Extension occasionally stops working

[Tomatoide]

Windows 10 1803
Firefox 66 64bit

Every several days the extension stops working completely (no images are sent to compression proxy), and doesn't work again until it gets removed and then reinstalled.. it is not working right now.. thanks

[Tomatoide]

90,882 - Images processed
1.83 GB (76%) - Data saved
Extreme compression
B&W conversion disabled
proxy hosted on heroku

[changhaitravis]

Yeah, I just noticed this, wasn't happening before, probably caused by the patch I submitted.

Does some sort of background.js crash? It could just have trouble re-attaching itself after firefox restarts or the plugin is toggled off and on again. I didn't modify that part of the code too much though...

Also did this ever happen before this last sunday evening?

[Tomatoide]

Yes actually this issue is quite old, way before the recent update, I even found a similar complaint on the extension's page on chrome webstore:

[changhaitravis]

If the listener disappeared and are not getting reattached, we may have to rewrite the code so that the on/off switch in the UI adds and removes the listeners and it's not contingent on the background.js/background.bundle.js getting run the first time. At the very least it'll make it so you can toggle off and on again to regain functionality next time this bug is encountered instead of having to reinstall...

Of course this is assuming that the script isn't completely blowing up.

I'll try and code a version that does that instead over the weekend and try it out for a week. If it works well I may file a pull request.

I would expect the background script to run and add the listeners each time you restart firefox or your phone though...

[changhaitravis]

So I have a version where the listeners are added/removed based on whether bandwidth-hero is enabled. https://github.com/changhaitravis/bandwidth-hero/releases/tag/2.1.2

I also turned off the messaging and replaced it with storage.onChanged()

I'm currently testing it, but I'm not a very heavy user. If I can use it for a month (or beat your record of ~90,000 images, whichever comes first) without having to uninstall and reinstall due to it stop working, I'll file a pull request.

[Tomatoide]

It happened again..
I noticed that it seems to happen often after a browser update, after I restart the browser to apply the update, the extension stops sending images to compression proxy. I might give your modified version a try.

[changhaitravis]

My modified version, for whatever reason, survived the last upgrade and add-on certificate expiration thing (currently at 58,952 images). I'd rather that ayastreb pull the code, but the chrome version build on my code's currently untested, so that would need to happen first.

My version's built under a different Add On key so you will want to uninstall the official version otherwise they will stack.

[ayastreb]

Published changes from @changhaitravis in v2.1.1, pls update and check if this still happens.
thanks!

[changhaitravis]

I'll keep an eye out for the next browser update. At the very least should be able to turn off and back on again to detach and reattach the onrequest listener, but hopefully it'll just keep working through to the next version somehow.

[Tomatoide]

Been using the extension past several weeks on firefox android, and this issue has become more and more common, like every other day suddenly no images appear, then I need to go to about:addons, disable the extension and enable it again and after that all images start appearing again and websites work as they should.

[changhaitravis]

This hasn't happened to me, and it makes me think it might be a separate issue, and I primarily use it on Firefox for android.

Do the images have a placeholder, and have the broken file icon in it? This'd mean that it attempted to get the image (likely from your proxy) but something went wrong in its attempt, and it would be good to open up the developer console to see what's happening. It's f12 + network tab on desktop, but on ff for android you'll need to do it over USB. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Remote_Debugging/Debugging_Firefox_for_Android_with_WebIDE

This is going to be up to you, since I can't reproduce it.

Make sure your proxy URL doesn't have any leading or trailing white-space. Also the gawker family of sites' (gizmodo,kotaku,io9) images don't load while using a non-HTTPS proxy, maybe due to their use of imageset. You might also want to try uninstalling and reinstalling, maybe also try using a different proxy that doesn't need to sleep.

[Tomatoide]

"Do the images have a placeholder, and have the broken file icon in it?"

No, and pages seem to be stuck in a loading status until I disable and re-enable the extension and instantly images start to appear and the page finishes loading..

Would it be an issue with memory? Maybe the extension gets unloaded? The device I'm using tends to get short of free ram quite often

[changhaitravis]

It's unlikely to be a memory issue, I've used this with an android phone with 1.5GB RAM before, although I kept memory usage very streamlined.

If it does have to do with the state of firefox, then, instead of disabling and enabling, then close firefox from the task manager or stop the firefox process and relaunch, or reboot ur phone. If that works then maybe it's memory or something with firefox itself.

[basilky]

This issue also affects me. I just added *.google.com* to the disabled sites. After that bandwidth hero is not working on any pages, even after removing that entry from disabled sites.

[changhaitravis]

@basilky hi, thanks for reporting this.

First of all "*" asterisks are not supported, as your hosts/disabled sites are passed into new RegExp() directly. I'll try to sanitize those symbols in upcoming code.

Secondly, there's a bug where, if you have any lines that are "" (empty string), that will match everything and block all the sites. So the immediately solution for you would to be to put in "google.com" in the first and only line, and that should actually satisfy your use case.

[Tomatoide]

This issue is getting worse:
Now when the mysterious bug happens and the extension stops working, images are still appearing (although uncompressed) unlike old behavior where images stop loading which gives you a hint for the problem unlike being totally unaware and consuming your limited bandwidth.
Also we are basically back to square one; disable/enable button from within the extension ui does nothing and disabling/reenabling the extension from about:addons also does nothing, you have to uninstall and reinstall to get it back to work again.