57868 - PDF Helper Application won't launch

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 56662

(Core Graveyard :: File Handling, defect, P3)

Description

[Scott Gifford (old account)]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14-5.0 i686; en-US; m18) Gecko/20001014
BuildID:    0000000000 (CVS 10/23/2000)

I have my browser configured to launch "acroread" when it encounters a PDF file:

	Extension: PDF
	MIME type: application/pdf
	Handled by: acroread (Application)

When I click on one of the many PDF files linked to from this page (or from any
page), the external application is not launched; instead, Mozilla just sits
there.  After clicking on several of these, Mozilla will sometimes become
unresponsive.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Configure acroread as you viewer for PDF files, as described above.

2. Visit http://www.acrobat.com/

3. Click on any of the PDF documents on the left.

Actual Results:  Browser does not do anything.

Expected Results:  acroread starting up and viewing the PDF file.

Comment 1

[Scott Gifford (old account)]

Attachment: My MIME types file

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Worksforme on trunk build 20000102221 on Linux.  It _does_ take acroread a while
to start up, though.

Comment 3

[Scott Gifford (old account)]

I gave it about 10 full minutes on an Athlon 750...It didn't take longer than
that, did it?

Could you attach your working mimeTypes.rdf file, and I'll see if that clears up
the problem for me?

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Attachment: No, it does not take 10 minutes. :) My mimeTypes.rdf file.

Comment 5

[Jacob Steenhagen]

May be related to bug 57810

Comment 6

[Scott Gifford (old account)]

OK, I can work around the problem now (thanks for your config Boris, that helped
me immensely), but it was definitely a bug I ran into before.

It actually looks like 2 bugs:

1. When firing up helper applications, Mozilla does not search your path.
Netscape does, and this is definitely the right behavior.  Hardcoded paths can
be a real PITA for sysadmins.

2. When a helper appliction does not exist (or a full path is not specified), no
error message is displayed at all.  Rather, it looks like Mozilla waits forever
for the application to start, and it never does.

Perhaps I'll open up two new bugs for those, since it's possible that one should
be fixed and the other shouldn't.  I'll do that in the next couple days if
nobody has any objections.

Anybody know a better component for this than Browser/General?

Comment 7

[Arjen Hommersom]

1 is bug 56662, although that works for me.
2 is bug 58667.

I think this bug can be closed.

Comment 8

[Scott Gifford (old account)]

Yup, a dup indeed.  I'll close it out.


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 56662 ***

Comment 9

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

ver