198567 - suddenly unable to open mail, composer and address book

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Linus Ericson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

Today when I started my computer, I was no longer able to start the mail client,
composer and address book from within Mozilla. ChatZilla and Navigator works
though. It dows not matter if I click on the icon in the component bar, use the
"window" menu or keyboard shortcuts (ctrl + 2/4/5), nothing works. There is no
CPU activity.

When I started mozilla with "mozilla -mail" the mail client started.

"File -> New -> Message" works.
"File -> New -> Address book card..." works.
"File -> New -> Composer Page" does _not_ work.

I temporarily moved my .mozilla dir to another location so Mozilla would start
with a new profile, and then everything worked as it should.

Yesterday (and the days before that...) everything was working fine.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open Mozilla
2. Try to open Mail client/Composer/Address book

Actual Results:  
Nothing happens.

Expected Results:  
Mail client/Composer/Address book should open.

I'm using the Modern theme, and I have not installed any extensions or messed
with Mozilla lately, it just stopped working overnight.

I have kept my profile between Mozilla upgrades, the oldest files in my .mozilla
dir are from November 1, 2001. I expected the profile to break after an upgrade,
not suddenly overnight :-)

Comment 1

[Patrick]

Seems that moving of the profile could be the cause.
You can also start the mozilla profile manager if you want to create a new
profile "mozilla -ProfileManager"

Are you sure all permissions are properly set again after moving your profile
back & forth.

Create a new profile using profile manager and if all of Moz works you know the
main fault is not in Moz. Then try duplicate profile permissions from the new
profile to your old profile.

You can also use command line to start Moz with a specific profile
"mozilla -P YOURPROFILENAME"

Comment 2

[Linus Ericson]

I did not start moving my ".mozilla" dir until the problems started occurring. 

I renamed my ".mozilla" dir to ".mozillaold" instead of creating a new profile.
I should have written "renamed" instead of "moved" in my bug report, but I did
use the "mv" command :-)

After seeing everything worked with a fresh profile, I restored my old,
"broken", profile by just renaming it back. No permissions changed.

I tried creating a new profile instead of renaming my ".mozilla" dir, and I
noticed something interesting:

When I now start Mozilla, I have to select profile. If I select the new profile,
everything works. If I select the old profile, then  mail, address book etc will
not start. The interesting part is that if I start Mozilla with the old profile
and switch to the new profile using "Tools -> Switch Profile...", the mail,
address book etc _still_ doesn't start!

Comment 3

[Patrick]

perhaps you can find out if one of your old profile files is corrupted by
copying one by one ;) to your new profile [or a test profile] and see if that
makes your problem come up?

Comment 4

[Linus Ericson]

I deleted my "XUL.mfasl" and now everything works again. I guess Mozilla
corrupted it somehow.

Should this still be considered a bug or should I resolve it as WFM?

Comment 5

[Andreas Kunz]

I think WFM is the best solution.

But if you still encounter this bug with current Mozilla versions, please reopen
and provide an example of a corrupted XUL.mfasl file.