346658 - Numerous proxy dialogs

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 230190

(Toolkit :: Password Manager, defect)

Description

[Francois Botha]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.5) Gecko/20060719 Firefox/1.5.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.5) Gecko/20060719 Firefox/1.5.0.5

I use Firefox in a corporate environment with a proxy server that uses NTLM authentication.  My password expires every month.  

I have numerous plugins, including the GMail notifier and ForecastFox.  They obviously periodically check their servers for updates.

Sometimes it happens, like this past weekend, that my password expires when I'm not at work.  So the mentioned plugins continue to check their servers and everytime a proxy auth dialog pops up.  

But I'm not here to click OK / Cancel or to enter my new password.  So this goes on and on, and when I eventually get to work, I have 200 proxy auth dialogs waiting for me.  

Sometimes it seems the GDI resources run out.  My PC is very slow and the proxy auth dialogs are misformed, i.e. not the correct size, without textboxes and 5px high buttons!  Check http://www.asaba.co.za/firefoxproxy.jpg for screenshot.

My noble suggestion:  Make it so that only 1 proxy auth dialog can be shown at a time.



Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Actually NTLM Proxy auth is a bit broken anyway, see Bug 318253. So I wonder that you do not get the auth dialog more often (even when the password does not expire).

Comment 2

[Francois Botha]

Yes, I do get proxy auth dialogs sometimes out of the blue, but when I click ok, it works fine. Unlike Bug 318253 where the user has to click it 8 times or more.

I'll wait and see if this still occurs in Firefox 2

(In reply to comment #1)
> Actually NTLM Proxy auth is a bit broken anyway, see Bug 318253. So I wonder
> that you do not get the auth dialog more often (even when the password does not
> expire).
> 

Comment 3

[Francois Botha]

Attachment: Numerous proxy auth dialogs (Firefox 2)

Comment 4

[Francois Botha]

Attachment: Numerous proxy auth dialogs (Firefox 1.5) showing limited GDI resources

Comment 5

[Francois Botha]

Nope, problem still occurs in Firefox 2.

Timing was great, since my domain password expired over the weekend and I could verify that I had numerous proxy auth dialogs waiting.

I removed the screenshot on the external server and uploaded it as an attachment as I've should've done in the first place.

(In reply to comment #2)
> I'll wait and see if this still occurs in Firefox 2

Comment 6

[Mikel Ward]

I get the same thing when I start Firefox.  It restores all the windows and tabs from my previous session, so I get several proxy dialog boxes (I think one per window).

As Francois said, the key is to "make it so that only 1 proxy auth dialog can be shown at a time" (across the whole browser).

Comment 7

[Luiz Angelo Daros de Luca]

This problem still occurs. To minimize it, why firefox just use a mutex/semaphore. 

//need auth
canceled=false
while not canceledauth {
   sincronize {
      if authed return
      authmethod 
   }
}
{

It will minimize some bugs as bug 356300, bug 230190 and others. Just avoid that 2 auths occurs at the same time (which is generally useless even for different resorces)

Comment 8

[Lee Moku]

(In reply to comment #7)
> It will minimize some bugs as bug 356300, bug 230190 and others. Just avoid
> that 2 auths occurs at the same time (which is generally useless even for
> different resorces)
> 

If Firefox is configured to use a proxy that supports basic authentication (not NTLM), I would like to chime in that when Firefox restores a session that has, say 3 windows and approximately 500 tabs across these 3 windows, that Firefox will put up 500+ prompts for the username/password. There is a prompt for each tab and sometimes more than one prompt per tab.

So while it would be an improvement to have a lock-step approach to clicking okay on the prompt, I would prefer not to have to click 500+ times each time Firefox starts up and restores my session.

There are similar bugs which suggest some preference variable workarounds that may help fix the multiple prompting problem in the short run:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112179
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=230190

Comment 9

[RNicoletto]

Look at my comment here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356300#c7