304350 - Core preferences system bug stops ChatZilla startup

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Other Applications :: ChatZilla, defect)

Description

[gc.17]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6

When I open Chatzilla from the Firefox toolbar or menu (or any other manual
method), it displays the following error message:

[Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80520008
(NS_ERROR_FILE_ALREADY_EXISTS) [nsIPrefService.savePrefFile]"  nsresult:
"0x80520008 (NS_ERROR_FILE_ALREADY_EXISTS)"  location: "JS frame ::
chrome://chatzilla/content/lib/js/pref-manager.js :: pm_arrayupdate :: line 256"
 data: no]
+ QueryInterface (function) [native code]
+ message (string) 'Component returned failure code: 0x80520008
(NS_ERROR_FILE_ALREADY_EXISTS) [nsIPrefService.savePrefFile]'
+ result (number) 2152857608
+ name (string) 'NS_ERROR_FILE_ALREADY_EXISTS'
+ filename (string) 'chrome://chatzilla/content/lib/js/pref-manager.js'
+ lineNumber (number) 256
+ columnNumber (number) 0
+ location (object)
+ inner (object) null
+ data (object) null
+ toString (function) [native code]
+ initialize (function) [native code]
*


After pressing 'OK' to this message, the main chat window is missing, and none
of the menu items at the top of the screen (File, edit, etc.) are present either.

It is important to note that if Chatzilla is opened from following an IRC
hyperlink from a webpage in Firefox, this error does not occur at all and
Chatzilla opens fine.

Several extensions are installed on my system, I'll list them under additional
information

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Run Chatzilla from the toolbar, menu, etc.

Actual Results:  
No menu items at top of screen, error message, no Chatzilla window/welcome message.

Expected Results:  
Should have displayed Chatzilla window/welcome message, no error window, should
have displayed menu items at top of screen.

The following extensions are installed:

Translate 0.6.0.7
BugMeNot 0.6.2
Image Toolbar 0.5
Nuke Anything 0.2
Google Pagerank Status 0.9.3
FLST 0.8.3
Context Search 0.2
BetterSearch 1.8.7
Sage 1.3.5
Adblock v.5 d2 * nightly 39
Bandwidth Tester 0.5.4
undoclosetab 20041125.5
CustomizeGoogle 0.23
Greasemonkey 0.3.5
Chatzilla 0.9.68.5

Greasemonkey scripts installed affect these sites:

Amazon.com
IGN.com
IMDB.com
Weather.com
Gamespot.com
Gamespy.com
Macworld.com

Comment 1

[James Ross]

For reference, this is not a bug in ChatZilla, this is a bug in the preferences
system in Core.

WHY it is failing to save your preference file, I don't know, but I STRONGLY
suggest disabling EVERY single extension except ChatZilla, and seeing if it
still occurs.

Beyond that, there is nothing we can do, except maybe catch the seriously rare
event and tell the user that Mozilla is screwed. I don't want to bother with that.

Comment 2

[James Ross]

Also, FWIW, I expect you'll be losing lines of incoming text if they contain
URLs, so I really would recomend that you get the problem with the host
application sorted.

Comment 3

[James Ross]

Attachment: Don't try and beat pref service at its own game

This offers a speed-up too, as saving the pref file is slow. I don't think we
really should be trying to force the service into something it should know
better.

Comment 4

[Robert Ginda]

Comment on attachment 193435 [details] [diff] [review]
Don't try and beat pref service at its own game

The pref service used to be pretty bad about saving prefs... or maybe mozilla
just used to crash alot more than it does now.

Anyway, we can roll like this for a while and see if anyone complains about
lost prefs.

r=rginda

Comment 5

[James Ross]

If worst comes to worst, we can call savePrefFile inside a setTimeout with a try/catch, so keep the speed-up and ignore errors.

Comment 6

[James Ross]

Checked in --> FIXED.