272324 - firefox hangs on startup for non-root user with "*** loading the extensions datasource"

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 259978

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Andrew P. Lentvorski, Jr.]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041109 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041109 Firefox/1.0

firefox works fine when run as root.  When run as a non-root user, the startup
hangs with the message "*** loading the extension datasource" repeating ad
infinitum.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Clean install of firefox 1.0 on a clean Sun Solaris 10 Sparc install
2. Run firefox as non-root



Actual Results:  
Infinite repetition of "*** loading the extensions datasource"

Expected Results:  
Browser startup

This looks to be the same issue as Bugs 270076, 259978, and 246869 except that
this report verifies that the same error occurs under Sparc Solaris 10.

By making the extensions directory of the firefox install world writeable, this
problem goes away (at the expense of security problems with the extensions
directory).

Comment 1

[Andrew P. Lentvorski, Jr.]

It turns out that it is not required to keep the extensions directory world-writeable.  It is only necessary 
for the files:

installed-extensions-processed.txt
{972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd}

to exist.  Even if they are not writeable or readable, firefox will start.

Comment 2

[Ralf Utermann]

I see the same problem for firefox1.0 compiled under Debian/woody
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0
(or also compiled for Debian/sarge or AIX5.1).

For our file server installation this has been solved by using part of the
debian patches for thunderbird 0.8 (iirc) by Alexander Sack
(http://www.jwsdot.com/debian/). This patch of the 
mozilla/toolkit/mozapps/extensions/src/nsExtensionManager.js.in
can be applied to both apps.

Comment 3

[Ralf Utermann]

Attachment: patch for mozilla/toolkit/mozapps/extensions/src/nsExtensionManager.js.in

This patch can found in the Debian Thunderbird 0.8 patches. This still stops
'extension loading' loops for the recent firefox/thunderbird version for our
environment.

Comment 4

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Feel free to post that patch in bug 259978 if it still applies.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 259978 ***