61686 - Odd existing mimeTypes.rdf makes mozilla' preferences dialog choke

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 50914

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, defect, P3)

Description

[Anthony Baxter]

Some time recently the mime types helper applications has stopped working
for me. To get it to work again, I had to create a new profile and copy
the mimeTypes.rdf file from the new profile over my old one. It appears
to be quite a different format - I'll attach the broken one and the new
one that worked to this bug report.
The symptoms I was seeing was that I was completely unable to use the
helper applications editing - if I brought up an edit window, and hit
'Ok' nothing would happen. Stdout gets the following message:

JavaScript error:
 line 0: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x8
0004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIRDFContainer.Init]"  nsresult: "0x80004005
(NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame ::
chrome://communicator/content/pref/overrideHandler.js :: anonymous :: line 242"
 data: no]

I don't know exactly what it is in the RDF that makes it choke - but I've not
used anything but the preferences dialog to edit it. It's also been seen by a
couple of other users here. The fix (creating a new profile to get a fresh
mimeTypes.rdf file) is fairly ugly.

Comment 1

[Anthony Baxter]

Attachment: broken mimeTypes.rdf file

Comment 2

[Anthony Baxter]

Attachment: fresh mimeTypes.rdf as produced by CreateProfile.

Comment 3

[Fabian Guisset]

Reporter is this the same as bug 57624?

Comment 4

[Anthony Baxter]

Bug 57624 might have been related - that's possibly how the file got
stuffed, but the symptoms I was seeing was that I was completely unable
to use or edit the helper applications...

Comment 5

[Keyser Sose]

I am thinking about marking this WONTFIX because the cause of the bug cannot be
determined. Thoughts?

Comment 6

[Fabian Guisset]

No, let's leave this open, parhaps mark as new to get someone from the component 
to look at it. Maybe it is a known issue... shrir?

Comment 7

[Anthony Baxter]

Ok, there's obviously a bit of confusion here - what I meant
in this bug was not that the mimeTypes.rdf file got munched,
but that the broken file completely fragged the preferences
dialog. There was also no way to fix this other than creating
a new profile and copy the file out of it - this is extremely
non-obvious.

If the file is fragged to the point of uselessness, the system
should _at_ _least_ put up a notice to that effect, and ideally
offer a way of repairing it. If that's too hard, at least make
it so that deleting the file and restarting will make moz recreate
a default one.

Comment 8

[shrirang khanzode]

ok, this is the same problem as in bug 50914. At some point of time, 
mimetypes.rdf was changed and any old profiles would be seeing this problem. Bug 
50914 gives a good explanation of this problem.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 50914 ***

Comment 9

[shrirang khanzode]

verif dup