662528 - Document the use of file:// URL's with the firefox command and possibly remote instance

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Graveyard :: Help Documentation, enhancement)

Description

[Vincent Lefevre]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110430 Iceweasel/3.5.19 (like Firefox/3.5.19)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110430 Iceweasel/3.5.19 (like Firefox/3.5.19)

This is a followup of bug 346198.

"./firefox --help" (from a recent nightly) says:

Usage: ./firefox-bin [ options ... ] [URL]

with nothing else special about the URL. The help text should say how file:// URL's are handled when firefox connects to an instance running on a remote machine. The problem is that the file hierarchy on the remote machine is different.

This can be either just missing documentation or a real bug in the behavior. For instance, should file:/// (local) URL's should be rewritten to a file://remote_host/ form (possibly unsupported, but at least the URL would be more correct and wouldn't make a wrong file to be opened).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. n/a

Comment 1

[George Carstoiu]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:7.0a1) Gecko/20110621 Firefox/7.0a1

Vincent, Firefox 3.5 is no longer officially supported. Can you please try reproducing your issue on Firefox 5?
Thanks!

Comment 2

[George Carstoiu]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:8.0a1) Gecko/20110707 Firefox/8.0a1

Setting status to Resolved Incomplete. Vincent, please reopen if you can provide more information.

Comment 3

[Vincent Lefevre]

My machines being x86_64 ones, I've tested with the nightly:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:8.0a1) Gecko/20110708 Firefox/8.0a1

and the same problem occurs:

1. Run "./firefox" on the local machine.
2. Run "./firefox file:///path/to/some/file/on/the/remote/machine" on the remote machine.

The URL is opened on the local instance, with a file not found error.
Still no documentation about such a limitation concerning file:// URL's.

Comment 4

[Steffen Wilberg]

Opening a file from a remote host using the file:// protocol is really an edge-case not worth documenting in the help page.

If you want to know how to open such a page, double-click it in the explorer/nautlius/whatever file browser.

The Firefox location bar then shows something resembling
file://///server/path/filename

So you can open such a page with this command
firefox file://///server/path/filename

Comment 5

[Vincent Lefevre]

(In reply to Steffen Wilberg from comment #4)
> If you want to know how to open such a page, double-click it in the
> explorer/nautlius/whatever file browser.

I don't use explorer/nautlius/whatever. But anyway the problem is the same.

> So you can open such a page with this command
> firefox file://///server/path/filename

This form is not standard and not supported by Firefox. Perhaps you meant
file://server/path/filename but this doesn't work correctly (firefox opens the local file instead of the file on server), and this is the purpose of this bug report.

Comment 6

[Vincent Lefevre]

(In reply to Vincent Lefevre from comment #5)
> This form is not standard and not supported by Firefox. Perhaps you meant
> file://server/path/filename but this doesn't work correctly (firefox opens
> the local file instead of the file on server), and this is the purpose of
> this bug report.

Note: this is from a test with Firefox 6.0.2 on both sides. I don't remember whether this problem existed in previous versions, but this makes my comment "wouldn't make a wrong file to be opened" (from Comment 0) incorrect.

Comment 7

[Steffen Wilberg]

(In reply to Vincent Lefevre from comment #5)
> I don't use explorer/nautlius/whatever. But anyway the problem is the same.
You can use Ctrl+O in Firefox to navigate to the remote file as well. The point is to open the file somehow and then look in the location bar for the path Firefox uses. And that path should work on the command line as well.

> > So you can open such a page with this command
> > firefox file://///server/path/filename
> 
> This form is not standard
Might be, but I don't care, especially not in this bug.

> and not supported by Firefox.
It works on Windows with 5 slashes. It doesn't work with 2.

I can't help you further, and this bug is not a support forum.
http://support.mozilla.com/ is, as well as a knowledge base and live chat.

Comment 8

[Vincent Lefevre]

(In reply to Steffen Wilberg from comment #7)
> (In reply to Vincent Lefevre from comment #5)
> > I don't use explorer/nautlius/whatever. But anyway the problem is the same.
> You can use Ctrl+O in Firefox to navigate to the remote file as well.

This doesn't work. Before commenting, please make sure that what you say works. Anyway this is off-topic: the problem is not how to open a remote file, but the behavior of firefox w.r.t. its documentation.

> > and not supported by Firefox.
> It works on Windows with 5 slashes. It doesn't work with 2.

This is a bug report against Firefox under Linux, not under Windows!

> I can't help you further, and this bug is not a support forum.

I'm not requesting for help, but for correct documentation (and it's better to have no documentation at all than incorrect documentation). If the documentation says

  firefox-bin [ options ... ] [URL]

and firefox doesn't open the URL (and even worse, firefox opens a different URL/file, possibly with sensitive information), then there's a problem. Since you assume that this isn't a documentation bug, then it is a bug in the behavior.