119408 - Download fails silently if you don't have write permission to destination directory

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 115197

(Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[Michael D. Crawford]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux ppc; en-US; rv:0.9.7) Gecko/20011230
BuildID:    0.9.7-2

I found this on Debian Linux for PowerPC, but I expect it would apply to any
Unix variant or other OS with filesystem security, like NT or Windows 2000.

If you don't have write permission to the directory you direct mozilla to save a
downloaded file into, the download will progress to 100%, but then no file will
be saved and no error alert will be given.

Mozilla should check write permission before starting the download, and after
moving the file should check that it really ended up there.  It should also
check operating system error codes at each step of the way - another problem
could be running out of space.

The way I found this error was launching Mozilla as my normal user, then
creating a directory for my download as root.  I then directed mozilla to save a
file in this directory.  I got the normal progress window, which later indicated
completion, but my only result was no file in the download directory.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Launch mozilla as a normal user on Linux
2. In a shell window, su to root and create a directory for which your normal
user doesn't have write permission.
3. Instruct mozilla to download a file into that directory

Actual Results:  Download appears to progress normally (I guess going into /tmp
while it's in progress), but no result file shows up in the destination directory.

Expected Results:  One might think that the downloaded file should show up, but
this cannot be the case because you don't have permission.  Instead, Mozilla
should alert the user that it cannot create the destination file because it
lacks permission.

Comment 1

[Christopher Aillon (sabbatical, not receiving bugmail)]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 115197 ***