“crash” ping

This ping is captured after the main Firefox process crashes or after a child process process crashes, whether or not the crash report is submitted to crash-stats.mozilla.org. It includes non-identifying metadata about the crash.

This ping is sent either by the `CrashManager` or by the crash reporter client. The `CrashManager` is responsible for sending crash pings for the child processes crashes, which are sent right after the crash is detected, as well as for main process crashes, which are sent after Firefox restarts successfully. The crash reporter client sends crash pings only for main process crashes whether or not the user also reports the crash. The crash reporter client will not send the crash ping if telemetry has been disabled in Firefox.

The environment block that is sent with this ping varies: if Firefox was running long enough to record the environment block before the crash, then the environment at the time of the crash will be recorded and hasCrashEnvironment will be true. If Firefox crashed before the environment was recorded, hasCrashEnvironment will be false and the recorded environment will be the environment at time of submission.

The client ID is submitted with this ping.

Structure:

{
  type: "crash",
  ... common ping data
  clientId: <UUID>,
  environment: { ... },
  payload: {
    crashDate: "YYYY-MM-DD",
    crashTime: <ISO Date>, // per-hour resolution
    version: 1,
    sessionId: <UUID>, // may be missing for crashes that happen early
                       // in startup. Added in Firefox 48 with the
                       // intention of uplifting to Firefox 46
    crashId: <UUID>, // Optional, ID of the associated crash
    minidumpSha256Hash: <hash>, // SHA256 hash of the minidump file
    processType: <type>, // Type of process that crashed, see below for a list of types
    stackTraces: { ... }, // Optional, see below
    metadata: { // Annotations saved while Firefox was running. See nsExceptionHandler.cpp for more information
      ProductID: "{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}",
      ProductName: "Firefox",
      ReleaseChannel: <channel>,
      Version: <version number>,
      BuildID: "YYYYMMDDHHMMSS",
      AsyncShutdownTimeout: <json>, // Optional, present when a shutdown blocker failed to respond within a reasonable amount of time
      AvailablePageFile: <size>, // Windows-only, available paging file
      AvailablePhysicalMemory: <size>, // Windows-only, available physical memory
      AvailableVirtualMemory: <size>, // Windows-only, available virtual memory
      BlockedDllList: <list>, // Windows-only, see WindowsDllBlocklist.cpp for details
      BlocklistInitFailed: 1, // Windows-only, present only if the DLL blocklist initialization failed
      CrashTime: <time>, // Seconds since the Epoch
      ContainsMemoryReport: 1, // Optional
      EventLoopNestingLevel: <levels>, // Optional, present only if >0
      ipc_channel_error: <error string>, // Optional, contains the string processing error reason for an ipc-based content crash
      IsGarbageCollecting: 1, // Optional, present only if set to 1
      MozCrashReason: <reason>, // Optional, contains the string passed to MOZ_CRASH()
      OOMAllocationSize: <size>, // Size of the allocation that caused an OOM
      RemoteType: <type>, // Optional, type of content process, see below for a list of types
      SecondsSinceLastCrash: <duration>, // Seconds elapsed since the last crash occurred
      ShutdownProgress: <phase>, // Optional, contains the shutdown phase in which the crash occurred
      SystemMemoryUsePercentage: <percentage>, // Windows-only, percent of memory in use
      TelemetrySessionId: <id>, // Active telemetry session ID when the crash was recorded
      TextureUsage: <usage>, // Optional, usage of texture memory in bytes
      TotalPageFile: <size>, // Windows-only, paging file in use
      TotalPhysicalMemory: <size>, // Windows-only, physical memory in use
      TotalVirtualMemory: <size>, // Windows-only, virtual memory in use
      UptimeTS: <duration>, // Seconds since Firefox was started
      User32BeforeBlocklist: 1, // Windows-only, present only if user32.dll was loaded before the DLL blocklist has been initialized
    },
    hasCrashEnvironment: bool
  }
}

Note

For “crash” pings generated by the crashreporter we are deliberately truncating the creationDate to hours. See bug 1345108 for context.

Process Types

The processType field contains the type of process that crashed. There are currently multiple process types defined in nsICrashService but crash pings are sent only for the ones below:

Type Description
main Main process, also known as the browser process
content Content process
gpu GPU process

Remote Process Types

The optional remoteType field contains the type of the content process that crashed. As such it is present only if processType contains the content value. The following content process types are currently defined:

Type Description
web The content process was running code from a web page
file The content process was running code from a local file
extension The content process was running code from an extension

Stack Traces

The crash ping may contain a stackTraces field which has been populated with stack traces for all threads in the crashed process. The format of this field is similar to the one used by Socorro for representing a crash. The main differences are that redundant fields are not stored and that the module a frame belongs to is referenced by index in the module array rather than by its file name.

Note that this field does not contain data from the application; only bare stack traces and module lists are stored.

{
  status: <string>, // Status of the analysis, "OK" or an error message
  crash_info: { // Basic crash information
    type: <string>, // Type of crash, SIGSEGV, assertion, etc...
    address: <addr>, // Crash address crash, hex format, see the notes below
    crashing_thread: <index> // Index in the thread array below
  },
  main_module: <index>, // Index of Firefox' executable in the module list
  modules: [{
    base_addr: <addr>, // Base address of the module, hex format
    end_addr: <addr>, // End address of the module, hex format
    code_id: <string>, // Unique ID of this module, see the notes below
    debug_file: <string>, // Name of the file holding the debug information
    debug_id: <string>, // ID or hash of the debug information file
    filename: <string>, // File name
    version: <string>, // Library/executable version
  },
  ... // List of modules ordered by base memory address
  ],
  threads: [{ // Stack traces for every thread
    frames: [{
      module_index: <index>, // Index of the module this frame belongs to
      ip: <ip>, // Program counter, hex format
      trust: <string> // Trust of this frame, see the notes below
    },
    ... // List of frames, the first frame is the topmost
    ]
  }]
}

Notes

Memory addresses and instruction pointers are always stored as strings in hexadecimal format (e.g. “0x4000”). They can be made of up to 16 characters for 64-bit addresses.

The crash type is both OS and CPU dependent and can be either a descriptive string (e.g. SIGSEGV, EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION) or a raw numeric value. The crash address meaning depends on the type of crash. In a segmentation fault the crash address will be the memory address whose access caused the fault; in a crash triggered by an illegal instruction exception the address will be the instruction pointer where the invalid instruction resides. See breakpad’s relevant code for further information.

Since it’s not always possible to establish with certainty the address of the previous frame while walking the stack, every frame has a trust value that represents how it was found and thus how certain we are that it’s a real frame. The trust levels are (from least trusted to most trusted):

Trust Description
context Given as instruction pointer in a context
prewalked Explicitly provided by some external stack walker
cfi Derived from call frame info
frame_pointer Derived from frame pointer
cfi_scan Found while scanning stack using call frame info
scan Scanned the stack, found this
none Unknown, this is most likely not a valid frame

The code_id field holds a unique ID used to distinguish between different versions and builds of the same module. See breakpad’s description for further information. This field is populated only on Windows.

Version History