (new computer) from
>Windows install up, so I doubt it's any leftover crap. Any ideas? This started
>about 9.0. I think it's worse in 9.1. No, nothing else crashes, ever.
>
>I also get an infinite referrer loop trying to logon to My Ebay. Yes, I have it
>checked. I have the latest versions of Java & Java script and both are turned
>on, as are plug ins. The only way I can get to My Ebay is to log on to the Ebay
>home page and then click My Ebay. After that, everything is fine unless it
>crashes again.
>
>I'd use FireFox, but it doesn't do some stuff I like, such as the zoom feature.
>It zooms, but clumsily. In addition, it screws up about as many web sites as
>Opera (not that I think Opera does a good job in that respect).
>
>Please don't preach to me about "use a different saw for different wood" or
>whatever. I want the damn computer to work for me, not be its' slave. If a
>browser ever comes along that is reasonably secure and works everywhere, I'm
>gonna use it - exclusively. I'm sick of having to remember that this or that
>site doesn't work with Opera or rejects Opera, etc. There's no way I'm going to
>be an evangelist for Opera, either. I think this arrogance on Opera's part
>about making your bank or whatever change to fit Opera is basically stupid. They
>(the banks) could give a damn. But first, make it reliable. Next release, try
>something new. Fix the program and don't add new bugs, or features.

Wow, from Opera crashing for you and apparently not many others, to
Opera's "arrogance" (it is pretty arrogant of Opera to ask banks to
program for something other than IE; perhaps you could ask the banks
all over the world to get together on web standards). Have you
filed a bug report, providing Inspectr and Memguard logs and specific
URLs to check? I did find one where Opera goes into 98% CPU usage
masking as FF and IE, but that's been the exception.

rm

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ro...@invalid.net

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Jan 3, 2007, 2:15:15 PM1/3/07
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Jim Sherman <roadkil...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 10:26:43 -0600, ro...@invalid.net wrote:
>
>>Wow, from Opera crashing for you and apparently not many others, to
>>Opera's "arrogance" (it is pretty arrogant of Opera to ask banks to
>>program for something other than IE; perhaps you could ask the banks
>>all over the world to get together on web standards).

>I don't give a rats ass about the banks all over the world, just the ones I use.
>None of which have the slightest interest in bending their web sites to suit a
>niche browser. That's precisely what I mean by arrogant. Opera's attitude (and
>they have a lot of attitude) is that the world should change to suit them. Not
>gonna happen. I'm not dumping my banks because the world shouldn't have to
>accomodate a browser that is only used by about 1.5% of the world. I've been
>using Opera a long time now, and while it now handles more sites more-or-less
>correctly, it also seems to have lost reliability in proportion to added
>"features".


>>Have you
>>filed a bug report, providing Inspectr and Memguard logs and specific
>>URLs to check?

>I don't know what those are, and I shouldn't have to. I never volunteered to be
>a beta tester. I just looked to see if there were responses to my post because
>it just crashed again as I was logging into Yahoo - something I've done many
>thousands of times without crashes. That's twice in 3 hours. If Opera
>generated dump files automatically, and asked to send them, I would.

It sounds like Opera and this newsgroup is being used an excuse to
vent, that you don't know and don't care to find out whether they do or
do not have anything to do with Opera. For someone claiming to have
been using and knowing Opera for so long, it's hard to reconcile your
expertise with your stated ignorance about bug reports, which are a
staple of any software (or product or system).

rm

Rijk van Geijtenbeek

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Jan 3, 2007, 7:20:30 PM1/3/07
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Op Wed, 03 Jan 2007 19:41:34 +0100 schreef Jim Sherman
<roadkil...@yahoo.com>:

> Opera's attitude (and they have a lot of attitude) is that the world
> should change to suit them. Not gonna happen.

People keep saying this, and I seriously wonder why. Where does Opera
Software has ever stated that we demand webmasters to make changes to suit
Opera, but refuse to do our own homework?

