426044 - Clicking links in Thunderbird does not open Firefox

Status: REOPENED

(Thunderbird :: General, defect, P5)

Description

[Ira Satinover]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030714 Firefox/3.0b4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030714 Firefox/3.0b4

Using Thunderbird 2.0.0.12  Clicking links to web sites will not open Firefox 3 beta 4.  Acts as if links are dead (nothing happens after clicking link).  If I copy the link (copy link location), then paste it into Firefox, the page will open correctly. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Run Thunderbird
2.Click on link to web page
3.Nothing happens
4.Worked when using official release of firefox
Actual Results:  
Nothing

Expected Results:  
cllicking link in Thunderbird should open firefox at web site linked to.

Comment 1

[Les]

I'm seeing this problem on Fedora 11(2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64) w/ Firefox 3.5
All of the above applies

Comment 2

[Bruce Smith]

I have tried every suggestion if can find on this subject, yet it is still not resolved. Using version version 2.0.0.22 (20090623) and ff 3.0.11 on PCLinuxOS 2009.2, KDE 3.5.10, kernel version 2.6.26.8.tex3. This began a few days ago after upgrading to ff 3.5.1 the 3.5.2. FF was behaving very strangely so I re-installed ff 3.0.11. My KDE Component Chooser default browser is set to firefox and the default email client is set to Thunderbird. I have tried modifying the config file and it has been futile. This really has me stumped. I have been using Linux for almost 7 years. This has happened in the past, but when I made the appropriate changes to the config file and KDE everything worked perfectly.

Selecting any url link in any message start an instance of ff which never launches except in Ksysguard.

Comment 3

[[e-mail]]

I am having this problem as well.

Kubuntu 10.04
Firefox 3.6.3
Thunderbird 3.0.4

Firefox and Thunderbird are both installed from the Kubuntu repositories.  I have verified that network.protocol-handler.app.http and network.protocol-handler.app.https are both set to launch firefox.

Comment 4

[Richard Schumaker]

I am seeing this same problem with Firefox 3.6.12 on a Macbook with Snow Leopard 10.6.5.  Tested links with Safari and Flock as default browser and they opened fine.

Comment 5

[Richard Schumaker]

I am seeing this same problem with Firefox 3.6.12 on a Macbook with Snow Leopard 10.6.5.  Tested links with Safari and Flock as default browser and they opened fine.

Comment 6

[Marty Sachs]

It was working fine for me before yesterday when I upgraded to Firefox 3.6.14.  Now I'm seeing the same issue.  Click on link in Eudora e-mail message and nothing happens in Firefox.  Mac OS X 10.6.6.  Prior to yesterday clicking on link opened a new window in Firefox.

Comment 7

[Marty Sachs]

Sorry for the false alarm.  I tried it on a few other Macs that were also updated to 3.6.14 yesterday and this function worked fine on them.  I downloaded and reinstalled 3.6.14 on my Mac and Firefox is now opening as expected from a link in a Eudora message.  I guess the Firefox auto-update didn't work quite correctly.

Comment 8

[John Sharples]

I am running windows 7, Firefox 5.0 and t/bird 3.1.10. I have exactly the same problem, including the link to confirm my account. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/token.cgi?t=T2bnqvzlmj&a=request_new_account

Comment 9

[John Sharples]

It could be that the problem is in Firefox. Clicking a link in "Calibre" has the same result as T/Bird. Nothing happens. Copy and paste the link in Firefox and it works normally. This behaviour is repeated on all links.

Comment 10

[Ben Lerner]

I just noticed a particular (mis)feature that seems to explain why it erratically works and doesn't work for me on Windows7x64, with Fx10.0.2 and TB10.0.2, at least: if I launch Firefox from the Windows shell (start menu, explorer, task tray, whatever), and also Thunderbird, everything works fine.  When Firefox updates itself, the newly running Firefox instance no longer has a parent process, according to Process Explorer.  Suddenly links in TB fail to make it to Fx.  If I restart Fx, such that it now is a child process of explorer again, links resume working -- without any change to Thunderbird.  A similar issue happens when I have to restart Fx to update a plugin, and the plugin installer launches Fx and then quits.  Or if I launched Fx via a link from TB, then quit and restart TB.  In each case, the running Fx outlives its parent process.

Perhaps whatever logic is being used to detect a running Fx instance fails to find them when they're no longer directly connected to the process tree?  So in reply to comment #6, perhaps (if this occurs again for you) restarting Fx will suffice to fix things?

Comment 11

[Jim Demers]

Same problem here, complicated somewhat by the fact that I just installed updates to both T-Bird and FF.  Clicking on links in messages fails to launch (or switch to) Firefox.  Quitting and re-launching the applications has no effect.

I'm running T-Bird 12.0 beta and FF 11.0 (both up-to-date as of today) under Mac OS-X (10.6.8) on an Intel Core 2 Duo iMac.  Clicking on links in mail messages has the weird effect of de-selecting the T-Bird window, without switchign to another application or opening up any other window.  In that state, the "hand" cursor fails to appear when mousing over links, and while the Apple menu is active, the dock fails to appear when the cursor is run to the bottom of the screen.

