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NSpluginwrapper: A cross-architecture browser plugin tool (Linux.com)
Linux.com looks at
NSpluginwrapper. "NSpluginwrapper is a cross-architecture tool
designed to let Firefox users on AMD64 and PowerPC Linux use i386-only,
binary Web browser plugins -- such as those frequently provided by closed
source, commercial interests. Following a protracted delay after its
initial, binary-only release back in May, NSpluginwrapper is now available
with source code."
(Log in to post comments)
NSpluginwrapper: A cross-architecture browser plugin tool (Linux.com) Posted Jul 6, 2006 17:48 UTC (Thu) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link] This is interesting - perhaps now I can reload my EMT-64 box with 64-bit linux, and get the improved performance. After initially doing a default 64-bit install, I had backed down to the 32-bit install in order to get full browser-plugin functionality without lots of hand tweaking...
If this nice tool can take care of all that, I think we're back in business!
NSpluginwrapper: A cross-architecture browser plugin tool (Linux.com) Posted Jul 6, 2006 18:59 UTC (Thu) by tristangrimaux (guest, #26831) [Link] I am going to try it!!! I am using AMD64 and I am really thinking on drop to the 32 bit version as this kind of problem is driving me crazy...--- Donde Ser Geek No Duele
NSpluginwrapper: A cross-architecture browser plugin tool (Linux.com) Posted Jul 6, 2006 19:40 UTC (Thu) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link] Does this mean one can now also use the IA32 flash plugin from Macromedia also to hang Firefox on PowerPC and AMD64??And they say there is no Santa Claus...
NSpluginwrapper: A cross-architecture browser plugin tool (Linux.com) Posted Jul 6, 2006 20:23 UTC (Thu) by mjr (guest, #6979) [Link]
Actually, I was thinking pretty much the opposite. The wrapper most likely runs the plugin code in a different process (natively or through qemu or similar, depending on circumstances). This might enable its use even on x86 to isolate the browser from plugins' faults more effectively. 'course, I'm just handwaving here, but that was my first reaction. Gotta see about this thing.
Potential browser stabilizer Posted Jul 6, 2006 20:35 UTC (Thu) by mjr (guest, #6979) [Link] Righto, apparently it's as I thought. Except for the actual stability part, as the article author apparently had his browser hang waiting for a plugin to actually do its work. Still, the potential is there, aside from running plugins of a different architecture, for this wrapper or a similar contraption to stabilize the browsing experience somewhat, perhaps providing an interface for disconnecting and restarting stray plugins. 'course, that would require some coding of its own.
Potential browser stabilizer Posted Jul 6, 2006 21:58 UTC (Thu) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link] From the article:
"On occasion, the browser will still lock up when NSpluginwrapper is running a plugin, but this seems to happen only when the i386 plugin in question is itself frozen or waiting on a connection"
For the cases where a plugin actually crashes the browser, running in a different process would solve the problem. Unfortunately, its more common for the plugin to simply hang the browser. Without knowing much about Mozilla internals, but having some familiarity with NSPR, I'll speculate that plugins normally run in their own NSPR thread and since NSPR offers no way to non-cooperatively kill them when they misbehave (a messy deal for threads that many native libs don't even try to support), the plugin architecture itself probably doesn't try to do that and hence running in a separate process won't help unless the plugin architecture changes to support that as a common option.
All of the above is just speculation and hand waving, so take it with a big grain of salt.
Potential browser stabilizer Posted Jul 10, 2006 0:01 UTC (Mon) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link] An even better potential is to use free software that can be compiled explicitly for each architecture, that we *know* has no hidden behaviour, and can be debugged and improved on our agenda.
NSpluginwrapper: A cross-architecture browser plugin tool (Linux.com) Posted Jul 9, 2006 23:56 UTC (Sun) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link] > Does this mean one can now also use the IA32 flash plugin from Macromedia> also to hang Firefox on PowerPC and AMD64??
It's even better. Any unknown behaviour programmed by Macromedia into the plugin, crashing or not, will have the opportunity to operate in a new environment.
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