Hi DM,

I had Visual Studio running and had the debugger attached to the sbbsctrl process on my BBS machine so that it could hopefully point out where in the code it crashed, if it crashed. This morning I saw VS reported an exception had been thrown in mozjs185-1.0.dll. Since we don't have the debug symbols for that library, it wasn't able to show where in the code it happened.. It seemed Visual Studio was frozen, so I had to force-kill it, and Synchronet closed too. At least I know it's something with the Mozilla JS library. I'm not sure if there's a JS script I have that's doing something wrong (I've been wondering if it's one of my mods) or if there's a bug in the Mozilla JS library.

Nightfox

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Re: Exception in Mozila JS DLL
By: Nightfox to Digital Man on Mon Aug 16 2021 08:27 am

Hi DM,

I had Visual Studio running and had the debugger attached to the sbbsctrl process on my BBS machine so that it could hopefully point out where in the code it crashed, if it crashed. This morning I saw VS reported an exception had been thrown in mozjs185-1.0.dll. Since we don't have the debug symbols for that library, it wasn't able to show where in the code it happened.. It seemed Visual Studio was frozen, so I had to force-kill it, and Synchronet closed too. At least I know it's something with the Mozilla JS library. I'm not sure if there's a JS script I have that's doing something wrong (I've been wondering if it's one of my mods) or if there's a bug in the Mozilla JS library.

It shouldn't be possible for a JS script to do something so wrong as to crash SBBS. Or at least, that's the goal.

The call stack should have indicated where the JS library functions were called from within the SBBS code (and with what arguments) and that could help to determine what's at fault. Sometimes bugs in SBBS can cause a crash in the JS library, so just because its crashing in the JS library doesn't necessarily mean it is at fault.
--
digital man

Synchronet "Real Fact" #12:
Synchronet was the first BBS software to ship with built-in RIPscrip support. Norco, CA WX: 82.2øF, 52.0% humidity, 0 mph WSW wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs ---
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Re: Exception in Mozila JS DLL
By: Digital Man to Nightfox on Mon Aug 16 2021 10:25 am

out where in the code it crashed, if it crashed. This morning I saw
VS reported an exception had been thrown in mozjs185-1.0.dll. Since
we don't have the debug symbols for that library, it wasn't able to
show where in the code it happened.. It seemed Visual Studio was
frozen, so I had to force-kill it, and Synchronet closed too. At least
I know it's something with the Mozilla JS library. I'm not sure if
there's a JS script I have that's doing something wrong (I've been
wondering if it's one of my mods) or if there's a bug in the Mozilla
JS library.

It shouldn't be possible for a JS script to do something so wrong as to crash SBBS. Or at least, that's the goal.

The call stack should have indicated where the JS library functions were called from within the SBBS code (and with what arguments) and that could help to determine what's at fault. Sometimes bugs in SBBS can cause a crash in the JS library, so just because its crashing in the JS library doesn't necessarily mean it is at fault. --

I got a screenshot of Visual Studio which I probably should have shared earlier. The call stack didn't seem to show much useful information though:

https://i.imgur.com/Qb6Lewz.png

Nightfox

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þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

Re: Exception in Mozila JS DLL
By: Nightfox to Digital Man on Mon Aug 16 2021 12:37 pm

Re: Exception in Mozila JS DLL
By: Digital Man to Nightfox on Mon Aug 16 2021 10:25 am

out where in the code it crashed, if it crashed. This morning I saw
VS reported an exception had been thrown in mozjs185-1.0.dll. Since
we don't have the debug symbols for that library, it wasn't able to
show where in the code it happened.. It seemed Visual Studio was
frozen, so I had to force-kill it, and Synchronet closed too. At least
I know it's something with the Mozilla JS library. I'm not sure if
there's a JS script I have that's doing something wrong (I've been
wondering if it's one of my mods) or if there's a bug in the Mozilla
JS library.

It shouldn't be possible for a JS script to do something so wrong as to crash SBBS. Or at least, that's the goal.

