95397 - Mozilla should not ask the same question in more than one window.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Networking, enhancement)

Description

[Aleksey Nogin]

I am not sure if this is a PSM bug, so I am filing it as "unconfirmed".

Reproducible: always
Steps to reporduce:
1) Open two windows with two different URLs to a site that requires
authentication (for example, run
mozilla -remote 'openurl(http://members.spamcop.net/,new-window)'
mozilla -remote 'openurl(http://members.spamcop.net/tst,new-window)'
)

Expected: The two windows share a single authentication dialog.
Actual: Each window has its own.

This is the problem not only with basic auth dialog, but with other auth dialogs
(e.g. NNTP) as well. Note that this seems to work correctly if both windows go
to the same URL.

Obviously, to be able to solve this problem, the dialog needs to know what it is
authentication for (e.g. host&real for HTTP, host&group for NNTP, etc). This may
mean that this bug depends on bug 51696 (or bug 38008?) for basic auth and bug
85637 for NNTP.

P.S. I am currently using 2001080600 on RedHat 7.1

Comment 1

[Stephane Saux]

Is this really expected?  Can't one set up a site that has exactly the same
host, but will require different auths for different URLs?
P3
t->future.

Comment 2

[Aleksey Nogin]

Sure, one can have different auth info for different URLs on the same host, but
then realms should be different as well. Anyway, if the wallet (IMHO correctly)
treats the auth info for same host-realm pair as being the same, why shouldn't
the password prompt do the same?

Comment 3

[Keyser Sose]

Marking NEW.

Comment 4

[Aleksey Nogin]

Should the PSM password dialog be considered another issue or a part of the same
one?

It's pretty annoying to come back to the machine and to realize that I suddenly
have dozens of copies of the PSM password dialog...

Nominating it for 1.0, IMHO it's an important usability issue.

Comment 5

[Stephane Saux]

Are you talking about the SDR web passwords? Do you use encrypt to keep your web
password?

If this is an issue with web passwords (rather than cert password for client
authentication), then the trigger for the password in not in PSM code.

I've never come to my desk to find dozens of "PSM password" dialogs waiting for me.

By "PSM password" do you mean the "Please enter the Master Password for the
Software Security Device"?

Comment 6

[Aleksey Nogin]

> By "PSM password" do you mean the "Please enter the Master Password for the
> Software Security Device"?
Yes.

> I've never come to my desk to find dozens of "PSM password" dialogs waiting
for me.
Steps to reproduce:
1) Make sure you have "Encrypt sensitive information" enabled.
2) Set up an NNTP account for a server that requires authentication (I am not
sure if passwd-protected POP or IMAP will act the same; if you do not have
access to passwd-protected NNTP server, you can try to emulate one by using
user_pref("mail.server.servernn.always_authenticate", true); ).
3) Make sure that auth information for that server is stored in the wallet.
4) Set biff ("check for new messages every 1 minutes") on that account.
5) Restart Mozilla (logging out of Password Manager will probably work the same,
but haven't tried it).
6) Go for lunch.

Expected: when you come back, you have at most one "master password" dialogs
waiting for you.

Actual: you'll have a *lot* of them.

It seems that every time Mozilla tries to check for new messages, the server
will ask for authentication and Mozilla will prompt for the "master password".

Note that if you do the same thing, but without storing the NNTP auth info in
the wallet, you'll get the same crazy number of "please enter username for news
access" prompts, so this behaviour is in no way specific for "master password".

> If this is an issue with web passwords (rather than cert password for client
> authentication), then the trigger for the password in not in PSM code.
As I said in the initial report, I am not sure if this is a PSM issue or not.
IMHO, this is not an issue with some *particular* promts (NNTP auth, web auth,
master password, etc), but with prompts *in general*. IMHO, there needs to be
some general framework for coding "I want to prompt for something, but if I
already did it, just let's wait together on an existing dialog".

Comment 7

[Stephane Saux]

Well, in this case this is not something I can do anything about.
Browser->general to see if somebody wants to take it.

Comment 8

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

->apps

Comment 9

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

don't think this belongs in xp apps. back to browser-general. perhaps somewhere
in networking or js?

Comment 10

[timeless]

well that was fun.

