443960 - FF3 fails to open when called from within Thunderbird via url link.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Leon Goldman]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052912 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052912 Firefox/3.0

Upgraded to FF3. When I open a message in Thunderbird (2.0.0.14) and it has a link to an http or https link and I click on it, FF3 does not open at all. This happens with all themes and addons disabled. In FF2.0.0.14 the link opens without a problem. After each attempt to open the link a running process is left behind which needs to be killed.
This is despite the fact that FF3 is set as the default browser in KDE and Gnome. Thunderbird has as its network.protocol-handler.app "xdg-open". If I call a url from the console with /usr/bin/xdg-open while FF3 is the default browser, the url does open in FF3. It just never works from within Thunderbird.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Set FF3 as default with or without addons
2.open email in Thunderbird
3.Click on link within an email in Thunderbird
Actual Results:  
Appears to be calling a program as an Icon "bounces" for a while next to the mouse cursor, then nothing. Checking processes reveals a process running for firefox and firefox-bin

Expected Results:  
FF# should open to the url chosen.

Comment 1

[Anthony Lanni]

I'm seeing basically the same thing.  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 update 4: same versions of T-bird and Firefox as Leon.  I have 

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http", "/usr/bin/firefox");
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.ftp", "/usr/bin/firefox");
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.https", "/usr/bin/firefox");

set in my Thunderbird prefs.js file.  Works fine with Firefox 2.0.

Also I found that mailto: and File->Send Link... do not open Thunderbird properly.  This also works in Firefox 2.  I do have 

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.mailto", "/usr/bin/thunderbird");

set in Firefox's prefs.js file.

Comment 2

[Anthony Lanni]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444808 is open for the issue of Firefox not opening Thunderbird compose windows.

Comment 3

[Anthony Lanni]

Works in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 update 1: OS/packaging issue rather than software?  I'll bring it up with Red Hat as well.  I did note that the user_prefs settings don't seem to matter: window manager 'Preferred Applications' seems to trump them.  I'm using GNOME 2.8 on RHEL4 and v2.16 on RHEL5.

Comment 4

[Anthony Lanni]

    And yet another update.  :)  Fixed this: it's "because of an incompatibility between the libraries used to run Thunderbird and those Firefox 3 needs to run, likely because Thunderbird is based on Firefox 2 sources."

http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=258118&tstart=0

I added the line

unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH

directly above the line

moz_libdir=/usr/lib/firefox-3.0

in /usr/lib/firefox-3.0/firefox, as the page suggests.  (Note that your install may be in a different directory, so that script and line may be different.)

Worked for me.

Comment 5

[Leon Goldman]

I tried Anthony's suggestion as recommended in the opensolaris.org thread, but it made no difference on my system. I added the unset entry, but FF3 did not open on being called from Thunderbird if FF3 is the default browser. This is using KDE 3.5.9 and Mandriva 2008.1

Comment 6

[Leon Goldman]

A solution for those with Mandriva was posted on their site at [url]http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?p=520359#520359[/url]. Problem goes away using TBird from Mozilla site and not the package from Mandriva. Using both FF3.01 and TB2.0.0.14 from mozilla.com works without need to alter the script.

Comment 7

[Fred]

FF3 fails to open when called from within Thunderbird via URL link also for me
using:

SLC4 (http://linux.web.cern.ch/linux/scientific4/)
firefox 3.0.1 
thunderbird 1.5.0.12 (20080724)
KDE 3.3.1-11.el4 Red Hat


I would like to confirm that the proposal to 

unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH

(see http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=258118&tstart=0)
as mentioned by Anthony (see Comment #4) works also fine for me (since two days).

Comment 8

[Anthony Lanni]

    I got a new rpm from Red Hat for T-bird 2.0.0.16 rolled for RH Enterprise Linux 4.  Still needs the 'unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH' line in /usr/bin/firefox-3.0.1/firefox to open links properly.  The package was rolled using the stock tar.gz file from the Mozilla download site.

thx
    anthony

Comment 9

[HBCanon]

Same results with 3.0.1 as the guy that opened this problem. 
This is going to force me to down grade until this is fixed. Highly unacceptable.
HBCanon

Comment 10

[Tibor Nagy]

I had the same problem under SuSe 10.3. All of the workarounds above did not help. I found that an environment variable is set if FF is started from TB:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/$LIB/libaoss.so

I don't know what it does, but if I insert the next line into the starter script (/usr/lib/firefox/firefox at me), it works:

unset LD_PRELOAD

Comment 11

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Did you try resetting (removing) the prefs in comment 1, and just let the system call the default browser?

Comment 12

[HBCanon]

I finally did what I always do eventually in these cases. I completely uninstalled FF, rebooted, reinstalled FF 3.0 clean. It all works now. On two machines. Don't allow installation over the 2.xxx stuff.  Do a clean install. 
Good habits from my mainframe days.
HBCanon

Comment 13

[jnerin]

(In reply to comment #10)
> I had the same problem under SuSe 10.3. All of the workarounds above did not
> help. I found that an environment variable is set if FF is started from TB:
> 
> LD_PRELOAD=/usr/$LIB/libaoss.so
> 
> I don't know what it does, but if I insert the next line into the starter
> script (/usr/lib/firefox/firefox at me), it works:
> 
> unset LD_PRELOAD

After having tried a lot of changes (and reverting them back for not working) this is the one it worked.

Just for the record, the info I collected while searching for a solution.

I'm using gentoo, KDE 3.5, firefox 3.5, thunderbird 2.0.0.22 and I'm having the same issues as this one (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1338745):

ps auxww|grep firefox
jnerin    6469  6.6  7.8 400248 204632 ?       Sl   08:04   4:05 /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox
jnerin    6670  0.0  0.0   3656  1140 ?        S    08:15   0:00 /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox -remote openURL(http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_at_Nuremberg,new-tab)
jnerin   31898  0.0  0.0   3656  1140 ?        S    08:39   0:00 /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox http://www.ojodigital.com/foro/software/274910-firefox-3-5-perfiles-de-color.html

The first version with openURL is when selecting firefox as the default browser in KDE Control Center but by browsing the default apps (Internet -> Mozilla Firefox). The second one with just the URL is by setting the default browser to /usr/bin/firefox. Neither one works with thunderbird, both works in command line. The processes WCHAN is futex_wait, and a backtrace with gdb shows little help:
(gdb) bt
#0  0xb7f5f424 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#1  0xb7f232d9 in __lll_lock_wait () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
#2  0xb7f1eaf7 in _L_lock_54 () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
#3  0xb7f1e4aa in pthread_mutex_lock () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
#4  0x080552cb in ?? ()
#5  0x0805d160 in ?? ()
#6  0x00000000 in ?? ()

Comment 14

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, are you still seeing this issue with Firefox 3.6.12 or later in safe mode? If not, please close. These links can help you in your testing.
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles
Also, please consider using the most recent Firefox 4 beta build, your bug may be resolved there.

Comment 15

[Tibor Nagy]

This problem disappeared at me.

Comment 16

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.13 or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.