I've been unable to replicate this, are you certain libflashplayer is the culprit?  Do you have a backtrace or an strace of the problem?

I am certain: removing libflashplayer.so from /usr/lib/browser-plugins cures the problem.

strace -o e.strace epiphany --sync www.novell.com
ALSA lib confmisc.c:672:(snd_func_card_driver) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:3492:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3492:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1072:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3492:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such device
ALSA lib conf.c:3961:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such device
ALSA lib pcm.c:2108:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
The program 'epiphany' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)'.
  (Details: serial 140 error_code 8 request_code 144 minor_code 3)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)


$ gdb epiphany 
(gdb) run www.novel.com
...
(no debugging symbols found)
ALSA lib confmisc.c:672:(snd_func_card_driver) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:3492:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3492:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1072:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3492:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such device
ALSA lib conf.c:3961:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such device
ALSA lib pcm.c:2108:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
[New Thread -1343362144 (LWP 17016)]
[New Thread -1352189024 (LWP 17017)]

Program received signal SIG33, Real-time event 33.
[Switching to Thread -1343362144 (LWP 17016)]
0xffffe410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
(gdb) (gdb) where
#0  0xffffe410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#1  0xb6d2e7b3 in poll () from /lib/libc.so.6
#2  0xb7f35b69 in PR_Poll () from /usr/lib/libnspr4.so
#3  0xb648e087 in nsSocketTransportService::Poll ()
   from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.8.0.1/libxul.so
#4  0xb648e275 in nsSocketTransportService::Poll ()
   from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.8.0.1/libxul.so
#5  0xb63eb79a in nsThread::Main () from /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.8.0.1/libxul.so
#6  0xb7f39d27 in PR_JoinThread () from /usr/lib/libnspr4.so
#7  0xb6e8d3bb in start_thread () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
#8  0xb6d3798e in clone () from /lib/libc.so.6
(gdb)

Created attachment 67959 [details]
strace through the crash.

At the end of the strace I see a bunch of font issues.  Could be a fontconfig thing possible.  See bug 147910 for test fontconfig packages that might solve the issue.

Wolfgang, Roc, any other ideas?

Related to https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=135973? See if the crash goes away with XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 set in the environment.

Thanks Robert!
The crash indeed goes away with XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
Should I do any further tests?

Thanks Juergen. No further tests needed. It's a bug in Flash and we have to set this environment for Epiphany.
Reassigning to gnome-maintainers for adding the workaround.

Because epiphany has no wrapper, and because it has a bonobo component, I decided to add setenv() directly to the code.

Using ltrace binary, the best candidate seems to be mozilla-embed-single.cpp:init_services(). Added, tested submitted.

Patch added to galeon, mozilla-embed-shell.cpp:mozilla_embed_shell_init().
But it's untested, because galeon seems to be broken just now.