1272209 - Firefox won't start, u_init() failed

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[harpreet]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/50.0.2661.102 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Typed `firefox` in terminal.


Actual results:

got errors
```
:~$ firefox 
[30233] ###!!! ABORT: JS_InitWithFailureDiagnostic: u_init() failed: file /build/firefox-HNVPVM/firefox-48.0~a2~hg20160509r318685/xpcom/build/XPCOMInit.cpp, line 709
[30233] ###!!! ABORT: JS_InitWithFailureDiagnostic: u_init() failed: file /build/firefox-HNVPVM/firefox-48.0~a2~hg20160509r318685/xpcom/build/XPCOMInit.cpp, line 709
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

```


Expected results:

firefox should launch

Comment 1

[harpreet]

i am using firefox developer edition.
`Mozilla Firefox 48.0a2`

Comment 2

[Andre Klapper]

The output
> ABORT: JS_InitWithFailureDiagnostic: u_init() failed: file /firefox-48.0~a2~hg20160509r318685/xpcom/build/XPCOMInit.cpp, line 709")
is mentioned in bug 1262731, bug 1264836, bug 1272246, bug 1272209. (In case some might be dups.)

Comment 3

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

Harpreet, is the Aurora build you're running a custom build? I cannot reproduce the error and not sure if there's any relation with the bugs that Andre mentioned above. 
Could you please clarify on which Linux distro you're running FF and if the problem reproduces on a Firefox Aurora official build?

Comment 4

[harpreet]

well its fine now.

Comment 5

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

Based on comment 4, setting it as Resolved/Works for me. Harpreet, don't hesitate to reopen this issue if need be.

Comment 6

[Ian Stakenvicius]

Gentoo has a user that's hit this on PPC with 52.1.0 - their copy is failing during the startup cache precompilation performed during the install phase but its likely the same or a similar issue (XPCOMInit.cpp line 709, u_init failed).  Details (including full build.log) can be found at http://bugs.gentoo.org/617510

I'll leave this to maintainers to determine if the bug should be reopened?

Snippet of build log containing error:

Executing /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/ff/dist/bin/xpcshell -g /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/ff/dist/bin/ -a /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/ff/dist/bin/ -f /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/toolkit/mozapps/installer/precompile_cache.js -e precompile_startupcache("resource://gre/");
[4764] ###!!! ABORT: u_init() failed: file /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/xpcom/build/XPCOMInit.cpp, line 709
[4764] ###!!! ABORT: u_init() failed: file /var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/xpcom/build/XPCOMInit.cpp, line 709
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/toolkit/mozapps/installer/packager.py", line 415, in <module>
    main()
  File "/var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/toolkit/mozapps/installer/packager.py", line 409, in main
    args.source, gre_path, base)
  File "/var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/toolkit/mozapps/installer/packager.py", line 166, in precompile_cache
    errors.fatal('Error while running startup cache precompilation')
  File "/var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/python/mozbuild/mozpack/errors.py", line 103, in fatal
    self._handle(self.FATAL, msg)
  File "/var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/python/mozbuild/mozpack/errors.py", line 98, in _handle
    raise ErrorMessage(msg)
mozpack.errors.ErrorMessage: Error: Error while running startup cache precompilation
make[1]: *** [/var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/toolkit/mozapps/installer/packager.mk:41: stage-package] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/ff/browser/installer'
make: *** [/var/tmp/portage/www-client/firefox-52.1.0-r1/work/firefox-52.1.0esr/browser/build.mk:21: install] Error 2

Comment 7

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

(In reply to Ian Stakenvicius from comment #6)
> Gentoo has a user that's hit this on PPC with 52.1.0 - their copy is failing
> during the startup cache precompilation performed during the install phase
> but its likely the same or a similar issue (XPCOMInit.cpp line 709, u_init
> failed).  Details (including full build.log) can be found at
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/617510

This is most likely to ICU being broken on big-endian targets, see:

> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1264836

You could try to apply the fix from Debian's firefox-esr package:

> https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-mozilla/iceweasel.git/commit/?h=esr52/master&id=4dd8c5d6dc4d6a712f1c73d5c8e12bc372a331e1
> https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-mozilla/iceweasel.git/commit/?h=esr52/master&id=1255e75f0cb491f34467f4c2e684b5ddec91c4ee
> https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-mozilla/iceweasel.git/commit/?h=esr52/master&id=8af389bd7bfaca6c49c4da2f22c4a67b2f92abba

Or just build with "--without-intl-api" on big-endian targets.