147053 - I get a mysterious error at startup (not enough information given in error)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 193638

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: BackEnd, defect)

Description

[Ken Beal]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0rc3)
Gecko/20020523
BuildID:    2002052306

I get an error at startup (for the past couple weeks, not sure what caused this
error but it has appeared every time I start, and I've installed RC1, RC2, and
now RC3 and it still occurs).

I will attach a bitmap of the error, but basically it says "Configuration
Warning" as the title, and the body is:

"An error occurred reading the startup configuration file.  Please contact your
administrator.

line 146: ReferenceError: user_ is not defined."

There's an "OK" button.

1. I didn't change any startup file, so I'm not sure why this error started
occurring.

2. The error should be more specific: *which* startup file is the error
occurring in, so I can fix it?

Fortunately, Mozilla appears to function normally after I click "OK".

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start Mozilla.  The error also occurs when Mozilla quick-starts, when I first
login.

Actual Results:  I get the attached popup.

Expected Results:  Started normally.

Comment 1

[Ken Beal]

Attachment: Error popup

This is the error popup mentioned in the bug.

Comment 2

[R.K.Aa.]

a shot in the dark, but prefs.js in your profile dir is for instance a
configuration file. Have you modified anything there?

Comment 3

[Ken Beal]

R.K.Aa: Thanks, I found the file and it ended with a line containing just
"user_".  All the other lines were of the form: "user_pref("something", true)".

So something had modified that file incorrectly (I never touched it manually).

However, even though my problem is solved I still deem this a bug, since the
dialog box should point me in the direction of solving the problem rather than
just say, "PROBLEM EXISTS CONTACT ADMIN."

Out of curiosity, is it possible that when Mozilla crashes, it leaves the
configuration file that way?  If so that's really bad, and if that's the case
this bug should be a "data loss" bug.

Comment 4

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Is it fixed with a new profile ?

Comment 5

[Ken Beal]

Matthias Versen (Matti): Yes.  Well, all I did was remove the last line (the one
that was simply "user_"), and the error went away.

As I said, though, the error dialog needs to show more information.

Comment 6

[R.K.Aa.]

On the odd occation a crash can lead to truncated prefs.js (and worse).
Bug 98476, bug 123929 and more deal with this. Resolving as dup of bug 98476..

Related: bug 107264

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 98476 ***

Comment 7

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

.

Comment 8

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 193638 ***