370313 - Overwrite of prefs.js if doing a 'sudo mozilla-thunderbird' then installing german dictionary and restart Thunderbird in normal user mode again.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[Sebastian Vater]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.8.0.9) Gecko/20070126 Ubuntu/dapper-security Firefox/1.5.0.9
Build Identifier: Version 1.5.0.9 (20070104)

A friend of mine was trying to install the german language dictionaries in order to use the built-in spell checker of Thunderbird.
Because Thunderbird was installed using Ubuntu's package manager, installation of the dictoniaries requires root priviliges. To grant them, he typed:
sudo mozilla-thunderbird
in order to start Mozilla Thunderbird in privilege mode. Then he went in the extension manager und clicked on Install in order to install the german language dictorary. Installation is successful but after exiting Mozilla Thunderbird and restart it as normal user, the profile is blocked, i.e. Thunderbird pops up as it would see an empty profile, asking for creating a email account.
Investigation of this showed me that some files in the Thunderbird Profile become chown'ed root:root so I guess that the normal user has permission denied and the Thunderbird profile is considered new.
Now he did a:
sudo chown -R myuser:myuser home/myuser/.mozilla-thunderbird

which still doesn't give back the profile. I then noticed that prefs.js got overwritten and recreated from scratch. So I copied a old prefs.js from a backup to my current profile directory and thus recovered my profile.
I have reproduced this bug on my ubuntu machine with the same Thunderbird, too. My Ubuntu is Kubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06.1 LTS with recent updates.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Backup prefs.js from your current Thunderbird profile in ~/.mozilla-thunderbird
2. Go to http://www.thunderbird-mail.de/hilfe/dokumentation1.5/allg_rechtschreibung.php and download the first XPI file: Deutsch, neue Rechtschr., 2.0.2
3. Install according to the manual in the page, in short, start Thunderbird as root with sudo, then go to extension manager, choose Install and the downloaded XPI file. then restart Thunderbird normal back in user mode.
4. Thunderbird now wants to recreate the profile from scratch, cancel this and exit Thunderbird.
5. Go to console, type (replace user with your username on your linux machine):
sudo chown -R user:user /home/user/.mozilla-thunderbird
sudo chmod -R 0750 user:user /home/user/.mozilla-thunderbird
6. Again restart Thunderbird, profile still isn't there.
7. Copy a backup from your prefs.js to your current Thunderbird profile.
8. Restart Thunderbird => Profile works again!
Actual Results:  
After done all 8 steps everything was back to normal. The bug itself occurs probably between steps 3-4.

Expected Results:  
After step 3, we expected that Thunderbird starts without the prefs.js being trashed.

Extensions used:
DOM Inspector 1.5.0.8 (from Ubuntu)
Enigmail 0.94.0 (from Ubuntu)
Deutsch (DE) Language Pack 1.5.0.2 (from Ubuntu)
Enigmail - DE Sprachpaket 0.94.2

Comment 1

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

several files are written out each shutdown, prefs and cookies being among them. This code/behavior should be the same with Firefox and Seamonkey in addition.

Comment 2

[Mike Gibbs]

SAme problem - upgraded to TB

Comment 3

[Jed Davis [:jld] ⟨⏰|UTC-7⟩ ⟦he/him⟧]

The nsAppRunner change in bug 1323302 will, I believe, also apply to Thunderbird, so the "sudo thunderbird" part of this will now fail immediately instead of quietly breaking the profile.  Hopefully it's now possible install dictionaries as a regular user.