Sites can fail for various reasons, and whenever there is something Opera
can do, we try to do it.
- talk to webmasters using our Open The Web program
- cooperate with the authors of toolkits
- implement new features like XMLHttpRequest and ContentEditable
- make changes to be more like the other browsers, regardless of what the
specs say
- fix bugs in Opera

The web is large though, so there may be times when it looks like progress
is small. Sometimes webmasters simply refuse to let Opera see their work,
which makes things unnecessary hard. But Opera is constantly busy
improving its rendering engine to deal with the web as it actually exists
- which is a changing web, so we have to change as well all the time.

So what is a user to do?
- tell Opera about problems
- tell the webmasters about problems
- discuss problems in the newsgroups and forums to see if workarounds can
be found, or whether issues can be clarified so they can be fixed more
quickly by either Opera or the website.

--
Rijk / Opera Software ASA / QA etc

"We hereby honor Opera with our Han and Chewy Award for Innovation and
Harebrained Experimental Goodness"
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/software/0,72360-0.html

Richard Grevers

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Jan 4, 2007, 1:09:19 PM1/4/07
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On Thu, 04 Jan 2007 07:41:34 +1300, Jim Sherman <roadkil...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

> On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 10:26:43 -0600, ro...@invalid.net wrote:
>

>> Wow, from Opera crashing for you and apparently not many others, to
>> Opera's "arrogance" (it is pretty arrogant of Opera to ask banks to
>> program for something other than IE; perhaps you could ask the banks
>> all over the world to get together on web standards).

> I don't give a rats ass about the banks all over the world, just the
> ones I use.
> None of which have the slightest interest in bending their web sites to
> suit a

> niche browser. That's precisely what I mean by arrogant. Opera's

> attitude (and
> they have a lot of attitude) is that the world should change to suit
> them.

It should be sufficient for any browser to support standards. For bank
developers to code and test only to the not fully documented
we'll-sue-you-if-you-reverse-engineer it non-standard solutions of one
vendor is arrogant.
Yes, Opera shouldn't crash. But crashes which happen every time for
everybody are usually identified and fixed well before a version is
released. The crashes which happen only for a few people and which might
be caused by an interaction between Opera and some other software are
harder to isolate and do need the help of crash dumps.

>> Have you
>> filed a bug report, providing Inspectr and Memguard logs and specific
>> URLs to check?

> I don't know what those are, and I shouldn't have to. I never
> volunteered to be
> a beta tester. I just looked to see if there were responses to my post
> because
> it just crashed again as I was logging into Yahoo - something I've done
> many
> thousands of times without crashes. That's twice in 3 hours. If Opera
> generated dump files automatically, and asked to send them, I would.

Inspectr IIXII does half of that: It replaces the OS crashlog app (Dr
Watson), producing dump files with much more relevant information, and
tells you where to find it. I have supplied Inspectr IIXII logs to the
developers of other applications which have crashed and they have been
most grateful. But it is only 7kb of binary code - it can't do the zipping
and emailing bit by itself.

http://www.opera.com/support/search/supsearch.dml?index=432

Memguard is a more challenging beastie and should only be used once you've
figured out how to reliably reproduce a crash (because it doubles Opera's
RAM use and provides a huge performance hit. But it can pinpoint the
problem for the developers.

--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/

ian

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Jan 5, 2007, 10:12:57 AM1/5/07
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In message <piinp25mgiprcvjli...@4ax.com>, Jim Sherman
<roadkil...@yahoo.com> writes

>I'm using Opera 9.10 build 8679 under Win XP Pro. I get frequent crashes of
>Opera.

Same here. I'm going back to 8.5.

--
Ian

Tim Altman

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Jan 5, 2007, 11:25:15 AM1/5/07
to

Please file a bug report with a crash log (type "o iixii" in the
address bar to get a knowledge base article about our crash logging
tool) before doing so. Otherwise, there's no guarantee that the
problem will be fixed.

