464429 - Support custom proxy configuration (always or in case of connection failure)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 430469

(Toolkit :: Crash Reporting, defect)

Description

[Helder "Lthere" Magalhães]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3

(This is an rewritten version of an issue originally reported to Breakpad project as issue 278 [1].)

Crash reporter doesn't support automatic proxy settings (something which is already reported in Breakpad project as issue 232 [2]) nor an alternative. My particular LAN environment's connection setting is set to automatic (screenshot "LAN Settings", to be attached in a follow up) and I'm behind a corporate proxy which requires authentication.

While I'm aware that implementing automatic proxy detection can be hard (at least, this is suggested by Breakpad's issue 232 [2]), Cygwin setup [2] and many more open source projects support it. Providing an alternative configuration (using the same example, similar to Cygwin's setup, screenshot "Cygwin Setup Connection Type" to be attached in a follow up), to be used in case of connection failure or prior to an attempt, would be most valuable: I'm convinced that Crash Reporter is missing many (most?) reports from corporate users, which are therefore hidden from the development team. These reports which are not submitted are potentially obfuscating interesting/severe problems which only/mostly occur in corporate environments - Web-based Intranet applications, for example, are known to have usage patterns different from those available in the Internet.

Although this might be considered an enhancement at a first glance, I'd personally label this as an issue, due to the amount of (potentially) valuable information which may currently being wasted. In my particular case, for example, I have about 15 crashes sitting in the reporter's pending folder [4]...

Currently, no workaround is known. I wasn't able to find a way, in the Crash Reporter documentation [5] [6], which allowed to try submission of pending reports [4] (command line parameters?). This would allow changing Internet Options to use a fixed proxy server, which may be supported [2].

Finally, although the "Build Identifier" refers to Firefox stable, this was also reproduced using an updated nightly version. Additional details contains the specific build identifiers.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/google-breakpad/issues/detail?id=278
[2] http://code.google.com/p/google-breakpad/issues/detail?id=232
[3] http://www.cygwin.com/
[4] %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports\pending
[5] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Breakpad
[6] http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Mozilla+Crash+Reporter

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Firefox crashes;
2. Crash Reporter opens;
3. Authorization to send crash reports is granted;

Just to make it clear, being able to always reproduce applies to the fact that it's never possible to submit a crash report, not to crashing Firefox.
Actual Results:  
Reporter states it couldn't send the information. Restarting Firefox and typing "about:crashes" in the address bar shows "No crash reports have been submitted", which is coherent but not expected.

Expected Results:  
Crash reports would be sent to a remote server.

Version details:
Crash reporter - 1.9.0.3188
Firefox stable - Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3)
Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3
Firefox nightly - Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1b2pre) Gecko/20081111 Minefield/3.1b2pre
Operating System - Windows XP SP3 (ENU)

LAN to WAN details:
Proxy type - squid-based
Proxy settings (Internet Options) - automatic detection
Proxy authentication - HTTP

Comment 1

[Helder "Lthere" Magalhães]

Attachment: Cygwin Setup Connection Type

Comment 2

[Helder "Lthere" Magalhães]

Attachment: LAN Settings

Comment 3

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Seems likely to be a dupe of either bug 405932 or bug 430469.

Comment 4

[Helder "Lthere" Magalhães]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Seems likely to be a dupe of either bug 405932 or bug 430469.

Agreed, this is pretty much aligned with bug 430469. Thank you for catching it. :-)

Sorry (again, Ted!) for the wasted time: while I did search for related issues, using "Crash Reporter" within Mozilla's bug tracker tricked me, where "Breakpad" should have (also) been used... :-(

Nevertheless, this may (arguably, of course) contain interesting information for the original bug report.