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submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by sgibson5150@slrpnk.net to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

TL;DR: Beware! Tried to send 32 tabs from Windows VM browser instance to Fedora browser instance. Entire VM crashed then browser process on Linux host crashed.

Before winter break I virtualized a Windows PC and set it up as a KVM/QEMU guest on Fedora running on the same hardware. Got IOMMU/Vfio passthrough working on guest. Loving the near-native performance. Seems really solid. Left it running continuously for several days, compiled multiple projects. Got over a week of usage with VM and had no issues.

Set up a new Firefox account for work to accommodate new workflow. Set it up to only sync certain items, but I forget which. Can't tell from account management page. Logged in on browser instances on both host and guest. I'd accumulated some tabs on guest instance that I wanted to bookmark on host instance. Tried a single tab using Send Tab to Device. Worked fine. Selected all tabs, did Send 32 Tabs to Device. Tabs appeared on host instance, appeared to be loading. Then my external monitor went black. VM had crashed. Browser instance on host stopped responding moments later, then closed itself after a brief time.

Both host and guest running 133.0.3. Host instance was installed from flatpak.

Nothing notable in Windows System log except for the usual "previous system shutdown was unexpected" EventLog and Kernel-Power events.

Edit: Was able to reproduce the VM crash with only 10 tabs. At 20 tabs, the VM crashed and the host browser process died as in the original incident.

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[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
[-] sgibson5150@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago

It is kinda crazy. It occurred to me that I should try to reproduce this on a physical Windows machine before I report to the QEMU guys. Could be a Windows flaw.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

This isn't a Windows flaw since a guest shouldn't be able to crash the host.

My guess is this is either hardware related or tied to hardware. Are you using vfio at all? (PCIe pass though)

[-] sgibson5150@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 day ago

The host browser process crashed, not the host OS.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Are you sure the VM wasn't killed due to the host Firefox eating up all the ram?

[-] drspod@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 days ago

If you can reproduce it, I would recommend filling a bug report with QEMU. If anything can crash the whole VM then there could be a security vulnerability that’s exploitable.

[-] sgibson5150@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 days ago

Good idea. Weirdly no errors in /var/log/libvirt/qemu/.log or in journalctl for libvirtd. Maybe devs can advise on other places to look.

[-] QuazarOmega@lemy.lol 4 points 2 days ago

Does it always happen over a certain number of tabs or was it just a one off?

[-] sgibson5150@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 days ago

It was reproducible. See post edit.

[-] sgibson5150@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 days ago

I've moved a dozen or so now doing them one at a time. No issues so far.

this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
18 points (100.0% liked)

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