1554184 - Pre-fetch feature prevents download when disk is full

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Downloads API, defect, P5)

Description

[Simon]

Attachment: Screenshot of the dialogs.

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:66.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/66.0

Steps to reproduce:

Hi Firefox team,

All I want is to download a file.

Steps to reproduce:

1. In your settings, tell Firefox to always ask where to download a file before downloading

2. Have the disk where "Downloads" is located full.

3. Try to download a file.

Since Firefox should ask me where to download the file, I should have no problem with insufficient disk space. I will simply download the file on another hard drive.

In my case, I download a PDF file.

Actual results:

A dialog opened asking me where to save the file.

Instantly after, an error dialog opened saying the following. I am French so I translated the error message.

"Opening of ....pdf : Cannot save in '~Downloads/....part'. Insufficient disk space. Make free space or choose another drive where to save the file".

When the error dialog opens, the first dialog (asking me where to save the file) is frozen.

When I close the error dialog, the first dialog closes instantly.

Problem: I cannot save a simple PDF file!

Expected results:

A dialog opened asking me where to save the file.

I want to save my file to another drive THEN start the download.

---

I suggest one of these fixes:

1. It seems firefox pre-downloads the file before knowing where the user wants to save it. Allow user to disable this bug/feature.

2. Allow user to choose where files are pre-downloaded and do not use "~/Downloads" as an arbitrary location.

---

Additionnal information

• In about:config, "network.prefetch-next" is set to false.

• I am attaching a screenshot of the dialogs.

• Version information

  "application": {
    "name": "Firefox",
    "osVersion": "Darwin 16.7.0",
    "version": "66.0.5",
    "buildID": "20190507012018",
    "userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:66.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/66.0",
    "safeMode": false,
    "updateChannel": "release",
    "supportURL": "https://support.mozilla.org/1/firefox/66.0.5/Darwin/fr/",
    "numTotalWindows": 1,
    "numRemoteWindows": 1,
    "remoteAutoStart": true,
    "currentContentProcesses": 8,
    "maxContentProcesses": 8,
    "autoStartStatus": 1,
    "policiesStatus": 0,
    "keyLocationServiceGoogleFound": true,
    "keySafebrowsingGoogleFound": true,
    "keyMozillaFound": true
  },

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

This is due to the underlying architecture where nsExternalHelperAppService.cpp starts the download and then it passes ownership to the downloads manager. It's complicate to change mostly because it's a project by itself that would require proper planning and sourcing, and atm we don't have enough developers to handle it. It's is tracked anyway hopefully the situation will change.