443628 - Improve error messages for add-on installation failures

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 552965

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Kevin Hunter]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008061017 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008061017 Firefox/3.0

This particular problem was transient, probably while mozilla.org admins did something behind the scenes.  Anyhow, it was a frustrating user experience for me, so I report this as "Have an interim or explanatory page, for this use case."

I searched for Selenium via https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ . (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=selenium&cat=all )  I clicked the Add to Firefox button and watched the download progress bar in the popup zip by.  When it completed, I got a cryptic error with code -203.  I have no idea what that means ...?

I tried in FF2 and got the same result.

I then copied the URL and pasted to the commandline:

$ wget -c https://services.addons.mozilla.org/downloads/file/29730/selenium_ide-1.0b2-fx.xpi

wget told me HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden

I came back about 30 minutes later and tried again, and this time it worked, both via FF3 (I did not restart FF in the interim) and the commandline method:

$ wget -c https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/file/29730/selenium_ide-1.0b2-fx.xpi

The difference that I see is the URLs had changed (note the 1st commandline vs the second commandline).  From services.addons to just addons.  What's confusing however, is that if it was 403 Forbidden, why did it complete the download in the Addon manager before giving me the error?

Since this is happening through the built-in addon manager, it appears that a nice way of informing the user what's /goes wrong/ has not yet been thought about.  When things work well, it's great, but not when things go wrong.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
* Happens every time while the server-side error exists.  Now that you've fixed that particular error, this won't work.  But issue is a larger inform-better-the-user of what's gone *wrong*.

1. Search for a plugin (selenium in this case)
2. Click "Add to Firefox"
3. Wait for download to complete, then see cryptic (negative?) error code.
Actual Results:  
I believe that I've explained it fairly well in the details section.  If not, ask a question for further clarification and I'll try to elaborate.  Again, since this particular server-side issue is fixed, it's not an issue for the browser per se, but rather that I think this particular user-interface issue should be addressed.

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

The error message would have suggested looking in the error console for further information. Did you do this and could you copy what you found there?

Alternatively could you attach a copy of extensions.log from your profile folder.

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Profiles

Comment 2

[Kevin Hunter]

(In reply to comment #1)
> The error message would have suggested looking in the error console for further
> information. Did you do this and could you copy what you found there?

Yes, it did, but admittedly I keyed in on the word "console."  Since I had started FF from the command line (often synonymous with "console") that's where my mind had me look, not the error console.  In hindsight, it makes sense that the command line had absolutely no output.  Alas.

But in some sense, that's my point.  I believe that as an end user, my user experience should not be one of figuring out what's gone wrong.  The computer (Firefox in this case) already knows what went wrong: tell me.  I can deal with fixing it, but figuring /what to fix/ is not my job.

> Alternatively could you attach a copy of extensions.log from your profile
> folder.

Sure.  To be clear, I *successfully* installed Selenium 30 minutes later, so it's *now* installed.  The point of this bug report is one of user experience, not whether I was able to install a plugin.

Comment 3

[Kevin Hunter]

Hmm.  Alright, so I'm able to recreate this with FF2, but not FF3.  I first discovered this in FF3, which led me to try to install it FF2, however.

$ firefox-2 -P Devel --no-remote
... Error console message:

Error: installLocation has no properties
Source File: file:///usr/lib/firefox/components/nsExtensionManager.js
Line: 4034

Further info:

Hmm, so I'm unable to find extensions.log:

$ cd ~/.mozilla/
$ find . -name "*log"
./firefox/Devel/install.log

Devel is my FF2 profile, currently:

$ cd firefox
$ ls
Devel  ixnvl7hk.default  pluginreg.dat  profiles.ini

$ cat profiles.ini 
[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=ixnvl7hk.default
Default=1

[Profile1]
Name=Devel
IsRelative=1
Path=Devel

Relevant part of Devel/install.log:

$ cat Devel/install.log | head -7
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/downloads/file/15109/firebug-1.05-fx+fl.xpi  --  2008-06-03 12:34:31
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


     Install **FAILED** with error -203  --  2008-06-03 12:34:39

$

Is this what you wanted?

Comment 4

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Hmm.  Alright, so I'm able to recreate this with FF2, but not FF3.  I first
> discovered this in FF3, which led me to try to install it FF2, however.
> 
> $ firefox-2 -P Devel --no-remote
> ... Error console message:
> 
> Error: installLocation has no properties
> Source File: file:///usr/lib/firefox/components/nsExtensionManager.js
> Line: 4034

Sounds like bug 356370 for that case.
extensions.log would only exist for certain errors in Firefox 3.

(In reply to comment #2)
> Sure.  To be clear, I *successfully* installed Selenium 30 minutes later, so
> it's *now* installed.  The point of this bug report is one of user experience,
> not whether I was able to install a plugin.

In that case I don't believe there is much we can do here. The error you saw
happens when something fails internally. We can't say what it is without
investigation. If we found what it was then we would likely fix it rather than
display a more appropriate error.

We could potentially remove the numeric error code which might make it look a
little less obscure, but there will still likely be not enough information to
help a user solve the issue since we don't know what the issue is.

Comment 5

[Kevin Hunter]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #2)
>> Sure.  To be clear, I *successfully* installed Selenium 30 minutes later, so
>> it's *now* installed.  The point of this bug report is one of user experience,
>> not whether I was able to install a plugin.
> 
> In that case I don't believe there is much we can do here. The error you saw
> happens when something fails internally. We can't say what it is without
> investigation. If we found what it was then we would likely fix it rather than
> display a more appropriate error.

Shucks.  Makes sense, but I wish it "could be better."  (Don't we all? ;-) )  Oh well.

> We could potentially remove the numeric error code which might make it look a
> little less obscure, but there will still likely be not enough information to
> help a user solve the issue since we don't know what the issue is.

Dunno.  You're the dev, so the call is up to you.

Comment 6

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I think we certainly need to improve the clarity of the error message from failures. In the event that it is a known http error we can give that, in the event that there is a real internal failure we could potentially include that in a note in the error for users to copy into a bug report.

Comment 8

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Fixed by bug 552965