--
Tim Altman
Core QA
Opera Software
Remove NO SPAM from e-mail address to reply

ian

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Jan 5, 2007, 2:10:11 PM1/5/07
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In message <mtusp2tb4meheqsu6...@4ax.com>, Tim Altman
<do....@spam.me.invalid> writes

>
>
>Please file a bug report with a crash log (type "o iixii" in the
>address bar to get a knowledge base article about our crash logging
>tool) before doing so. Otherwise, there's no guarantee that the
>problem will be fixed.
>

Problem is, the crashes (actually, freezes) are not reproducible. Opera
freezes, says it is not responding, and I have to kill it via Task
Manager. I then restart Opera, repeat the operation that led to the
earlier freeze, but everything then works properly.

This has happened many times since I upgraded from 8.5 a few days ago,
on all types of web pages. (8.5 was solid as a rock for a long time).
I'm sorry I can't be more specific.

--
Ian

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Rijk van Geijtenbeek

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Jan 8, 2007, 2:13:41 PM1/8/07
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On Mon, 08 Jan 2007 19:57:54 +0100, Jim Sherman wrote:

> On Thu, 04 Jan 2007 01:20:30 +0100, "Rijk van Geijtenbeek"
> <ri...@opera.removethiz.com> wrote:
>
>> People keep saying this, and I seriously wonder why. Where does Opera
>> Software has ever stated that we demand webmasters to make changes to
>> suit Opera, but refuse to do our own homework?

> I've seen hundreds of posts exhorting people to badger their banks (or
> whomever) to change their web sites so that Opera will work.

With banks it is usually not the case of a bank having to change their
coding habits, as well as simply letting Opera in... When the problem are
caused by browsing sniffing in Javascript or on the server, there is very
little we can do. Even so, we gone to the trouble of making Opera
automatically downloading (weekly) a list of websites where it has to lie
about its identity.

You still can't access BankOfAmerica sites when IDing as Opera. Only
sneeking in as 'MSIE' works - and then apparently the site has no problems
at all. What can we do about this, except asking users to ask their banks
to let Opera in?

You are right that many Opera-fans take the position you describe. But I
want to stress that is *not* the position of Opera Software!

> I know damn well that Opera representatives have posted some of them.

I know Opera people sometimes have pointed out how problems have been
caused. But I can't remember Opera people saying we were not willing to
work on our end as well in fixing this. And many known problems get fixed
with major new releases (Opera 8, Opera 9), by making changes to become
more compatible with the way IE and FF do things, even if there is no spec
that tells us to do so. Can you point to a 'bad' post from 2006 from an
Opera employee? It might have happened, and I'd like to discuss it then
with them...

--

Rijk van Geijtenbeek
Opera Software ASA, Documentation & QA
Tweak: http://my.opera.com/Rijk/blog/

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Mark V

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Jan 8, 2007, 3:21:49 PM1/8/07
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In opera.general Jim Sherman wrote:

> On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 07:09:19 +1300, "Richard Grevers"
> <newsr...@dramatic.co.nz> wrote:
>
>>Inspectr IIXII does half of that: It replaces the OS crashlog
>>app (Dr Watson), producing dump files with much more relevant

[ ]

>>Memguard is a more challenging beastie and should only be used
>>once you've figured out how to reliably reproduce a crash
>>(because it doubles Opera's RAM use and provides a huge
>>performance hit. But it can pinpoint the problem for the
>>developers.

> In a mature and *reliable* product, these things should only
> need to be used by beta testers. If they popped up
> automagically, then I'd use them. I work for me, not Opera.

What world do you live in? I'd like to move there. :)

Mark V

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Jan 8, 2007, 3:27:29 PM1/8/07
to
In opera.general Jim Sherman wrote:

> On Thu, 04 Jan 2007 01:20:30 +0100, "Rijk van Geijtenbeek"
> <ri...@opera.removethiz.com> wrote:
>

>>People keep saying this, and I seriously wonder why. Where does
>>Opera Software has ever stated that we demand webmasters to
>>make changes to suit Opera, but refuse to do our own homework?

> I've seen hundreds of posts exhorting people to badger their


> banks (or whomever) to change their web sites so that Opera will

> work. I know damn well that Opera representatives have posted
> some of them.