Comment 11

[Aleksey Nogin]

Timeless, are you sure it belongs to Networking? Disallowing more than one
"Please enter the Master Password for the Software Security Device" windows
definitely seems outside of networking and it wasn't decided yet if that is the
same problem as with other auth dialogs, or a separate one.

Comment 12

[timeless]

No, i wholeheartedly thought it belonged to PSM, but we crossed and burned that 
bridge already.

alternatively, networking could cause the system to block preventing further 
reloads (actually if this is exclusively a mail issue then mailnews:networking 
*, but your original description was for http...) or just remember it already 
had a pending question and try to focus it again (actually this might be 
docshell or something but i'm not sure which of those things it'd be).

Comment 13

[neeti]

cc'ing darin

Comment 14

[Aleksey Nogin]

Yet another instance of this problem - just came back to my machine to find out
154 instances of the "The newsgroup xxx does not appear to exist on the host
yyy. Would you like to unsubscribe from it?" question (xxx and yyy were the same
in all 154 of them).

To reproduce, try removing one of the newsgroups you are subscribed to from the
server while Mozilla is running with "check for new messages every 1 minutes"
enabled...

Comment 15

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

is this still a problem?  

Comment 16

[Aleksey Nogin]

Yes, BuildID 2002100119 (trunk) still has it. I didn't go though all 3
scenarious (original report, comment #6 and comment #14), but tried some of it
and was able to get both two "Master Password" dialogs and two "basic auth"
dialogs (for the same thing).

Comment 17

[benc]

Can we get some updated steps? I'm not convinced what is going on is a real problem.

Comment 18

[Aleksey Nogin]

> Can we get some updated steps? 

What's wrong with *three* sets of existing ones? I just tried the ones in the
original report and the ones in comment #6, both still behave exactly the same.
Have not tried reproducing comment #14, but I expect it to be exactly the same
as well...

> I'm not convinced what is going on is a real problem.

Well, the thing with having multiple dialogs is that you have to deal with them
one-by-one. So when you are faced with hundreds of dialogs, you are more or less
forced to quit (even kill, if the dialogs are modal) Mozilla. And even then, if
you had enough dialogs to push X deeply into swap (if you'd been away for a day
while biff is set for every minute, that is likely to happen), even after
Mozilla is killed, it can take X several *minutes* of slowly getting rid of
these windows one-by-one to get out of swap and stop trashing. So, in worst case
scenario this can be even worse than a crash...

And even if you end up with two-tree windows as opposed to several hunderds of
those, it is still pretty annoying that you have to type the exact same thing in
every one of them...

Comment 19

[benc]

"real" probably should have been "really networking".

All I care about at this point, is figuring out if this is a networking problem
or not.

I'll leave that to darin and dougt, because I don't know where password manager
intersects w/ these user events.

Comment 20

[neeti]

darin: is this a networking bug?

Comment 21

[Darin Fisher]

yes, i think this is a networking bug.  we should delay the second prompt until
the first prompt returns.  we can probably add a flag to the http auth cache
entry to indicate a prompt in progress, and then add some kind of hook to be
notified when the prompt returns.  shouldn't be that difficult to implement.

in my mind, this is an enhancement bug.  marking as such, and futuring (not sure
when i'll get around to fixing this).

Comment 22

[Aleksey Nogin]

Should I file a separate bug for the "Master Password" dialog? I doubt it's
networking too...

Comment 23

[Darin Fisher]

yes, IMO that is a different bug.

Comment 24

[Aleksey Nogin]

Master Password one is filed as bug 177175.

Comment 25

[benc]

Is this bug really dependant on that bug? If so, we should update the reference
because it was duped.

Comment 26

[Aleksey Nogin]

This bug definitely depends on 96896. I am not convinced 177175 is really a dup,
so will keep it too in case it's reopened.

Comment 27

[Darin Fisher]

-> default owner

Comment 28

[Mikel Ward]

Does the first window then own the prompt?  What happens if I Alt-Tab to the second window?  Does it just hang, waiting for the prompt to be answered?  How will the user know they have to answer the prompt in the first window?

There is some code recently that I think detaches prompts from any window, but I' m not sure this is working very well.

Comment 29

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

I think the answer to that is to invert this bug report. If the same question blocks progress in multiple windows, continue using multiple alerts, one for each window. But if the question is answered affirmatively in any of the alerts, all its doppelgangers should also be dismissed.