296940 - Update Changes Cause Thunderbird to Enter an Infinite Loop

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

Seen on Mac Thunderbird build 2005-06-07-05-trunk

-Clear out profile 
-Launch app.
-Click anything in the Migration dialog

Hang with spinning rainbow wheel.

-Force quit and attempt to launch again.
nothing happens

-restart Computer
-Launch Tbird again.
-click "Cancel" and "Exit" to get out of the account setup dialog (or go through
account setup completely)
-click on the App

Hang with spinning rainbow wheel.

Note:  The Mac Tbird build from 2005-06-06 did not display this problem

Comment 1

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

linux build just came out.  It is useable, but the following message is
repreated endlessly in the command line terminal:


*** Checker.onError: error during load
*** update url: chrome://mozapps/locale/update/update.properties
*** Checker.findUpdates: sending request to
chrome://mozapps/locale/update/update.properties

I don't know if it is related to the hang on Mac.  Just fyi.

Comment 2

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

yeah, I also see the tons off errors from comment 1 (linux fc3, 2005060706-trunk
tbird).

Comment 3

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

another observation: the spewing comments affects performance, too, since I
noticed that the response is a bit slower --but more annoyingly the pointer is
now always flickering.

Comment 4

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

let me know if I should file a separate bug on the flickering pointer/perf
issue. it really interfere's with using the app.

Comment 5

[Scott MacGregor]

cc'ing Ben and Darin.

I'm pretty sure all these update errors are from the big software update landing
that happened yesterday. 

Comment 6

[Scott MacGregor]

Even if I'm not migrating, just starting Thunderbird up with an existing
profile. The mail 3-pane comes up but you can't do anything because we are in
some sort of infinite loop with the update service. Console keeps spewing out
the forementioned errors:

*** Checker.onError: error during load
*** update url: chrome://mozapps/locale/update/update.properties
*** Checker.findUpdates: sending request to chrome://mozapps/locale/update/updat
e.properties
*** Checker.onError: error during load
*** update url: chrome://mozapps/locale/update/update.properties
*** Checker.findUpdates: sending request to chrome://mozapps/locale/update/updat
e.properties

Comment 7

[Scott MacGregor]

Looks like some XBL bindings in update.xml went away without anyone fixing up
Thunderbird to not use these bindings anymore. That expains some of the XBL
prototype binding errors I'm getting. I've been able to fix those but I still
see the infinite update loop.

Comment 8

[Scott MacGregor]

Another problem, updates.properties which is defined in mozilla\toolkit sets:

app.update.url=https://aus.mozilla.org/update/firefox/en-US.rdf

Surely that's not right? I'm pretty sure Thunderbird shouldn't be running
against Firefox's en-US.rdf file on the update server. 

Not sure if that is related to the infinite update check.

Comment 9

[Scott MacGregor]

it looks like it's loading the actual properties file for app.update.url instead
of  getting the localized pref value of app.update.url.

From nsUpdateService.js.in:

  get _updateURL() {
    try {
      //return gPref.getComplexValue(PREF_APP_UPDATE_URL,
nsIPrefLocalizedString).data;
      return gPref.getCharPref(PREF_APP_UPDATE_URL);
    }

where PREF_APP_UPDATE is defined as app.update.url

which is in all-thunderbird/all-firefox.js as
chrome://mozapps/locale/update/update.properties

I'm hoping one of you guys (darin/ben?) are going to jump in here and help
figure this smoketest blocker out. Seems pretty clear to me that we never tested
Thunderbird before checking this in yesterday which is a pretty big no no for
something of this size and is clearly stated on the Tinderbox rules. You guys
should know better :) 

Comment 10

[Scott MacGregor]

Attachment: try to port some of the update changes for firefox over to thunderbird

1) Incomplete patch that gets rid of some XBL widgets (statusbar-update) in
Thunderbird which were removed from updates.xml as part of the update landing
yesterday.

2) Trys to mimic the preference changes made to all-firefox.js as part of
yesterday's update landing.

3) port the CSS changes from winstripe's update.css to qute's update.css

With these changes I still have the same problems reported above. This patch
does get rid of the XBL prototype binding assertions because our widget was
removed from underneath us.

Comment 11

[Scott MacGregor]

Attachment: updated port

I think this patch fixes the infinite loop. The timer was firing over and over
again to constantly try to update. Now we get just the one error the first time
we try to update and we don't do it again.

Comment 12

[Darin Fisher]

Note also: bug 296972 (for XULRunner)

Comment 13

[Scott MacGregor]

I checked in the ported changes whidch I think fixes the problem. 

Comment 14

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

Verified on Mac and Linux Tbird trunk builds from 2005-06-08