360435 - nsIAlertsService not available under Linux anymore (BAD_IID error when loading the interface for the alerts service)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Dirk Strauss]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061109 Firefox/1.5.0.8 Flock/0.7.8 XpcomViewer/0.9
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061109 Firefox/1.5.0.8 Flock/0.7.8 XpcomViewer/0.9

I have a problem creating an alert under linux. Not the typical JS alert (window.alert) but the nsIAlertsService: I can't trigger an alert that is used by some of the extensions I use here (Yahoo Mail Notifier, Forecastfox, etc.).

After some research I came up with the idea that the interface Components.interfaces.nsIAlertsService is not shipped with Firefox. Using the extension XPComViewer showed me that an old version of Flock had this interface shipped but Firefox 1.5.0.6 had not this interface shipped with (strange english, I know ;) ). After an email conversation with Michael Dosik I came up with the idea that only the newer versions of Firefox are affected. So, basically: every Firefox starting from 1.5.0.6 up to 2.0 have no nsIAlertsInterface on the linux platform.

Hence my question: why has this interface not found its way to the linux platform? Why has it been removed from the newer releases?

Funnily: with Firefox 2.0 I SAW a nsIAlert when a download finished (I had to enable this behaviour by changing an option in about:config). So, the alertsService MAY be available but why is it not available the way it was mentioned at http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/nsIAlertsService?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. download the linux version of firefox (1.5.0.6 or 2.0, both should not work)
2. install it
3. use a non-root account to execute this: ./firefox -P alertsProfile (or use another profile, whatever you like)
3a. just tested: you can also use a root account. The problem also occurs here.
4. open the javascript console (in Firefox 2: the error console)
5. execute this line:
Components.classes["@mozilla.org/alerts-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIAlertsService);
Actual Results:  
Actual result: BAD_IID exception. 0x80570018

(Since 1.5.0.6 or 1.5.0.7 you can't copy any exception information from the javascript console to the clipboard anymore???)

Expected Results:  
Expected result: nothing. You may get a single response that tells you that the service is available, or something like that. No error or warning should occur.

Only the linux version is affected I think. Don't try to reproduce this bug on a windows machine: you'll not find it ;)

I tested this with the following browsers:

a) Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20061031 Firefox/1.5.0.7 Flock/0.7.7 XpcomViewer/0.9
b) Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6
c) Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0
d) Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0
e) Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7

Comment 1

[Ondrej Brablc]

I confirm to have the same problem on fedora-fc6-i386.vmx . As far as I can see, the component is there but the interface nsIAlertService is not visible, but it is accessible from the download manager.

On other boxes with real FC6 this works just fine.

Comment 2

[Nikitas Liogkas]

I still see this with Firefox 2.0 on Fedora Core 4 (kernel 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4).

Comment 3

[Paul Crown]

I am not able to reproduce with Firefox 2.0.0.12 on Ubuntu Gutsy (linux kernel 2.6.22-14-generic).  [Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080207 Ubuntu/7.10 (gutsy) Firefox/2.0.0.12]

I do have the same problem on Swiftweasel 2.0.0.12 on the same Ubuntu Gutsy machine.  I assumed this was because the browser wasn't a standard Firefox.