506452 - Shell service component unavailable (NS_ERROR_XPC_GS_RETURNED_FAILURE returned on instantiation)

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 383348

(Firefox :: Shell Integration, defect)

Description

[(no longer active)]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090725 Minefield/3.6a1pre

I am seeing this problem on every Firefox I build from the source.  Typing the following code in the error console leads to the error below:

Components.classes["@mozilla.org/browser/shell-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIShellService)

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80570016 (NS_ERROR_XPC_GS_RETURNED_FAILURE) [nsIJSCID.getService]"  nsresult: "0x80570016 (NS_ERROR_XPC_GS_RETURNED_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame :: javascript:%20Components.classes["@mozilla.org/browser/shell-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIShellService) :: <TOP_LEVEL> :: line 1"  data: no]

In addition, none of the shell services work, and things like <http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/shell/test/browser_420786.js> also fail every time.

A google search <http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial&hs=z9f&q=ns_error_xpc_gs_returned_failure+shell&aq=f&oq=&aqi=> seems to suggest that I am not the only one getting this error.

This manifests itself by lack of features such as setting a picture as the desktop background, or failing to open feeds in external applications, etc.

I am trying to debug this, and I'll update this bug as I get more info.

This is blocking my work in bug 495495 to figure out what is wrong with the test I wrote for that bug.  On Tinderbox, that test also caused the browser shell test to fail, but for me that test fails even without that patch.