304250 - file:// URLs to Network Shares (UNC) do not work, must used malformed URL

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 66194

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Matthew W. Jackson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6

On an intranet page with file:// URLs to resources on network shares, Firefox is
unable to navigate to a properly formed file URL on any machine other than the
local machine.

For example, the URL "file://server/projects/test.txt" will not work.  As far as
I know, file URLs are supposed to allow an optional computer name between the
first two slashes and the third slash.  If omitted, "localhost" is assumed.

The URLs can be *made* to work (I discovered this by typing the physical file
path in the address bar) by using "file://///server/projects/test.txt", but this
is grossly incorrect, as it would be shorthand for
"file://localhost///server/projects/test.txt", which makes no sense.

I'm not sure if this is a bug with Windows intergration or in general, but it
could limit Firefox's use in a corporate environment where files are not always
placed on web servers, but are linked from emails and intranet websites.

Also, once this is fixed, typing "\\server\projects\test.txt" should also
redirect to the correct file:// URL, not the one with five slashes.

Oddly enough, Internet Explorer supports both the correct and incorrect forms,
so I'm not against removing support for the incorrect URLs.

Also, Firefox seems to simply ignore the computer part of the file URL.  For
example, "file://server/C:/" will navigate to "C:\", while it should give an
error since there is no "C:" share on "server".

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Type a properly formed file:// URL in the address bar. (actual URLs will
differ from person to person, based on their own Local networks)
2. Hit enter or click Go.


Actual Results:  
The file or directory is not loaded.

Expected Results:  
The file or directory should be loaded.

about:buildconfig

Build platform
target
i586-pc-msvc

Build tools
Compiler 	Version 	Compiler flags
$(CYGWIN_WRAPPER) cl 	12.00.8804 	-TC -nologo -W3 -nologo -Gy -Fd$(PDBFILE)
$(CYGWIN_WRAPPER) cl 	12.00.8804 	-TP -nologo -W3 -nologo -Gy -Fd$(PDBFILE)

Configure arguments
--disable-ldap --disable-mailnews
--enable-extensions=cookie,xml-rpc,xmlextras,pref,transformiix,universalchardet,webservices,inspector,gnomevfs,negotiateauth
--enable-crypto --disable-composer --enable-single-profile
--disable-profilesharing --enable-optimize --disable-debug --disable-tests
--enable-static --disable-shared --enable-official-branding

Comment 1

[Adam Guthrie]

Related to bug 66194?

Comment 2

[Matthew W. Jackson]

Yes, this does appear to be a duplicate of 66194.  I must have been searching
for the wrong keywords, since I did not find that bug in three separate searches.

However, that bug does not seem to discuss the complete ignoring of the computer
name (e.g. "file://server/C:/" resolving to "file:///C:/").

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to mark it as a duplicate or if somebody else
should, but that bug is exactly what I was talking about, worded differently.

Comment 3

[Adam Guthrie]

Only one issue per bug. Please file another bug for the second issue (after
thoroughly searching Bugzilla).

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 66194 ***