1608893 - MacOS Thunderbird Appmenu menu items not working if starting offline

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: OS Integration, defect)

Description

[murdoch.duncan]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:72.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/72.0

Steps to reproduce:

Click on Thunderbird menu (the one containing About Thunderbird, Preferences, etc.), and choose any item, e.g. the first one.

Actual results:

Nothing. No popup of the About Thunderbird dialog.

Expected results:

The dialog should pop up to give version number, etc.

Similarly, the other menu entries other than "Services" in the Thunderbird menu do nothing. Services opens a submenu which works.

Comment 1

[murdoch.duncan]

This community post gives more details: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1277057?utm_campaign=questions-reply&utm_medium=email&utm_source=notification, though with a typo: " I can't even quit with choosing "Force Quit..." should be " I can't even quit without choosing "Force Quit..." . A second user on a more recent MacOS has the same issue.

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Khushil, can you reproduce?

Comment 3

[Khushil Mistry [:khushil324]]

I am not able to reproduce the bug on 74.0a1 (2020-01-15) (64-bit).

Comment 4

[murdoch.duncan]

I can confirm that the "Thunderbird Daily" menu appears to function properly using the nightly build https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/nightly/2020/01/2020-01-15-09-12-57-comm-central/thunderbird-74.0a1.en-US.mac.dmg . I didn't do a full install.

Comment 5

[drd]

I have this exact same problem still. thunderbird 68.5.0 and Mac OS 10.15.3

I have found that I can sometimes get the Preferences menu by repeatedly entering Safe Mode, then back to Normal, then Safe Mode again and, within seconds of Thunderbird starting up, pressing tghe Control and ',' keys. Selecting from the drop-down menu does not work. However, there is no predictability to this.

Comment 6

[John Brownlee]

I can also reproduce, having just upgraded to 68.5.0 from X both running on the same OSX 10.14.6. The hot-keys work, but the entire Thunderbird menu is dead including Services that just call the native OS functions for things like Instruments etc. With Services I can select and after some stalling it will launch for 'Activity Monitor' but the actual items that would make a call within T_bird are dead. All hotkeys under Thunderbird menu otherwise work including Prefs.

This is also running in Safe Mode, and all add-ons and extensions were removed during the upgrade including Lightening which was not compatible with 68.5.0 for the version I had earlier. I did NOT actively use Lightening for PIM, it was there as a vestigal organ from two T-bird installs prior.

I've also restarted the machine, run it without Firefox running as well, and run it as a different user that has no accounts in T-bird created yet. The menu is dead to all of them. Is there a nightly build I can help test this against?

Comment 7

[John Brownlee]

P.S. 'X' above was actually meant to be the previous version of T-bird, which was 60.9.1. Sorry about the double posting. I -did- previously use Enigmail as an add-on under the earlier version that the upgrade to 68.5.0 was from, but it was disabled at the time of the upgrade apply.

John

Comment 8

[floor]

I had the same problem on OS X 10.13.6 and TB 68.6.0 and I discovered that the problem was gone when I deleated the prefs.js file in the profile directory. After careful search-and-delete the following line seems to be the problem: user_pref("offline.startup_state", 1);

When I delete only this line (in Bbedit or a simple text-editor), the problem is gone and all the other prefs still work.

This pref-line is not written in the prefs.js file of TB 68.6.0 when a new profile is installed, so I think it's a residue from old versions which should be deleted in the new 68 version.

Comment 9

[murdoch.duncan]

Yes! Deleting user_pref("offline.startup_state", 1); from prefs.js fixes things. Thanks!

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I tested offline.startup_state = 1 on current beta and was not able to reproduce, which is consistent with comment 3 and comment 4.

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Is more info needed to determine what might be causing this?

Comment 12

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

I can't reproduce this issue on 77.0a1 on macOS 10.15.4
I set TB to start offline and tested various menu items from the AppMenu. Everything works as expected.

Is there any other particular setting I should try to reproduce this issue or is the Offline status the only condition causing this?

Comment 13

[drd]

(In reply to floor from comment #8)

I had the same problem on OS X 10.13.6 and TB 68.6.0 and I discovered that the problem was gone when I deleated the prefs.js file in the profile directory. After careful search-and-delete the following line seems to be the problem: user_pref("offline.startup_state", 1);

When I delete only this line (in Bbedit or a simple text-editor), the problem is gone and all the other prefs still work.

This pref-line is not written in the prefs.js file of TB 68.6.0 when a new profile is installed, so I think it's a residue from old versions which should be deleted in the new 68 version.

This method of deleting that specific line in prefs.js has worked for me.

Of note is that I had my TB set up to ask me which online/offline status I wanted during startup. It no longer does that, but starts online (which is fine). Perhaps helpful to know this for the bug finding.

Thanks a million for the suggestion.

Comment 14

[John Brownlee]

It's baaaaaack! Upgraded to 68.10.0 and the Appmenu is unresponsive again. I re-ran all the tests I did earlier, it's the same OS rev, same profile, tried a new user and an existing one, and where Command-Q will work the app menu is dead again. Since this is still marked open, I am posting something here just to memorialize it has returned. Not insisting the same root cause.

Comment 15

[murdoch.duncan]

I'm also using 68.10.0 now and the problem did not resurface on its own. I could recreate it by adding back the line mentioned in comments 8 and 9, and re-fix it by deleting that line again.

Comment 16

[John Brownlee]

Sure, I was able to "fix" it the same way by deleting the offline startup pref in that user's profile. But even in a brand new install on OSX 10.14 editing a file with a top line that says "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE" seems like something worth knowing about. On another note, I would add that commenting it out rather than deleting it does not do the trick, it just gets "fixed" on the next startup which is likely desired behavior.

It's still weird, and happens on a brand-new install on a fresh OS, and in a user that is T-bird naive. I thought it worth mentioning. The work-around is OK, but there have been daily builds that don't do this too per my earlier post. I don't mind the work-around, but for less savvy users it would be confusing to fix it this way.

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Does this reproduce in version 78?

Comment 18

[murdoch.duncan]

I followed comment 8's advice to delete

user_pref("offline.startup_state", 1);

and didn't see the problem again. I just looked, and the line was still not there. However, when I shut down Thunderbird, edited that line into the prefs.js file, and restarted Thunderbird, the problem reappeared. This is using 78.10.0 (64-bit).

Comment 19

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I am unable to reproduce this with current beta. In settings I changed thunderbird to restart offline.

Is anyone else able to reproduce??

Comment 20

[Antony]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #19)

I am unable to reproduce this with current beta. In settings I changed thunderbird to restart offline.

Is anyone else able to reproduce??

nope - using TB 114.0b1, closed TB and opened off-line from the initial choose profile window, i get the version coming up from the About,

Comment 21

[Phoenix]

Resolved per whiteboard and Comment 20