59116 - Crash while loading messenger.xul in navigator

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: XUL, defect, P3)

Description

[Fabian Guisset]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; m18) Gecko/20001103
BuildID:    20001103

Mozilla crashes while loading chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul
The graphical interface loads correctly, then when it is about to finish
loading, Mozilla crashes. This works correctly when viewing, for example,
chrome://navigator/content/navigator.xul, or
chrome://messenger/content/am-main.xul, and most of the others.
Another xul I could use to crash Mozilla is
chrome://messenger/content/messengercompose/messengercompose.xul

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1) Open a Mozilla Navigator Window
2) Click in the URL bar and type "chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul"
3) Press Enter

Actual Results:  The page starts loading, showing the MailNews user interface,
then Mozilla crashes.

Expected Results:  It should work like navigator.xul, just opening the xul in
the browser window.

I found this while reading the XUL tutorial, linked at http://www.mozilla.org/docs
The URL for the tutorial is
http://www.xulplanet.com/tutorials/xultu/chromeurl.html
It says to try chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul as an example.
This has been confirmed by at least one other person.
Fabian.

Comment 1

[Henrik Gemal]

Build 20001103 on Win2k loads
chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul
just fine.

Comment 2

[Cyril Bortolato]

On Linux, using build of 11/03, I found the following.

I had my NN profile migrated when I first started this build with a clean
.mozilla directory. It contained an ISP and news account. I also had created
a couple of additional news accounts in mozilla.

1) When I loaded chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul mozilla crashed
after loading the UI. In the console there was this message before the crash:
Found invalid server [nsIMsgIncomingServer: server7] in [nsIMsgAccount:
account7]!
prefillAccount = [nsIMsgAccount: account7]

2) Suspecting a bad account config, I went into Mail/News and removed all
accounts, leaving only "Local folders" and "Outgoing (SMTP) server".
I loaded chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul and mozilla did not crash.

3) Back to Mail/News I created an account, pointing to news.mozilla.org.
When reloading chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul the account was there.

4) When I right clicked on it, and selected "subscribe", mozilla crashed.


Also I then noticed that no panels (ex. Tinderbox, bookmarks, search) were being
loaded in the sidebar (only showing "Loading...") in step 2) and 4).
So it looks to me that when loading chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul
networking functionalities are missing, or misbehave.

Confirming, adding crash keyword.

Comment 3

[Fabian Guisset]

Ok here are additional informations. After reading Cyril's comments, I tested
myself and figured out the cause of this crash :
I had not opened the MailNews component yet, which I had no account opened. When
loading the chrome url, Mozilla browser tried to load the account informations,
but couldn't, cuz there are NO informations! ;) After creating an account, the
bug no longer showed. This is thus very minor because very few people will
actually load a chrome url before creating an account.. but if possible maybe
add a little check to prevent this from happening in the future...
Thanx Cyril,
Fabian.

Comment 4

[John Morrison]

Interesting that having an existing account avoids the crash. I suppose that
may be because the mailnews app is trying to spin up a dialog but is sandboxed 
in the content area. 

At any rate, since mailnews wasn't designed for being loaded that way, it's 
not a priority issue. We shouldn't crash, but there are more common/likely 
ways to crash than this one :-]

For posterity, the crash is on an infinite recursion:

ntdll.dll + 0x49790 (0x77fc9790) 
MSVCRT.DLL + 0x1089 (0x78001089) 
MSVCRT.DLL + 0x1026 (0x78001026) 
nsDocShell::FindItemWithName 
[d:\builds\seamonkey\mozilla\docshell\base\nsDocShell.cpp, line 920] 
nsDocShell::FindItemWithName 
[d:\builds\seamonkey\mozilla\docshell\base\nsDocShell.cpp, line 940] 
nsContentTreeOwner::FindItemWithName 
[d:\builds\seamonkey\mozilla\xpfe\appshell\src\nsContentTreeOwner.cpp, line 
154] 
nsDocShell::FindItemWithName 
[d:\builds\seamonkey\mozilla\docshell\base\nsDocShell.cpp, line 955] 
nsDocShell::FindItemWithName 
[d:\builds\seamonkey\mozilla\docshell\base\nsDocShell.cpp, line 940] 
nsContentTreeOwner::FindItemWithName 
[d:\builds\seamonkey\mozilla\xpfe\appshell\src\nsContentTreeOwner.cpp, line 
154] 


-> Future

Comment 5

[William Garrison]

This happens in normal operation when simply opening mail.

Comment 6

[Håkan Waara]

This loads just fine for me, as does messengercompose.xul, in the navigator
window. In general, Mozilla has become much more stable since the two years ago
when someone comment here. ;-)

I'm inclined to mark it as WORKSFORME.  John, Fabian, you guys OK with that
resolution?

Comment 7

[John Morrison]

actually, the app exits if you don't already have a mailnews account created.

But, this bug is still a moot point.

Comment 8

[Fabian Guisset]

/me agrees with jrgm

Comment 9

[John Morrison]

How about wontfix, because, well, we aren't going to make the use of mozilla in 
this way a "feature", and any improved stability in running this way is just 
a fallout from more directed development (i.e., directed at typical use).

Comment 10

[Håkan Waara]

It's a real edge-case that isn't worth investigating right now...How about
priority; trivial or something? (right now it's set to critical)

Comment 11

[Fabian Guisset]

Fine with me. I was young and stuff. :-)

Comment 12

[timeless]

i had what looked like the same crash just opening preferences/account settings 
in mailnews. I think there's a real bug here, so at some point I may resolve 
this as a duplicate.