455937 - crashreporter-override.ini environment variable can persist when running one xul app from another, making crashreporter dialog confusing

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Crash Reporting, defect)

Description

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

crash reporter under Thunderbird says "Firefox had a problem and crashed". Should read "Thunderbird had a problem ..."

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1b1pre) Gecko/20080917030604 Shredder/3.0b1pre
and
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1b1pre) Gecko/20080918110343 Shredder/3.0b1pre

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

I don't see this on mac with today's build.

Comment 2

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

I don't believe this at all, unless something really weird happened. The default crashreporter.ini doesn't contain that text:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/locales/en-US/crashreporter/crashreporter.ini
It's in the crashreporter-override.ini in browser/:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/locales/en-US/crashreporter/crashreporter-override.ini

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

I kind of agree. So bug 412989 implemented crashreporter-override.ini, but what is that doing anyway (and should we have one)?

Why should we need specific strings to say its product 'x' when the
crashreporter already knows its product 'x' as is obvious from the wording on
the buttons?

Comment 4

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

The override is just so we can say "tabs and windows" without making your crash reporter also say that. But you can put whatever strings you want in there for your own app! I hardcoded Firefox in there just because I could, no particular reason.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: 20080918 crashreporter.ini

It's something freaky. .inis look OK

After I saw it the first time, I caused it twice more with crashme! extension for the two aforementioned builds.  THen went back to 20080912, 16, and then 17 and they were all OK.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: messed up TB screen like prior to crash

No crashreporter-override.ini involved afaict.  According to vista search, I have 7 crashreporter-override.ini but they are all in oldish FF trunk build directories.


The original crash, screen symptoms per attached screen shot, might involve some messyness happening in vista - perhaps caused by a remote desktop session to a misbehaving remote connected XP system. This RDP session drives vista's CPU and response time through the roof. And perhaps affects memory?

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: crash reporter screen shot with mixed text THUNDERBIRD and FIREFOX

I wouldn't have believed it either.  see attached screen shot from 9/18.  Unable to reproduce since comment 5, and just retried.

clarifying comment 6 
- FF 3.0.0, 3.0.1, 3.0.2 dirs all have -override files
- no thunderbird dirs have -override files (searched c: drive again)


(as for attachment 339355 [details] screen shot, I know I started to file a bug on that but I'm not finding, perhaps FF crashed)

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I just experienced this with the .si locale.
You can force a crash using Tools|Crash me now! after installing http://socorro.googlecode.com/files/crashme.xpi extension

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: .si locale crash reporter screen shot with mixed text THUNDERBIRD and FIREFOX

.si locale testing 3.0a3 release candidate (I did not attempt to repeat)

Comment 10

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> I just experienced this with the .si locale.
> You can force a crash using Tools|Crash me now! after installing
> http://socorro.googlecode.com/files/crashme.xpi extension

Nope, tried with .si, zh_CN and en_US locale on Mac 10.5.5 with alpha 3 build 3, WFM though.

Comment 11

[Rohana Dasanayaka]

Attachment: Crash Dialog - Locale si

Comment 12

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Created an attachment (id=342571) [details]
> .si locale crash reporter screen shot with mixed text THUNDERBIRD and FIREFOX
> 
> .si locale testing 3.0a3 release candidate (I did not attempt to repeat)

Of note is the fact that your crash reporter has the Firefox text in English and the rest of the text in Sinhala. Are you launching Thunderbird from Firefox in some way? The existence of the override file is stored in an environment variable to be passed to the crashreporter process:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/xre/nsAppRunner.cpp#2719

Comment 13

[Rohana Dasanayaka]

(In reply to comment #8)
> I just experienced this with the .si locale.
> You can force a crash using Tools|Crash me now! after installing
> http://socorro.googlecode.com/files/crashme.xpi extension

I did and sent "crash report" but I can't clearly see info on the dialog which looks like ??? ???????? ????? ???????? ???????? ????? ?????? ????????? ??????? ? ?????? ??.

The localized parts clearly visible.  A jpg file attached.

Comment 14

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

If the environment variable is somehow being propogated from your Firefox instance to a Thunderbird instance you've launched, one thing we could try to fix it would be adding an else block after the if block I just linked that would unset the environment variable if the file is not found.

Comment 15

[Rohana Dasanayaka]

(In reply to comment #12)
> (In reply to comment #9)
> > Created an attachment (id=342571) [details] [details]
> > .si locale crash reporter screen shot with mixed text THUNDERBIRD and FIREFOX
> > 
> > .si locale testing 3.0a3 release candidate (I did not attempt to repeat)
> 
> Of note is the fact that your crash reporter has the Firefox text in English
> and the rest of the text in Sinhala. Are you launching Thunderbird from Firefox
> in some way? The existence of the override file is stored in an environment
> variable to be passed to the crashreporter process:
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/xre/nsAppRunner.cpp#2719

>"Are you launching Thunderbird from Firefox"

No, but I am working (opened) with both (FF 3.0.3 and TB) now. Both TB 2.0.0.17 and TB-Alph3 were installed.

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #12)
> (In reply to comment #9)
> > Created an attachment (id=342571) [details] [details]
> > .si locale crash reporter screen shot with mixed text THUNDERBIRD and FIREFOX
> > 
> > .si locale testing 3.0a3 release candidate (I did not attempt to repeat)
> 
> Of note is the fact that your crash reporter has the Firefox text in English
> and the rest of the text in Sinhala. Are you launching Thunderbird from Firefox
> in some way? The existence of the override file is stored in an environment
> variable to be passed to the crashreporter process:
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/xre/nsAppRunner.cpp#2719

Ted's a genius?

I just reran the sequence of events of how I got there the first time, and I can now recreate the condition. The key is run installer from FF dl manager and start TB from installer.

my exact sequence of events in this case is as follows:
1. dl .si build via thunderbird
2. launch installer from dl manager, i.e. from FF
3. click "finish" of last install dialog page - thunderbird was still running so I closed it
4. click finish again
5. play with .si build (I did not log in to any accounts, and .si build was not made the default mail program)
6. selected crash me now!

Comment 17

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Attachment: possible fix

I can reproduce this with WSM's steps from comment 16. This patch will probably fix it, but it's sort of a pain to test. I'd need to build something other than Firefox with this patch, launch it from Firefox (either via the installer or directly), and then crash that application and verify that it doesn't show the Firefox text in the crash reporter.

Comment 21

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.

Comment 22

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

This likely still happens. Bug has draft patch

Comment 23

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

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S4. However, the bug has 3 duplicates.
:gsvelto, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 24

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.

Comment 25

[Gabriele Svelto [:gsvelto]]

Closing as per bug 1895244 comment 10.