301043 - SeaMonkey application immediately quits after launch

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Installer, defect)

Description

[chaosgate]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Build Identifier: seamonkey/nightly/2005-07-16-07-trunk/

Seamonkey cannot be started at all, it immediately exits, most of the time 
without any visible indication of it running. Mozilla 1.7.2 ran fine on this 
machine, so I tried to upgrade, after which I could not start up seamonkey, so 
I uninstalled seamonkey, mozilla, and deleted the profile and registry entries, 
but the same failure to start up still occurs.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Install Seamonkey
2.Start up seamonkey
Actual Results:  
Seamonkey immediately quits, sometimes I am able to see the splash screen for a 
split second.

Expected Results:  
Started up

Operating System: Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2
Processor: Pentium M 2GHz
RAM: 2GB
Antivirus: etrust Antivirus 7.0.139

Comment 1

[chaosgate]

Attachment: Dependency Walker Trace of Startup

Comment 2

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

Confirming; using the stub installer, I see the same behavior.

Comment 3

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

But .zip builds such as seamonkey-1.0a.en-US.win32.zip                         
   16-Jul-2005 10:27   11M   are fine.

Comment 4

[Andrew Schultz]

apparent bustage from bug 298044

Comment 5

[Edward]

Same occurs with 7/17/2005 build.

Build identifier:  /seamonkey/nightly/2005-07-17-06-trunk/

Comment 6

[Alan]

Same here, WinXP Pro SP2 using seamonkey/nightly/2005-07-16-07-trunk/

Comment 7

[Jason Bassford]

I think we can safely say that this problem is confirmed.  No reason to keep
saying that you see it. <grin>

I do question, however, the fact that this hasn't yet been set as a blocker bug.
 Since we're talking about SeaMonkey now, and not Mozilla, I don't know if the
same criteria apply?  Robert?

Comment 8

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

(In reply to comment #7)
> I do question, however, the fact that this hasn't yet been set as a blocker bug.

[e-mail]  	2005-07-16 13:30 PDT  	Flag  	blocking-seamonkey1.0a?  
blocking-seamonkey1.0a+

i.e. blocking status was set 2 days ago.

Comment 9

[Jason Bassford]

That's what I get for being too vague. <grin>  I'd meant raising the severity to
"blocker".  Isn't this preventing smoketests from running on the installer
version of SeaMonkey?

Comment 10

[Benjamin Smedberg]

This was caused by a change in design of the XPCOM glue:

The standalone XPCOM glue is now loading the dependent libraries that XPCOM
needs (xpcom_core.dll) but is not loading the dependent libraries that are
needed by the application (gfx, js, probably some mailnews stuff).

There are two solutions: an expedient solution that wallpapers over the problem
and a good solution that will require some work from seamonkey.

1) EXPEDIENT: add the GRE path to the PATH envvar in the windows version of
XPCOMGlueStartup. This is a hack because it only works on windows, and it isn't
really "correct", see #2.

2) CORRECT: In between calling XPCOMGlueStartup and NS_InitXPCOM2, the apprunner
should manually load whatever dependent libraries are required by that
application. The reason this is not easy is that seamonkey currently uses the
(rather broken) GREStartup() function instead of separate XPCOMGlueStartup and a
custom directory provider passed to NS_InitXPCOM2.

I can provide a patch for solution #1, but I encourage the seamonkey coders to
get their act together, implement a real dirserviceprovider for seamonkey, and
load the proper dependent libs in the apprunner.

Comment 11

[[e-mail]]

So is the -greLocal installer option a workaround?

Comment 12

[Benjamin Smedberg]

It should be, yes.

Comment 13

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

My findings are indeed that running C:\Documents and
Settings\Owner\Desktop>seamonkey-1.0a.en-US.win32.stub-installer.exe -greLocal
from the command line results in a successful installation. ;-)

Comment 14

[Edward]

Confirming the success of Stephen's workaround on Windows XP Home - Service Pack 2.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050719
SeaMonkey/1.0a

Comment 15

[OstGote!]

*** Bug 301235 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to comment #10)
>The standalone XPCOM glue is now loading the dependent libraries that XPCOM
>needs (xpcom_core.dll) but is not loading the dependent libraries that are
>needed by the application (gfx, js, probably some mailnews stuff).
OK, so where was the code that used to load js etc? Also, is there any reason
not to hack GRE_Startup, surely anyone who used it would be affected?

Comment 17

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Attachment: Hack GRE_Startup()

This is the patch to hack GRE_Startup... it builds (I added the printf for
debugging, it should be removed before final checkin). I need somebody to build
windows seamonkey+installer to test it before I request review.

I would actually prefer that seamonkey stopped using the GRE and went back to
-grelocal by default.

Comment 18

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

Comment on attachment 190021 [details] [diff] [review]
Hack GRE_Startup()

this patch does make seamonkey start up correctly.

+	 printf("newpath = %s\n", newPath);

that should probably be removed

Comment 19

[Darin Fisher]

Comment on attachment 190021 [details] [diff] [review]
Hack GRE_Startup()

deferring to bsmedberg since he's the one who's been hacking GRE code lately.

Comment 20

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

darin: it's his patch...

Comment 21

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Comment on attachment 190021 [details] [diff] [review]
Hack GRE_Startup()

Yeah, it's my patch ;-)

Comment 22

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

*** Bug 301843 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 23

[OstGote!]

*** Bug 300878 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 24

[Darin Fisher]

Comment on attachment 190021 [details] [diff] [review]
Hack GRE_Startup()

Sorry, I only looked at who assigned r= to me :-P


>Index: xpcom/glue/standalone/nsXPCOMGlue.cpp

>+        printf("newpath = %s\n", newPath);

please kill this printf before checking in.  r=darin

Comment 25

[J. Reynolds]

Today's "nightly" build still has this problem.  So, wouldn't it help to set
this to be a priority 1 and the target milestone to be SeaMonkey1.0alpha, also?

Comment 26

[Robert Kaiser]

(In reply to comment #25)
> Today's "nightly" build still has this problem.  So, wouldn't it help to set
> this to be a priority 1 and the target milestone to be SeaMonkey1.0alpha, also?

No, it wouldn't help, as reviews won't happen faster just because those are set,
and additionally, those are for the assignee to set for his own planning. The
blocking-seamonkey1.0a is enough to see that we won't ship that release without
that fix, and severity set to blocker is enough to show it's a bad bug.
(Additionally, there's even a known workaround available.)

BTW, Benjamin, shouldn't we seek the rest of needed reviews/approvals and drive
it in?

Comment 27

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Comment on attachment 190021 [details] [diff] [review]
Hack GRE_Startup()

fwiw, a=me though nobody asked for it

Comment 28

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Fixed on trunk for 1.8b4

Comment 29

[Marc]

Just downloaded latest version this morning... Does not work!

Comment 30

[Johannes Walther]

Same for me with build 2005072605, same behaviour as with any installer build of
the last days.

Comment 31

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

Please, people.  The fix was landed at 2005-07-26 07:12 PDT, which means it was
around 2 hours after the build was created.  It'll be available in tomorrow's build.

Comment 32

[Benoît]

Verified fixed in today's (27 June) trunk build.

Comment 33

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

*** Bug 302323 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 34

[Matti]

This bug has occurred again in SeaMonkey XP 2005-09-17.

Comment 35

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

(In reply to comment #34)
> This bug has occurred again in SeaMonkey XP 2005-09-17.

Yes, but it's filed as bug 308838.