Comment 12

[Swarnava Sengupta (:Swarnava)]

Firefox 2.0 is now EOL, please try latest version of Firefox and feel free to open if it reproducible on latest build
* http://getfirefox.com
for support
* https://support.mozilla.org/questions/new

Comment 13

[Ben Lerner]

Per comments 10 and 11, this doesn't appear limited to Fx 2.0.  I still see this issue with TB13 and Fx13, and it only seems to happen when the processes have been detached from their ancestor explorer.exe process.  Please re-open.

Comment 14

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Reopening per comment 10, comment 11, and comment 13.

(In reply to Ben Lerner from comment #13)
> Per comments 10 and 11, this doesn't appear limited to Fx 2.0.  I still see
> this issue with TB13 and Fx13, and it only seems to happen when the
> processes have been detached from their ancestor explorer.exe process. 
> Please re-open.

Ben, how do the processes get detached from their ancester explorer.exe process?
Can you add explanation and STR to reproduce that?
Which OS are you using?

Comment 15

[Ben Lerner]

I've seen this on Win XP (32-bit) and now on Win7 (64-bit).  (I never ran Vista :-p)  TB and Fx can be detached from explorer.exe in several ways, with the common denominator that their parent process dies.  So for instance, when Firefox updates, it launches firefoxupdater, which launches firefox (in staging mode, I guess?), which then relaunches firefox one more time.  When both intermediate processes have finished, the final firefox.exe process is disconnected from explorer.exe.

Now, when I say disconnected, I obviously don't mean that the whole OS loses track of the process, or else you wouldn't be able to use Firefox any longer.  I just mean that the process tree now has gaps in it, and becomes disconnected.

Here's one small STR that doesn't require an update:
1) Launch TB, with Fx *not* running.
2) Click a link in TB to launch Fx.
3) Launch ProcessExplorer, to watch what happens to the process tree.
4) Close and relaunch TB.  Fx is now disconnected from explorer.exe.
5) Try clicking links in TB.  They may or may not work -- usually they don't, for me.

I can't explain the behavior in comment #11, since I'm not on a Mac.

Comment 16

[Patrik Nilsson]

This bug is back in version 24 and 25.0 of thunderbird and firefox on Debian. This have worked before.

Comment 17

[Patrik Nilsson]

Firefox opens when the link is pressed, but no webpage is shown.

Comment 19

[[:Towkir] Ahmed]

I was about file another bug about it, but found this one.
I am using Ubuntu 16.04
Thunderbird 38.8.0
Firefox :
Version 	47.0
Build ID 	20160606113944
User agent:
User Agent 	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0
OS 	Linux 4.4.0-24-generic x86-64

I have just faced this and the bug is reopened already.
Shall I make it new ??

And yes, clicking on a link from thunderbird opens up firefox but a new window which is blank
I expected a new tab on my current window. 
Had to manually copy and paste the link on urlbar to open link.

Comment 20

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

Decreasing the priority as no update for the last 2 years on this bug.
See https://github.com/mozilla/bug-handling/blob/master/policy/triage-bugzilla.md#how-do-you-triage 
about the priority meaning.

Comment 21

[Peter Brown]

I have pretty much this same problem: click link in TB but FF does not open a new page when running. But if I restart FF, the link works fine from TB and continues for a while. Running TB 60.3.0 and FF 63.0.1 (64-bit)
When the link opens from TB to FF it's as though everything worked right, except for the restart. 
I use very few links to email from FF, but just checked and the one I clicked (after restarting FF as noted) worked fine.

Comment 22

[Henri D/CH]

Maybe I can help: I had this problem and searched for solutions on the web. It seemed me promising to change network.protocol-handler.external.https from "False" to "True". This helped immediately, https:// links opened immediately in Firefox ! Setting to False the links don't open anymore; I reproduced this a few times more.

HOWEVER, this was NOT the solution, as then Thunderbird on start always additionally started Firefox on the page https://thunderbird-settings.thunderbird.net/v1/buckets/monitor/collections/changes/changeset?collection=query-stripping&bucket=thunderbird&_expected =0, with data I did not understand.

Then I DELETED the advanced setting network.protocol-handler.external.https and restarted Thunderbird. The deleted setting was there again (automatically restored) and its value was False (exactly as originally when links didn't open in Firefox). But from now the links clicked in Thunderbird open without any problem in Firefox.

Hence, it appears that the original setting (inherited from many previous versions starting with the very early Thunderbird versions) was incorrect, though it displayed the correct setting name with the correct value False ! THERE WAS THE BUG !!!

Comment 23

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

In the process of migrating remaining bugs to the new severity system, the severity for this bug cannot be automatically determined. Please retriage this bug using the new severity system.

Comment 24

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:Gijs, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 25

[:Gijs (he/him)]

This should be in the Thunderbird product per the last few comments...