Bug 181781 – iOS 11.2.2 and 11.2.5b6 WebAssembly regression (error or hang)

• Component: WebAssembly
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Brooke Vibber]

At Wikipedia we use an emscripten-based decoder in Safari for some video and audio formats, and are looking at deploying a WebAssembly build for both desktop and mobile.

In iOS 11.2.2 there's a major regression in wasm which breaks things with "out of bounds memory access" errors, which I believe is rdar:://problem/36236004 and supposed to be fixed; however the latest version I can test is iOS 11.2.5beta 6, where instead of emitting an error the entire web content process hangs without emitting any console messages.

Sample using asm.js build:
* https://brionv.com/misc/ogv.js/demo/#player=js
^ works

Sample using wasm build:
* https://brionv.com/misc/ogv.js/demo/#player=wasm
^ errors out on 11.2.2, hangs on 11.2.5b6

The hang comes during initialization or early execution, making it tricky to connect with the Safari remote debugger.

Downstream issues:
* https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T179108
* https://github.com/brion/ogv.js/issues/485
* https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/issues/6042

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/36631309>

[Brooke Vibber]

11.2.5 beta 7 on iPad Pro 9.7" no longer seems to hang the web content process; I get the original out of bounds memory access error, now caught by surrounding code and logged internally as opposed to outputting direct to console:

[Log] [3395ms] i/o error: Error: Out of bounds memory access (evaluating 'Module["asm"]["_ogv_demuxer_receive_input"].apply(null,arguments)') (ogv.js, line 1005)

[Brooke Vibber]

I've identified a smaller test case which I've posted at https://github.com/brion/min-wasm-fail

Does an i32.store of a value at index 4 and reads it back -- on iOS I get 0 instead of the expected value. (At index 0, we get the expected value back.)

The actual out of bounds exception in emscripten'd code seems to be a side effect of failing to load/store correctly, so pointers get screwed up and something ends up trying to access outside of mem.

[Brooke Vibber]

Confirmed resolved in iOS 11.3 beta 1.

[JF Bastien]

*** Bug 181598 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Ashley Gullen]

For those of us who can't see rdar links, is there any news on this?

[Brooke Vibber]

(In reply to Ashley Gullen from comment #6)
> For those of us who can't see rdar links, is there any news on this?

Bug is resolved in iOS 11.3 betas; presumably the fix won't reach the public until 11.3 is complete, so for now people will need to detect the bug and either throw a user-visible error or switch to an asm.js build. I've created a small test case at https://github.com/brion/min-wasm-fail/blob/master/min-wasm-fail.js which can be used to check at runtime whether the bug is present, which I've integrated into my project. Please feel free to copy that test case.

[Ashley Gullen]

OK, thanks. Is there any indication when 11.3 is due out? We can hack in a workaround but it won't fix all the content that's already been deployed with our software. I can't believe that a key web technology is completely broken and it's being left like that!

[Brooke Vibber]

I'm sure the Apple folks can't comment on that, but what indications I have seen in public are "spring" which could mean anywhere from March to May of this year. I would love an earlier fix on the 11.2.x branch too, but I know engineering scheduling is a hard problem...

[Ashley Gullen]

Wow. Okay. Seriously, it would have been better to simply turn off WebAssembly, so existing fallbacks to asm.js are activated.

[Ashley Gullen]

WebAssembly is still enabled, and non-functional, on iOS 11.2.6.

I think there is no fundamental improvement for this issue, because I have tested it on all kinds of iOS version from 11.0.1 to 11.3 b6, only 11.2.1 can work well so far, I have submitted related issues but the issues' status all are "NEW".

Please refer to:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181723
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=183101
https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/issues/6042
https://forum.unity.com/threads/webgl-builds-crash-issue-on-ios-browsers-unity3d.518240/

I think apple/webkit should face this issue seriously and fix it ASAP, this issue should be reopened.

Thanks!