581865 - Chatzilla disconnects all SSL-connections on IRC whenever I manually clear cookies in Firefox.

Status: NEW

(Other Applications :: ChatZilla, defect)

Description

[Duysterwald]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; nl; rv:1.9.2.7) Gecko/20100716 Linux Mint/8 (Helena) Firefox/3.6.7
Build Identifier: 0.9.86

I have been using Chatzilla for about 2 years now, and only recently have I begun connecting to IRC via SSL (via port 6677). I noticed that whenever I manually clear my cookies (and *all* other information from my browsing session) in Firefox, the add-on Chatzilla (which I leave running) automatically disconnects my connection to the IRC-networks to which I am connected via SSL. This does not happen to the IRC-networks that I am *not* connected to via SSL - the connection to those just remains intact.

The error message that Chatzilla gives when this happens, is as follows:

"Connection to ircs://irc.lolipower.org:6697/ (ircs://irc.lolipower.org:6697/) closed with status 2147500037."

Basically, that error message means that Chatzilla is closing the TCP-connection without telling the server that it is quitting first.

For the record: I have Firefox configured to remove *all* of my browsing history whenever it closes. When I close it (by closing all running Firefox windows) and leave Chatzilla running, nothing happens to Chatzilla or any of my established IRC-connections (be they normal or SSL). Then when I open Firefox again, no browsing history has been cleared, so I guess Firefox didn't *really* close because I left Chatzilla running (which probably makes sense, since Chatzilla is an add-on in my case, and thus does not run independently of Firefox).

Manually clearing my cookies in Firefox while leaving Chatzilla running did *not* yield any problems in Chatzilla before, i.e. in the time where I was still connecting to IRC via a normal, unencrypted connection. And it *still* does not affect the few normal connections that I still have (because those IRC-networks don't support SSL) - *only* the SSL-connections.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Get Firefox running, and then Chatzilla - connect to an IRC-network then.
2. Surf a little bit on the Internet and thus build up a little browsing history. Meanwhile, always leave Chatzilla running.
3. In Firefox, go to Edit -> Options (this is not Tools -> Options, since this is different in Linux Mint's Firefox) and then go to the 'Privacy' tab.
4. Make sure Firefox is set on 'Never remember history' (I have to translate from Dutch, so forgive me) and then click on the blue-coloured 'Remove all history.'
5. A window will pop up, and make sure that you have got every box checked, for you will want to delete every possible little thing.
6. Click on 'Erase', after which all browsing history will have been removed.
Actual Results:  
The direct result from manually erasing the browsing history in Firefox is that Chatzilla closed all running SSL-connections on IRC, but left the running normal and unencrypted connections open. Chatzilla gave the following error message for each closed connection (the numeric error code is always the same):

"Connection to ircs://irc.lolipower.org:6697/ (ircs://irc.lolipower.org:6697/) closed with status 2147500037."

Expected Results:  
Chatzilla should have left the SSL-connections up and running on IRC, just like it did with the normal, unencrypted connections.

I currently run the 64-bit version of Linux Mint 8 "Helena" in my own native language (which is Dutch), and the version of Firefox that I use is 3.6.7. (which is 1.0 for Linux Mint).

Also, I have configured Chatzilla to auto-login to IRC.

Comment 1

[Duysterwald]

I would like to correct a little typo in the first sentence of my description, to avoid any possible misunderstandings. I said "port 6677" in my first sentence, while that should have been "port 6697" instead. I apologise for the inconvenience!

Comment 2

[James Ross]

The error code mentioned (2147500037) is NS_ERROR_FAILURE, and cannot originate from ChatZilla code; something *below* ChatZilla is failing and causing the disconnection.

The lack of a more useful error code makes it nearly impossible to say what, but this is not likely ChatZilla's fault but a limition or bug with some part of the software below it, like NSS, Necko, etc..

Given it's only taking out the secure connections, my money would be on NSS picking up a notification to clear or reset something and - either correctly or not - disconnecting all secure connections in response.

Comment 3

[Duysterwald]

Just a slight update, in an effort to further narrow things down:

A friend of mine suggested that I should try clearing all of my browsing history in Firefox, except for the 'Active Logins' (of which I had to leave the box unchecked). I did that, and the problem unfortunately still persisted.

Also, thank you for your input, James! I am sorry I wasn't able to provide a more descriptive error code, but the one I mentioned is all that Chatzilla reported to me.

Comment 4

[Alexander Weitzmann]

This also happens for me when starting or stoping 'Private Browsing' in any Firefox window.
(Win7 64, Firefox 9.0.1, Chatzilla 0.9.88)