230091 - -p option prevents Firefox from running

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Rahul]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; X11; Linux i686) Opera 7.23  [en]
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7

I encountered the following problems installing and using MozillaFirebird
on a machine running RedHat Linux 9.0.

I downloaded this file:
  MozillaFirebird-0.7-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz

After cd'ing into /usr/local I extracted the above with 'tar xzf'.

Then I followed the release notes at:
  http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firebird/release-notes.html

The instructions say "once you have downloaded the binary, use Winzip or
gzip to unzip Mozilla Firebird to an empty directory, then run
MozillaFirebird.exe. and "You should create a new profile for Mozilla
Firebird 0.7. To create a new profile, start Mozilla Firebird by running
MozillaFirebird.exe -p and click on the "Create Profile" button".  

The binaries that I found in the extracted directory tree were:

  MozillaFirebird
  MozillaFirebird-bin

When I executed these, I get error messages as follows:

% ./MozillaFirebird -p
run-mozilla.sh: Cannot execute ./MozillaFirebird-bin.pure.
                                                                                 
                               
% ./MozillaFirebird-bin -p
./MozillaFirebird-bin: relocation error: ./MozillaFirebird-bin: undefined 
symbol: _ZTISt9bad_alloc

I am able to invoke MozillaFirebird without the -p option and it starts
up without the error.  The other program, i.e., MozillaFirebird-bin, yields the
same error with or without -p.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. as described above
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Rahul]

I se now that this is a MozillaFirebird bug and should have been
entered elsewhere.  I will do so.  Please delete it from here.  Thanks.

Rahul

Comment 2

[Rahul]

OK, I will leave the bug here but change its 'product' field to Firebird.
Sorry for my confusion.

Rahul

Comment 3

[Jason Barnabe (np)]

Reassigning...

Can you try again with the latest nightly?

Comment 4

[Gilles Durys]

It should be "-P" not "-p".
They have the same effect on windows but are different on linux.

Comment 5

[Rahul]

-P works OK.

It would be advisable for the Linux/UNIX version of MozillaFirebird
to use lowercase -p, the same as the Microsoft version.  This would
decrease user confusion, and allow the same release notes (ecept
for the self-explanatory ".exe" suffix in the filename) to be valid
for both.

Rahul

Comment 6

[Jeff Walden [:Waldo]]

Is this still a problem in either the latest Firefox nightlies or Firefox 0.8?

Comment 7

[Rahul]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Is this still a problem in either the latest Firefox nightlies or Firefox 0.8?

Currently I am not using a Linux workstation, so I cannot check to see if the
problem has been fixed.  When I go back to using a Linux workstation, I will
check.  I hope some other reader, or one of the developers who is using a Linux
machine, will invoke the browser with '-p' and see if the problem got fixed.

(Somehow this bug report got changed to be a bug report about Firefox, which it
was not. It was a bug report about MozillaFirebird, the older product.)

Comment 8

[logan]

still a problem.

what the heck is -p/-pure for anyway? If you remove this from the script, -p
brings up the profile manager. mozilla's setup the same way...

so, is this a documentation problem or should -p really work on non-windows sytems?

--- firefox.orig        2004-03-01 11:25:26.000000000 -0600
+++ firefox     2004-03-02 15:03:39.000000000 -0600
@@ -126,10 +126,6 @@
 while [ $# -gt 0 ]
 do
   case "$1" in
-    -p | -pure)
-      MOZILLA_BIN="firefox-bin.pure"
-      shift
-      ;;
     -g | --debug)
       script_args="$script_args -g"
       debugging=1

Comment 9

[logan]

can't find a whole lot on this... http://www.mozilla.org/unix/purify.html

if it's some kindof debugging option, maybe the -p case could be removed
(handling  only -pure).

Comment 10

[Nilson Cain]

I still see this in 
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040613 Firefox/0.8.0+


nilson@katheryn nilson $ /usr/lib/firefox/firefox -p
run-mozilla.sh: Cannot execute /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin.pure.



Recommend STATUS NEW.

Comment 11

[Mike Shaver (:shaver -- probably not reading bugmail closely)]

-p should work like it does on Windows (preserving the -P behaviour as well;
compat is important, and we shouldn't be growing many more such options, IMO).

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Walt, does this reproduce for you?

Comment 13

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

No problem starting or using the Fedora supplied Firefox using just firefox -p from the terminal here on Fedora 35 Workstation.

Same with the Fedora supplied Thunderbird using thunderbird -p.

Also works with /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox -p.

Comment 14

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

In the process of migrating remaining bugs to the new severity system, the severity for this bug cannot be automatically determined. Please retriage this bug using the new severity system.

Comment 15

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:mossop, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.