305914 - New profiles do not work correctly with global extensions

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[David Gatto]

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: Thunderbird version 1.0.6 (20050716)

Profiles created after installing a global extension with
-install-global-extension will receive the following error when that profile is
used to start Thunderbird:  "Any old extensions that you have installed have
been disabled".  The global extension is still listed in Tools/Extensions as
enabled, but its functionality is missing.  The only fix I've found for this is
to delete the chrome folder and xul.mfl file from the new profile.  This allows
the global extension to work as intended.  Profiles that exist before the global
extension is installed do not have this problem.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install a global extension
2. Create a new profile
3. Start Thunderbird with the new profile.

Actual Results:  
Got the message "Any old extensions that you have installed have been disabled".
 And the global extension(s) do not work.

Expected Results:  
Worked as intended.

Comment 1

[gnarwhal]

this also affects firefox 1.0.7
the scenario is the same and recieves the same error message

Comment 2

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Is this still a problem with 1.5?

Comment 3

[ViktorHorvath]

I have a similar problem, so I'm adding this here instead of opening a new bug. Sorry if I'm wrong. The mailing list of the Enigmail extension told me to file a bug, as it's a generic extension problem.

I'm a student admin in my university's Mac OS X pool. The user's
homedirectories are on a Novell server, OS and applications are
installed on each machine (running Mac OS 10.4, but I think the OS isn't
that important here). At the moment only Thunderbird 1.5 without any
global extensions is installed, and I'm trying to figure out how to give
our users the pleasure of using Enigmail in it.

The following points lead me to the decision that I should make Enigmail
a global extension:
(1) The home directories are with quota, so anything additional put
there should be avoided.
(2) The user should never have to fiddle around with the extensions
himself, for him Thunderbird and Enigmail should appear as one thing. Of
course, it would be my administrator's duty to upgrade both Thunderbird
and Enigmail properly, if an upgrade is needed.

However, while trying around, I found myself in a mess, with quite
contradictory instructions about how to install global extensions (and
if I should install them at all). I hope to describe my problems as
clear as possible:

(a) If I speak of a "global extension", I installed that by running the
thunderbird binary with "-install-global-extension XYZ.xpi" as root,
starting Thunderbird as root once after that.

(b) So far, I had Thunderbird 1.5 installed on a test machine, with
Enigmail 0.94.0 and the German language pack as global extensions. That
worked; when I logged into that computer, I had Enigmail in it, and when
I logged into another computer with Thunderbird, but without Enigmail, I
had it not. OK so far.

(c) Now, I have a machine with newer software: Thunderbird 1.5.0.4 and
Enigmail-DE (one localized global extension instead of the two former).
On this machine, neither of the two former global extensions are
installed.

(d) When I log onto that new machine, I only have the old, outgreyed
extensions. It says they would be deinstalled the next time I started
Thunderbird, but that never happens, the situation remains the same no
matter how often I start Thunderbird. 

(e) When I delete the *global* Enigmail-DE extension, the old extensions
for my user account vanish. But still, the new one does not show up, no
matter how often I start it.

(f) Writing scripts to delete parts of my user's profiles is out of
question; I can't simply delete their preferences.

My conclusion:

I can't rely on that my users won't have any problems if I put an
updated Thunderbird/Enigmail combination in the pool, so I'm forcing
them to deal with their extensions and profiles (or forcing them to run
to me - we are a university, even if most people unfortunately don't
care about mail security, that still could be a lot of people knocking
at my door).

So I don't do any global extensions, just writing a note how to install
Enigmail on their own. I'd really liked to present GPG support as a
default. 

It would be nice to large administrated networks (universities, companies...) 
if I could "hard-compile" an extension so that users would never have to
fiddle around with it theirselves. I wouldn't hesitate to recompile Thunderbird myself, if that would be possible. Global extensions, in their present state, are not that usable to me. Sorry if I missed something, I'd gladly be corrected!

Comment 4

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

(In reply to comment #3)
That would not be the same bug... this bug is for 1.0.x and almost all of the EM has been re-written since then and works quite differently than in 1.0.x including the way global extensions work. Please file a new bug for what you are experiencing and it would help if the initial report just contained the details of the problem you are experiencing.

Comment 5

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

No response from reporter to comment #2 for over a year... resolving -> wfm