#115 Safari Preview unstable with WebKit

[Damien Stewart]

I've found with evey build of WebKit, inclusing current 603 build, that the system can be very unstable. For example, the QuickLook daemon crashes at least every minute. This is while using WebKit. I don't know why it is QuickLooking my files when I'm not but it happens constantly in the background.

Not as common, but it has happened, is the Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher has also been crashing.

I don't know if relinking fixes it. But will do that next. I might need to delete a QuickLook plist or something.

[Damien Stewart]

Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher

[Tobias Netzel]

Thanks for the crash report - this one is interesting but the cause isn't obvious (it might be related to Growl though, see here).
It should not happen when using a relinked Safari because "Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher" will not be using Leopard WebKit in that case - but as the system default WebKit renders modern web pages more or less badly the previews won't look correctly.

[Tobias Netzel]

This is indeed because of Growl - it can't deal with being invoked by certain background tools like "Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher".
I found a workaround and will either release it in a last 603 version or in the upcoming 604 series.
A relinked Safari will not cause that problem - for now I'd recommend to either disable preview rendering using the supplied script or using a relinked Safari application.

[Damien Stewart]

I disabled the preview but the crash still came up. So will stick to a relink. :-)

[Tobias Netzel]

The new 604 release should fix the "Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher" crashes.

[Tobias Netzel]

The QuickLook daemon crashes shouldn't be related to Leopard WebKit at all; it's simply QuickTime crashing when trying to scan certain media files it wasn't prepared for. There's no trace of WebKit or JavaScriptCore anywhere in the crash report (it wasn't even loaded when the crash occurred).
Would be nice though if you could find some sample files that cause these crashes - maybe we can find a workaround for these nasty crashes. I guess you should try removing any media files (video and audio) from the desktop and the dock (maybe also folders or folder links placed there). Adding back the files/folders/links until the crash occurs should lead you to the affected files.
In case you don't care not being able to play audio files using quicklook you could simply move "Audio.qlgenerator" out of "/System/Library/Frameworks/QuickLook.framework/Resources/Generators/". It's this qlgenerator as the crash report contains the line:
6 com.apple.qlgenerator.audio 0x0002e830 GenerateThumbnailForURL + 584
A line containing "com.apple.qlgenerator.movie" would indicate that "Movie.qlgenerator" causes the crash.

[Damien Stewart]

I haven't yet found what is causing the crashes. I suspect it's related to the QT7.7 update. Since the system became unstable since installing it. Be good if there is a newer version. Any video and audio files I have I tend to quick view and nothing has shown up directly. Except a corrupted FLAC recently when it tried to get the size but it from a bad unarchiving.

[Damien Stewart]

Thanks for your research in this. I'll set about putting those fixes in place. I've found the current build quite stable. The only issue I am having is loosing HD space. It tends to be fine for a while. Then suddenly starts eating up space. By just scrolling text in websites already loaded it can suddenly chew through 1GB of space wihin ten minutes.

Another soltuion would be to remove Growl.

If the source is available, for same release, perhaps it could be recompiled to fix it.

[Tobias Netzel]

Please report whether this is still an issue for you with the 604 release!

[Damien Stewart]

Testing 604 now. So far so good. :-)

[Tobias Netzel]

Thanks for reporting!