Time for an expectedly poor analogy?
If your newspaper arrived full of grammatical, spelling and
typographic errors and stereoscopic typeset that required a
particular brand of special glasses in order to read it, what would
you do? Who would you complain to?

Food for thought. No discussion intended.

Rick Onanian

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Jan 8, 2007, 4:04:09 PM1/8/07
to
Rijk van Geijtenbeek wrote:
> is very little we can do. Even so, we gone to the trouble of making
> Opera automatically downloading (weekly) a list of websites where it
> has to lie about its identity.

Wow, really? I didn't know. Is this a built-in feature? How do I do it?

> You still can't access BankOfAmerica sites when IDing as Opera. Only

Works okay for me.

Mark V

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Jan 8, 2007, 4:18:14 PM1/8/07
to

Are you sure? Opera sets the ID in
override_downloaded.ini
for you and they default it to "4"
No "Opera" in the UA string
IIRC.

However, a setting of "2"
"Opera detectable"
works here for me as well and I'd prefer that "Opera" appear in the
BofA logs.

Martin 'Cherry' Kirsch

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Jan 8, 2007, 4:24:46 PM1/8/07
to
Rick Onanian schrieb:

>
> Rijk van Geijtenbeek wrote:
> > is very little we can do. Even so, we gone to the trouble of making
> > Opera automatically downloading (weekly) a list of websites where it
> > has to lie about its identity.
>
> Wow, really? I didn't know. Is this a built-in feature? How do I do it?

It's been in Opera for quite some time. I think this file was the origin
of "per-site"-settings. In older Versions you only could specify
site-specific useragents be editing this ini-file, then it got some more
options and a gui and became "per-site"-settings.
Have a look in your Opera-profile-directory.
You find an "override.ini", which contains your "per-site" settings.
And there is another "override_downloaded.ini", which is essentially the
same as "override.ini", but only contains settings for site-specific
useragents, for webpages know to lock Opera out.
This file is downloaded automatically every once and a while.

Martin
--

C.H.E.R.R.Y.:
Cybernetic Humanoid Engineered for Repair and Rational Yardwork

Mark V

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Jan 8, 2007, 5:36:40 PM1/8/07
to

Hmm, my other post may be in error then.
I'll need to lookup those two files. Or perhps Rijk will refresh my
failing memory? <G>

--
Opera Win32 9.10-8679; W2K
For Windows I suggest using the "classic" installer package in all
cases where feasible. </opinion>

Rijk van Geijtenbeek

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Jan 8, 2007, 7:15:38 PM1/8/07
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Op Mon, 08 Jan 2007 23:36:40 +0100 schreef Mark V <notv...@nul.invalid>:

> In opera.general Martin 'Cherry' Kirsch wrote:
>
>> Rick Onanian schrieb:
>>>
>>> Rijk van Geijtenbeek wrote:
>>> > is very little we can do. Even so, we gone to the trouble of
>>> > making Opera automatically downloading (weekly) a list of
>>> > websites where it has to lie about its identity.
>>>
>>> Wow, really? I didn't know. Is this a built-in feature? How do
>>> I do it?
>>
>> It's been in Opera for quite some time.

Introduced in Opera 8.0.

>> I think this file was the origin of "per-site"-settings. In older
>> Versions you only
>> could specify site-specific useragents be editing this ini-file,

Opera 8 didn't support anything else indeed. ua.ini was updated once a
week, together with the weekly version update check.

>> then it got some more options and a gui and became
>> "per-site"-settings. Have a look in your

That is in Opera 9.

>> Opera-profile-directory. You find an "override.ini", which
>> contains your "per-site" settings. And there is another
>> "override_downloaded.ini", which is essentially the same as
>> "override.ini", but only contains settings for site-specific
>> useragents, for webpages know to lock Opera out. This file is
>> downloaded automatically every once and a while.

The downloaded file can include everything that can be set in Site
Preferences, but it usually doesn't make sense to change any other
settings for users than the browser ID.

