Closed Bug 1279978 Opened 8 years ago Closed 8 years ago

cut/copy/paste not working between Firefox and different displays

Categories

(Core :: Widget: Gtk, defect)

47 Branch
x86_64
Linux
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

()

RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: jeff, Unassigned)

References

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0
Build ID: 20160606114238

Steps to reproduce:

Firefox 46.0, 46.0.1 and 47.0
Xubuntu 15.10

Installed Firefox 46 and 47.  Ran separate sessions (different profiles) on displays :0.0 and :0.1.  Attempt to cut/copy any text in one browser session and paste it into any app on the other display no longer works.  This always worked prior to FF version 46.  Cut/paste works between displays for all other apps.

Examples:

1: I can B1 select text in an xterm and can B2 paste it into another another xterm or into the URL bar on Firefox running on either display.

2: I can B1 select text from the Firefox URL bar or from the content on a page and can B2 paste it into another app (xterm for example) on the same display, but cannot paste it into any app, including Firefox, on the other display.

So B1/B2 copy/paste are working system-wide as expected, but Firefox is doing something strange with its own selections that do not conform to expected behavior.

I previously reported this under bug 1197590  (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1197590) where there was a discussion taking place regarding broken scrollbar navigation which seemed to be related to the change to GTK3.  I speculate that this problem of improperly managing the system-wide paste buffer may also be a GTK3 issue.  This should be tagged as high priority.  The inability to cut/past across displays is a serious limitation that is causing all sorts of work flow problems.


Actual results:

FF copy will not paste across displays.


Expected results:

Paste should work across displays.
Can you use the tool mozregression to narrow down a regression range in FF46.
See http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/ for details.
OS: Unspecified → Linux
Hardware: Unspecified → x86_64
Cannot reproduce on Ubuntu 14.04 or 15.04 LTS which points to an issue related to the XFCE Desktop Environment. Not sure if the Widget:Gtk is ultimately the right component for this issue, but I believe it's a good place to start.
Component: Untriaged → Widget: Gtk
Product: Firefox → Core
Blocks: gtk3
I've downloaded the mozregression tool.  I don't know how to use it so I will read the instructions next week and let you know what I discover.

I'm not sure what program is ultimately responsible for managing the universal copy/paste buffer, but assuming xfce4 is responsible, then the version installed here is: 4.12

It's as if the Firefox sessions on the two displays are using two different cut/paste buffers.  What I cannot understand is how all other programs share the same buffer but FF can somehow read buffered content from the local display but not the other one.

Sometime next week I plan to upgrade to Xubuntu 16.04 and will report results observed after that occurs.

Thank to those looking into this.
(In reply to Jeffery Small from comment #3)
> I've downloaded the mozregression tool.  I don't know how to use it so I
> will read the instructions next week and let you know what I discover.

As the bug was present in FF45, you can install FF45 on your machine. After, you run mozregression with command --good=45. The tool witll download builds (46/47/ etc) and your make your copy/paste test from 45 to the build loaded by Mozregression.
Well, before I had a chance to run the regression tool, I had to perform the upgrade to Xubuntu 16.04.  Firefox remained at version 47.0.  However, the cut/paste issue is now resolved and everything appears to be back to normal.  I can cut/paste between Firefox and any app on any screen.

If the problem was not resident in FF then it must have been due to some underlying change in Ubuntu.  I pay close attention to the updates as they are installed and do not recall anything obvious that had to do with the xfce4 interface.  However, there are core packages with security issues that get updated frequently and possibly one of those updates was responsible for the problem.  Still, since only FF seemed to be affected, it would seem to be localized there.  I wish I could be more specific in pointing to the source of the problem, but it is a great relief that this is all working once again.

Let me know if I can provide additional info.
Let's close it, reopen the bug report if the issue is back with STR.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 8 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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