296916 - Multiple error messages on first launch of nightly builds

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 303599

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050606 Firefox/1.0+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050606 Firefox/1.0+

Multiple error messages on first launch of nightly builds.
For some reason Firefox thinks that a location with spaces in it is a part of a
commandline argument.

See this conversation:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=276220


Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

I can trigger similar behaviour when:

1. I put a Firefox folder in My documents;
2. I put a folder Profile in My documents;
3. and start Firefox from the commandline with "C:\Documents and Settings\Ria\My
documents\Firefox\firefox.exe" -profile "C:\Documents and Settings\Ria\My
documents\Profile"

When I take out the spaces ("C:\Docume~1\Ria\Mydocu~1\Firefox\firefox.exe"
-profile "C:\Docume~1\Ria\Mydocu~1\Profile") I don't see this problem, but I
find it alarming that a lot of people see this kind of behaviour randomly, even
without using the commandline.

Comment 2

[William Bumgarner [:zsinj]]

WFM Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050606
Firefox/1.0+

I have DPa1 installed in C:\Program Files\Deer Park Alpha 1 (four spaces)
without a problem.

Comment 3

[jsnod]

This affects me too (among others, as seen in that Mozillazine thread).  I also
get a blank dialog screen with 2 blank buttons that I have to 'Esc' out of
before these other ones show up.  I'm going to install a new nightly to try and
get some screencaps and post them here.  I'm using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U;
Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050605 Firefox/1.0+

Comment 4

[jsnod]

Attachment: 3 tabs on first launch of new install

3 tab URLS are:
file:///C:/Program%20Files/Deer%20Park%20Alpha%201/Park
file:///C:/Program%20Files/Deer%20Park%20Alpha%201/Alpha
file:///C:/Program%20Files/Deer%20Park%20Alpha%201/1/firefox.exe

Comment 5

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Darin, didn't we fix all the known issues with spaces in paths before DP1?

Comment 6

[jsnod]

Attachment: Screencaps of dialogues received on startup.

These all pop up when launching DP for the first time.

Comment 7

[sbporter]

I see this using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2)
Gecko/20050606 Firefox/1.0+
except I have 9 tabs open, and the dialogs repeat two times after each has
popped up once.

Comment 8

[jsnod]

The blank alert dialog in Attachment #2 [details] [diff] is probably unrelated, and has a
seperate Bug # 295539

Comment 9

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

There seems to be a possible workaround on the forum:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=276220

Comment 10

[DarkLuminus]

Seen on DP 2 release. (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b3)
Gecko/20050712 Firefox/1.0+ ID:2005071206

Using the .exe installer and auto install the app path get's spaces in it.
Launching Firefox gives the same result as Comment #4 (NOT blank alert dialog)
and/or Comment #7 describes. Using a zip (same build id) and extracting to a
folder _without_ spaces no problem. Unzip to a folder named "Deer Park Alpha 2"
and again the bug is back.

Comment 11

[DarkLuminus]

Sorry but i forgot to mention this. The bug happens _every_ time when launching
FF using the profile switch -p but only random without (almost never). However
launching FF using the -p switch and selecting the default profile do _not_ have
the same affect as launching with no profile switch.

Comment 12

[sbporter]

I don't know when it started for me but in newer nightlies I never get any error
dialogs but I do have 9 error pages in tabs open upon first launch.
This could be because they enabled xul error pages by default but I'm not sure.

Comment 13

[DarkLuminus]

Attachment: 9 xul error pages on first launch

Right it's the xul error pages not the error box i wasn't very clear in my
explanation

either it's 3 xul error pages like in Comment #4
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=185576

or the 3 xul error pages is repeated 2 times more making it 9 tabs open.

Comment 14

[Jaime Mitchell (use [e-mail] for email)]

*** Bug 301115 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15

[u2564793]

It happened again for me (this is the second time).
Deer Park attempted to load three local files and displayed the three error
messages in three seperate tabs.
The files it tried to load were, in order:
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/George/PARK
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/George/ALPHA
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/George/2/FIREFOX.EXE

Deer Park was installed with all default settings, including install path.

Comment 16

[sbporter]

I didn't see this bug when I installed yesterday's build (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows;
U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050718 Firefox/1.0+)
Can everyone test the latest nightlies to verify if this is really fixed?

Comment 17

[jsnod]

Wierd, I didn't see these errors with 20050718, but I just installed 20050719
and received the errors once again.

Comment 18

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Tracy, can you poke at this some and see if you can figure out what's going on?

Comment 19

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

I cannot reproduce this with Windows DP build 2005-07-22-06-trunk. I created a
"Deer Park Alpha 2" folder in My Documents\My Downloads, then installed the
build to there.  It launched without any issues.

Comment 20

[DarkLuminus]

I still see this using the latest pacifica-trunk. 

XP SP2 
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050722
Firefox/1.0+ ID:2005072216

9. error pages on very first launch, the same 3 repeating 3 times. Then on
subsequent launches 3 (or 6 the same 3 repeating 2 times).


Reproduction:

Install (unzip) to C:\Program Files\Deer Park Alpha 2

Make a shortcut, give it the -p switch "C:\Program Files\Deer Park Alpha
2\firefox.exe" -p

Launch Firefox. The PM comes up, make a new profile, start Firefox using the new
profile.

Result error pages on launch.


Note:
unzip gives path "C:\Program Files\Deer Park Alpha 2\firefox"

Comment 21

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

A week ago saw my bookmarks on startup as a webpage. Sadly they were not my
normal bookmarks but the default set in the app directory. 
My startpage is never on my harddisk, so I don't know why Firefox thought that
the bookmarks were my homepage.

Comment 22

[jsnod]

I have found the cause of this!  It happens if
KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem set
NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation is set to 1.  The problem is that if this RegKey is
set to 1, Windows will not create a short name (eg: DEERPA~1) for a folder with
spaces in it.  To fix:

1) Change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem set
NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation to 0
2) Reboot
3) Rename your current DP Folder to something else
4) Create a new folder in place of the one you just renamed
5) Copy alll the contents of the renamed folder into the new one.

Or you could just do a clean install after step 2 for the same result.

Note that DP seems to use 8dot3 notation in many places, so perhaps this bug is
just a symptom of a larger one.  For example, software update fails for me as
well until I went through the steps above.  I'm going to file another bug to
handle 8dot3 problems, as it seems to be fairly widespread.

Info:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A//www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/2000/server/reskit/en-us/regentry/28231.asp&ei=ZJ3zQq2EM7f4sgHV29X9AQ

Thanks to ChefChaudart on MozillaZine for helping me figure this out.

Comment 23

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

that's the kind of thing I was concerned about in that other bug...

Comment 24

[Benjamin Smedberg]

which other bug? the nsILocalFile.equals patch is longname-safe. It's some of
the restart code in nsAppRunner and updater which is not longname-safe.

Comment 25

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

bug 300404 comment 13 is what I meant

note bug 302533

Comment 26

[DarkLuminus]

Probably not needed at all but i just want to confirm
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=296916#c22

"NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation 1" seems to be the culprit.

Comment 27

[Jaime Mitchell (use [e-mail] for email)]

*** Bug 304665 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 28

[Benjamin Smedberg]

I'm goig to dup this to the bug with the patch.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 303599 ***