839728 - plugins don't retain their state after restart when changed while in use

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect, P2)

Description

[[:philipp]]

changes to the state of plugins in the addons manager are not kept after a restart of the browser when a gmail-tab is open at the same time and the google talk plugin (https://www.google.com/chat/video?hl=en) is installed on the system.

i can reproduce the issue on a new profile with default settings like this:
-i start firefox, go to the addons manager > plugins section & disable all plugins listed. then i close the window and restart the browser.
-i open the addons manager > plugins again and check that all plugins are still disabled (which they are).
-i open a new tab, enter to mail.google.com, log in to my account and wait until the page is fully loaded.
-i switch back to the addon manager tab & reenable all the plugins listed. afterwards i close & reopen the browser.
-when i go to firefox > addons manager > plugins now the plugins show up as disabled although i've just activated them all in the step before.

i can reproduce the bug when i try those steps with firefox 17 ESR, firefox 18 & firefox 20 - when i use firefox 10 ESR though i get the expected result and plugins retain their state on the next session.

these are all the plugins that are present in about:plugins on my system:
Java(TM) Platform SE 7 U13 - Version: 10.13.2.20
Java Deployment Toolkit 7.0.130.20 - Version: 10.13.2.20
Google Update - Version: 1.3.21.124
Shockwave Flash - Version: 11.5.502.149
Google Talk Plugin Video Accelerator - Version: 0.1.44.23
Google Talk Plugin - Version: 3.13.2.11592
Adobe Acrobat - Version: 9.5.3.305
Adobe Acrobat - Version: 9.5.3.305

Comment 1

[Loic]

It looks like a regression if it worked normally in FF10 ESR.

Comment 2

[[:philipp]]

the first time i get the bug is with this mozilla-central nightly build: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/2012/07/2012-07-26-05-28-03-mozilla-central/

& this is the changeset to the nightly the day before: http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=ef20925bc2a5&tochange=20db7c6d82cc

Comment 3

[Alice0775 White]

Regression window(m-c)
Good:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/ef20925bc2a5
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Firefox/17.0 ID:20120725002955
Bad:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/75d16b99e8ab
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Firefox/17.0 ID:20120725080455
Pushlog:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=ef20925bc2a5&tochange=75d16b99e8ab


Regression window(m-i)
Good:
http://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/4f4f8e1167c9
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Firefox/17.0 ID:20120724150555
http://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/ef6fac0c8330
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Firefox/17.0 ID:20120724153555
Bad:
http://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/b0fdbf25855a
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Firefox/17.0 ID:20120724195655
Pushlog:
http://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/pushloghtml?fromchange=ef6fac0c8330&tochange=b0fdbf25855a

Suspected:
	4f8487f92ae1	Georg Fritzsche — Bug 776923 - Fix tag management by (1) not loading duplicate plugins if they are in-process and (2) not repeatedly adding plugin tags that haven't changed. r=josh

Comment 4

[[:philipp]]

in addition to the original describtion in comment #1 it isn't only confined to gmail &the google talk plugin - another user on SUMO is reportedly seeing the same issue with an open facebook tab & Facebook Video Calling Plugin:
https://support.mozilla.org/questions/949840#answer-406167

Comment 5

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

Will check into this when i have time and it still reproduces after bug 830267.

Comment 6

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

Not a very recent regression, and it's not clear that this is a critical user regression. No need to track for upcoming releases, although we would take a low risk uplift to FF20.

Comment 7

[WildcatRay]

I'm not sure if what I observe is relevant to this bug or not.

I want to keep the Google Update plugin disabled. What appears to happen is that when it gets updated, the plugin will get re-enabled in both Firefox and T-bird. (I would think it probably happens in the other programs, too, if they share the same code as Fx & T-bird.)

Comment 8

[[:philipp]]

hello ray - i think the causes for that are different & the state of plugin was reset whenever the filename or the location of the plugin changed. this might be addressed in firefox 21 with the fixing of bug #838290 (though i'm not sure of that).

Comment 9

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

(In reply to philipp from comment #8)
> this
> might be addressed in firefox 21 with the fixing of bug #838290 (though i'm
> not sure of that).

Bug 838290 is about persisting the click-to-play per-site permissions (e.g. "always allow for this site"), bug 830267 will address the enable/disable part of that.

Comment 10

[Nick]

This bug only happened to me when I set plugins.click_to_play to true. Once I set it to false, the problem disappeared. Closing gmail did not stop the issue.

Comment 11

[[:philipp]]

since bug 830267 has been fixed & landed in the latest nightly, i cannot reproduce this issue with the steps described in comment #1 anymore.

Comment 12

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

Thanks Philipp, that's good to hear. Lets close this bug then.