1477593 - about:networking is broken on most tier-3 platforms

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Networking, defect, P5)

Description

[Marco Perez [:mpk]]

about:networking is broken under FreeBSD since the last week of May 2018.
Other tier3 platforms might also be affected.

Clicking on any links on the about:networking page has no effect.
The following error is shown when starting Firfox from the console:

  JavaScript error:
    chrome://global/content/aboutNetworking.js, line 15:
      TypeError: Cc['@mozilla.org/network/network-link-service;1'] is undefined

I've been able to narrow down the regression window:
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=443ff1adf8ab&tochange=4408bb821f5b

443ff1adf8ab is the last known working revision, whereas 4408bb821f5b is already broken.

Comment 1

[Marco Perez [:mpk]]

Feel free to change this bug to a more appropriate component, as it may be UI rather than networking.

Comment 2

[u408661]

We'd need a network link service implemented for FreeBSD for this to be fixed.

FWIW, I suspect this page is now broken on pretty much any tier-3 platform that isn't built on top of one of our existing tier-1 platforms, as we only have network link services for android, linux, mac, and windows.

Comment 3

[Valentin Gosu [:valentin] (he/him) {{ PTO until Nov 5 }}]

Technically, we could change about:networking to not display RCWN data on tier-3.
But then again, it's also broken on Android (for CSS reasons).

Comment 4

[Marco Perez [:mpk]]

(In reply to Valentin Gosu [:valentin] from comment #3)
> Technically, we could change about:networking to not display RCWN data on
> tier-3.
> But then again, it's also broken on Android (for CSS reasons).

As long as network link services aren't universally available, your
suggestion makes sense.

We have all kind of weird behaviour on some of the tier-3 platforms.
Getting to the bottom of these issues is hard enough as it is,
but without the proper debugging tools this seems like a fool's errand.

We should *really* try to avoid breaking those tools, even if the breakage
affects tier-3 only. The key here would be "graceful degradation".
(Making it unnecessarily hard for our users, especially the power users,
 wont't help neither Firefox' market share nor Mozilla's image.)

Comment 6

[Valentin Gosu [:valentin] (he/him) {{ PTO until Nov 5 }}]

The solution here would be always check if gNetLinkSvc is null in aboutNetworking.js before using it.

Comment 7

[Val Packett]

Attachment: Bug 1477593 - fix about:networking on tier-3 platforms

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/0e1155ff7159
fix about:networking on tier-3 platforms r=valentin

Comment 9

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/9f55d547e196
Fix ESlint. CLOSED TREE

Comment 10

[Narcis Beleuzu [:NarcisB]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/0e1155ff7159
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/9f55d547e196

Comment 11

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Hi Greg, did you want to nominate this for Beta uplift for Fx73?

Comment 12

[Val Packett]

uhh.. sure, I guess we can do that

Comment 13

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Nevermind.