243391 - Thunderbird is responding to Firefox -remote commands?

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 237283

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Todd Ross]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040501 Firefox/0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040501 Firefox/0.8

I have a shell script that I use to launch Firefox based on whether another
Firefox instance is running or not.  It looks like this:

-----

#!/bin/csh
 
set FIREFOXPATH = "/usr/X11R6/bin/"
set FIREFOXNAME = "firefox"
 
if ($1 == "") then
        set URL = "about:blank"
else
        set URL = $1
endif
 
set FIREFOX = "$FIREFOXPATH$FIREFOXNAME"
if ( -x $FIREFOX ) then
        $FIREFOX -remote "ping()"
        if ( $status == 2 ) then
                $FIREFOX $URL &
        else
                $FIREFOX -remote "openURL($URL, new-tab)" &
        endif
endif

-----

This script works fine 90% of the time.  The 10% of the time that it doesn't
work is when Thunderbird is already running and Firefox is not.  I suspect that
Thunderbird is responding to Firefox's ping() request which is causing the
script problems.  If I close down Thunderbird and run the script again, it
starts up just as I would have expected.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install Thunderbird and Firefox on a *nix machine (I can only verify FreeBSD)
2. WITHOUT Thunderbird running, use the script to launch Firefox (this works)
3. WITHOUT Thunderbird running, WITH Firefox running, use the script to launch
Firefox again (this works)
4. WITH Thunderbird running, WITH Firefox running, use the script to launch
Firefox again (this works)
5. WITH Thunderbird running, WITHOUT Firefox running, use the script to luanch
Firefox (this doesn't work)
6. File bugzilla report (err, how about you just comment on this one)

Actual Results:  
It's hard to verify with Firefox already running (I'm typing this bug in, aren't
I?) but I believe the script either returns "No running window found." or
"Failed to send command."  I have both of them on my console at some point.

Expected Results:  
I would have hoped that it would have launched Firefox.

I'm filing this is Major because these types of scripts are the only way for us
*nix users to launch Firefox seamlessly.  None of these launcher scripts will
work correctly if -remote doesn't work as expected.  Without this script,
launching Firefox with another Firefox instance running causes that damn Profile
Manager to pop up when what we really want is another Firefox window -- same as
what happens on Windows.

Comment 1

[José Jeria]

Dupe of bug 229681?

Comment 2

[Todd Ross]

I'm interested in how you arrived at the conclusion that this bug is a dupe of
229681, Jose.  The descriptions have nothing to do with each other, short of
both making reference to the -remote functionality.

I think this bug stands on its own.

Comment 3

[José Jeria]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I'm interested in how you arrived at the conclusion that this bug is a dupe of
> 229681, Jose.  

I didnt, thats why i asked.

Comment 4

[Bogdan Stroe]

Duplicate of bug 237283?
It should work with a nightly build, go ahead and try.
And remember to mark this as duplicate if that was indeed the problem.

Comment 5

[Todd Ross]

Bogdan,

I will be unable to test to see if the changes made to the other bug fix this
one until it lands in a release.

I also don't really understand what the other bug was trying to resolve. 
xremote doesn't mean much to me.  What is mozilla-xremote-client?  I confess to
being nothing more than a user right now but the bug description/comments of the
other bug does nothing to help me understand if that would fix my problem or not.

Comment 6

[Bogdan Stroe]

I thought you wrote that script and you know what 
$FIREFOX -remote "openURL($URL, new-tab)" & means.
I'm not a linux user, but I'm 99% sure it's a duplicate of bug 237283. See also
bug 170609, which is dependent on 237283.

Comment 7

[Todd Ross]

Bogdan,

I do know, perfectly well, what those commands do.  They execute
/usr/X11R6/bin/firefox, passing -remote "openURL($URL, new-tab)" as a parameter.
 The & means run in the background.  From my role as a user, nowhere in there
has xremote or mozilla-xremote-client come into play.  All I'm saying is that
the bug you referrenced didn't adequately explain TO ME what was actually fixed
as I don't know what xremote and mozilla-xremote-client are.

I'm not a Linux user either.

I don't even know what to test to see if that other bug fixes my problem.  Do I
need a new Thunderbird or Firefox or both?  I'll be happy to test the scenario
that causes my bug once new releases of Thunderbird or Firefox have been
released to determine if my bug is fixed, but a nightly build isn't an option.

Comment 8

[Bogdan Stroe]

From a short search on the net I found these two pages:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/176569
http://www.mozilla.org/unix/remote.html

As I understand, -remote option makes a program try to connect to an already
existing instance of the application and do the desired action, instead of
launching a new process.
The problem is that Mozilla, Thunderbird, and Firefox had the same "ID" with
respect to this xremote protocol, before bug 237283 was fixed. So the problem
described in this bug is exactly the same.

Thunderbird 0.6 should have this fixed. Also that should be true for the next
release of Firefox, which will happen in a couple of weeks.
I don't know how the combination Firefox 0.8 and Thunderbird 0.6 will work.

I will mark this a duplicate of bug 237283 for now.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 237283 ***