The call stack should have indicated where the JS library functions were called from within the SBBS code (and with what arguments) and that could help to determine what's at fault. Sometimes bugs in SBBS can cause a crash in the JS library, so just because its crashing in the JS library doesn't necessarily mean it is at fault. --

I got a screenshot of Visual Studio which I probably should have shared earlier. The call stack didn't seem to show much useful information though:

https://i.imgur.com/Qb6Lewz.png

Yeah, looks like maybe the callstack was corrupted. If you could build your own mozjs185-1.0.dll from source, you'd have the debug symbols and could maybe get more helpful details.

I know Deuce has been working on a major update to sbbs to use a modern JS library, so worst case, you could just wait till that lands in the master branch and this problem probably likely goes away (to be replaced by new ones). :-)
--
digital man

Sling Blade quote #17:
Charles Bushman: A shovel just makes too goddamned much racket.
Norco, CA WX: 86.1øF, 53.0% humidity, 12 mph NNE wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs ---
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Re: Exception in Mozila JS DLL
By: Digital Man to Nightfox on Mon Aug 16 2021 05:12 pm

I got a screenshot of Visual Studio which I probably should have
shared earlier. The call stack didn't seem to show much useful
information though:

https://i.imgur.com/Qb6Lewz.png

Yeah, looks like maybe the callstack was corrupted. If you could build your own mozjs185-1.0.dll from source, you'd have the debug symbols and could maybe get more helpful details.

Have you ever built mozjs185-1.0.dll yourself? The source doesn't include Visual Studio project files, though it has a makefile. I tried searching online for the best way to build mozjs 1.8.5 on Windows, and found some fairly old pages mentioning things like using MozillaBuild, etc., and other people wanting to build it with Visual Studio 2019 and having difficulties.

I tried following one page's instructions using MozillaBuild, though I still ran into issues with that. MozillaBuild has a *nix-like command prompt for Windows, and when running configure, it said it couldn't find a suitable CC executable on my system and aborted.

At this point I've thought about trying to just create a new DLL project in Visual Studio, including all the source, and trying to build it; I haven't tried that yet though.

I know Deuce has been working on a major update to sbbs to use a modern JS library, so worst case, you could just wait till that lands in the master branch and this problem probably likely goes away (to be replaced by new ones). :-)

At this point I might end up waiting for that. :)

Nightfox

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þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

Re: Exception in Mozila JS DLL
By: Nightfox to Digital Man on Thu Sep 02 2021 08:34 am

Re: Exception in Mozila JS DLL
By: Digital Man to Nightfox on Mon Aug 16 2021 05:12 pm

I got a screenshot of Visual Studio which I probably should have
shared earlier. The call stack didn't seem to show much useful
information though:

https://i.imgur.com/Qb6Lewz.png

Yeah, looks like maybe the callstack was corrupted. If you could build your own mozjs185-1.0.dll from source, you'd have the debug symbols and could maybe get more helpful details.

Have you ever built mozjs185-1.0.dll yourself?

Yes, looks like I last built it back in October of 2011.

The source doesn't include
Visual Studio project files, though it has a makefile. I tried searching online for the best way to build mozjs 1.8.5 on Windows, and found some fairly old pages mentioning things like using MozillaBuild, etc.,

Yeah, that sounds familiar (MozillaBuild).

and other
people wanting to build it with Visual Studio 2019 and having difficulties.

Not surprising as anything 2019 didn't exist back in 2011. :-)

I tried following one page's instructions using MozillaBuild, though I still ran into issues with that. MozillaBuild has a *nix-like command prompt for Windows, and when running configure, it said it couldn't find a suitable CC executable on my system and aborted.

I did figure out ten years ago, and I don't recall it being *that* difficult, but I suppose I could be blocking out a painful memory too. :-)

At this point I've thought about trying to just create a new DLL project in Visual Studio, including all the source, and trying to build it; I haven't tried that yet though.

I know Deuce has been working on a major update to sbbs to use a modern JS library, so worst case, you could just wait till that lands in the master branch and this problem probably likely goes away (to be replaced by new ones). :-)

At this point I might end up waiting for that. :)

Might be for the best. That libmozjs source code is not very easy to trouble-shoot even when everything's compiled right with debug symbols and everything (e.g. on Linux).
--
digital man

Synchronet "Real Fact" #31:
The Synchronet IRC server (ircd) was written in JS by Randy Sommerfeld (Cyan). Norco, CA WX: 83.1øF, 45.0% humidity, 8 mph NW wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs
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