346198 - starting remote firefox in X doesn't start new firefox, but triggers new window from local firefox

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Shell Integration, defect)

Description

[hacksaw]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060614 Fedora/1.5.0.4-1.2.fc5 Firefox/1.5.0.4 pango-text
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060614 Fedora/1.5.0.4-1.2.fc5 Firefox/1.5.0.4 pango-text

I'm on a local linux box, ssh'ed into a remote box, with X11 forwarding enabled.

If I start firefox on the remote box, I get a new window from my local firefox, which is not what I want, since I want to look at file:///var/www on the remote box.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. In linux, ssh -X to remote box
2. start firefox
3. look at file:///var/www, compare to ls listing on remote box.

Actual Results:  
Wrong directory, it's the one from the local host

Expected Results:  
I should see the one on the host where I issued the new firefox command.

Comment 1

[Frank Zwart]

I have the same issue, even when I start firefox with the --display= setting: 

user@host1:~$ ssh -Y user@host2
user@host2:~/firefox$ ./firefox -v
Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6, Copyright (c) 1998 - 2006 mozilla.org
user@host2:~/firefox$ ./firefox --display=0:10

Opens up a local (host1) firefox .

Using: Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on both host1 and on host2 , with firefox downloaded from http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ (not using Ubuntu package). 

Comment 2

[Frank Zwart]

Apologies, forgot some relevant information: 
Firefox used (same on host1 and on host2): 
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6

Comment 3

[Vincent Lefevre]

Seems to be the same bug as bug 345900, where it is said that there's an option to avoid that, but it no longer works. Anyway starting a remote firefox should be the default since:
  * The IP address is important (intranet, authentication by IP...).
  * The profile (i.e. the .mozilla/... directory) is different.
This bug prevents the user from being able to browse some web sites.

Comment 4

[Vincent Lefevre]

Bug 296363 is also about the same problem, and the suggested workaround (setting MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1) doesn't work either.

Comment 5

[[:Aleksej]]

Is this reproducible with the latest Firefox trunk (3) or 2 builds?

Comment 6

[Vincent Lefevre]

I cannot reproduce it with Firefox 2.

Comment 7

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

closing as incomplete -> no feedback and wfm per comment #6

Comment 8

[hacksaw]

I just reproduced this between two Ubuntu 8.04 systems, both running Firefox 3.0 Gecko/2008060309

Comment 9

[hacksaw]

For the purposes of prioritization, if I need to look at html files in a package on one of the several servers I use, I just can't. It sends the command to my local firefox, which can't see the server filesystem at all, nor should it. In addition, I can't get rid of my local firefox, as these are web applications, and I need to test them from something not on the server.

I can't speak for the majority of people out there, but for me this is a critical bug. 

Comment 10

[Vincent Lefevre]

I can reproduce it now under Debian too with Firefox 2 (iceweasel in fact).

Comment 11

[Vincent Lefevre]

Well, in fact, it seems that the bug cannot be reproduced between a PowerPC Debian machine and an x86_64 Debian machine. That's probably why my test in comment #6 failed.

Comment 12

[Benjamin Smedberg]

This is by design and will not be fixed.

Comment 13

[Vincent Lefevre]

Actually it seems that this very general bug was more or less fixed with the -no-remote option.

But I think that:
  * How "file:///" (and "file://localhost/") URLs provided as an argument are handled should be documented (bug 662528).
  * There should be a new option to connect to a running instance only when it is on the same machine, since on a remote machine, file:///" URL's and other things may no longer work (bug 662538).

Comment 14

[hacksaw]

Why would this behavior be the right thing by default? I would argue it breaks the principle of least astonishment at the most basic level. I start a browser on a remote machine, I expect it to *run* on that remote machine. I didn't ask Firefox to find my browser for me.

Note that in the instance where I was using this, I had two accounts, each with their own, unshared, not really at all alike bookmarks, history, etc. I only used that machine to debug (ironically) my bugzilla installation.