> Hmm, my other post may be in error then.
> I'll need to lookup those two files. Or perhps Rijk will refresh my
> failing memory? <G>
>

--

Rijk van Geijtenbeek

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Jan 9, 2007, 4:21:20 AM1/9/07
to

I don't think Jim's sentiments in this are exceptional... It is very nice
when users help us out in finding issues, and sometimes it is even the
only way. But there can never be the expectation that users have to do
this work, especially if they have to hump through some hoops. It is
perfectly valid to say 'well, this piece of software just doesn't work for
me'.

Because Jim posted in this newsgroups we can assume he's much more than
casually attached to Opera though, and using Inspector IIXII isn't that
big a hoop, so I hope he relents. It can really help finding out why Opera
goes down for him.

Tim Altman

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Jan 9, 2007, 9:52:33 PM1/9/07
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On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 19:10:11 GMT, ian <i...@nospam.net> wrote:

>In message <mtusp2tb4meheqsu6...@4ax.com>, Tim Altman
><do....@spam.me.invalid> writes
>>
>>Please file a bug report with a crash log (type "o iixii" in the
>>address bar to get a knowledge base article about our crash logging
>>tool) before doing so. Otherwise, there's no guarantee that the
>>problem will be fixed.
>
>Problem is, the crashes (actually, freezes) are not reproducible.

Our crash tool will run automatically when Opera crashes and can
sometimes collect enough information that a crash doesn't have to be
reproducible.

However, since this is a freeze, it's much more difficult for us to
debug it. I'm not sure what to recommend other than paying attention
to when it happens to see if you can find any common thread. But, as
you've gone back to 8.54, we'll just have to hope that the problem
gets fixed based on another report.

I'm sorry that you're experiencing these problems and I wish there
were more we could do.

ro...@invalid.net

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Jan 10, 2007, 12:15:17 AM1/10/07
to
Jim Sherman <roadkil...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:12:57 GMT, ian <i...@nospam.net> wrote:
>

>>Same here. I'm going back to 8.5
>

>Well looky here. Another victim. Beware of little men with copies of "The Book
>of Opera" tucked under their arms. These folks get vicious if you hint that
>their browser might possibly be slightly imperfect.

For all the time you've spent ranting here about mostly-imagined "little
men" and pounding your chest while chanting Me-Me-Me-Me, you could have
informed yourself about bug reports. For instance:
http://www.opera.com/support/bugs/ and also the other site suggested
about Inspectr. Oh, by the way, just so you don't waste the time, my
Opera software religion includes having "InIE" up on the Opera toolbar.

rm

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ro...@invalid.net

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Jan 17, 2007, 10:32:43 PM1/17/07
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Jim Sherman <roadkil...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 23:15:17 -0600, ro...@invalid.net wrote:
>
>>For instance:
>>http://www.opera.com/support/bugs/
>Step 4. Make sure the bug is reproducible, that is, that when you
>perform the same actions as the first time you encountered the bug,
>you will encounter the same bug again. Include information on the
>actions performed.
>
>It is not, as I previously stated. I can do the exact same things
>twice in a row, FROM BOOT, and yet it may or may not crash at a place
>that hasn't ever generated a crash before.
>
>There is no mention there of any automatic dump submission. If you'd
>get off your high horse and post the URL for *that* feature, I could
>perhaps use it. I don't see why I have to automatically be the one at
>fault when I'm the victim of a bug. Only an ass would claim that. If
>Opera went a bit more out of their way to point out this thing, then
>perhaps it might get used more. A hell of a lot, I suspect. Instead,
>it's hidden somewhere, if it exists.
>
>Plus, after searching for it, I see that Inspector IIXII is NOT
>automatic. All it does is produce a dump. You have to track it down
>and file a bug report, etc., etc. See step 4. This is useless.

There's an international drinking club - ah, I mean a running club -
called the Hash House Harriers that afterwards demands members drink an
extra beer for whining about the course or anything else. In
their spirit, please have a couple on me.

rm

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