[hardy] Cannot xforward firefox

[Graham Clenaghan]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

When I have a terminal open and ssh'd to another machine with Ubuntu Hardy on it, and type the command firefox, normally a remote x-forwarded session pops up so the program is actually running on the remote machine, but a local version of firefox comes up, with all my bookmarks and such. Other applications forward as is expected.

When sshing into a RHEL machine that has Firefox 2.0.0.12, it is forwarded fine.

[Christian Biesinger (cbiesinger)]

-> firefox, mozilla does not use -remote by default

[Jo-hermans (jo-hermans)]

*** Bug 254757 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Jo-hermans (jo-hermans)]

*** Bug 254994 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Mike Connor (mconnor)]

*** Bug 254994 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Robin Monks (mozillaman)]

Is this still here in newer versions of Mozilla Firefox?

[Robin Monks (mozillaman)]

Moving to Core->X-Remote...

[Jgarvin (jgarvin)]

confirmed. Behavior exists in Firefox
-Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1 (on
machine "local")
-Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3
(machine "remote")

transcript:
local $ xhost + remote
local $ ssh remote
...
remote $ export DISPLAY="local:0"
remote $ firefox &

---------
In another xterm on local, typing firefox opens another window, or tab in the
existing firefox window. Running ps on the local machine confirms firefox is not
running.

[Mook-moz+mozbz (mook-moz+mozbz)]

Does setting MOZ_NO_REMOTE work for you? I.e.,

local $ xhost + remote
local $ ssh remote
...
remote $ export DISPLAY="local:0"
remote $ export MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
remote $ firefox &

[Steve-kelem-elementcxi (steve-kelem-elementcxi)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Does setting MOZ_NO_REMOTE work for you? I.e.,

% setenv MOZ_NO_REMOTE 1

worked for me (in tcsh).

I'm still puzzled as to why this option exists. If I wanted to run the program locally, I would have run it locally.

[Greg Trounson (uoms-gregt)]

export MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
in bash does not work for me. The variable sets okay:
set |grep MOZ
MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
but launching firefox still results in the local copy, with nothing running on the remote machine.

This happens on the following distros:
Debian Stable
Fedora Core 3 and 5

Curiously it works as expected on Debian Unstable.

[Greg Trounson (uoms-gregt)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> But today when I went to try that, using X remotely, the remote firebird
> connected to the local firebird and used the local window. This is a nice
> feature. But it should be easy to turn it off and I cannot find a command line
> flag to do so.

I can't think of a single case in which this feature could possibly be useful. If you're logged into a remote machine it's presumably with a purpose to do something ON THAT MACHINE.

If one has a desire to launch a web page on the local machine surely one would do it by means of opening a new window/tab in the local browser or a local terminal. What is the history behind this feature? I find it hard to believe that someone actually requested it.

So I would propose removing this feature entirely, or perhaps have a command-line switch for people that can't live without it.

[Graham Clenaghan (origin191)]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

When I have a terminal open and ssh'd to another machine with Ubuntu Hardy on it, and type the command firefox, normally a remote x-forwarded session pops up so the program is actually running on the remote machine, but a local version of firefox comes up, with all my bookmarks and such. Other applications forward as is expected.

When sshing into a RHEL machine that has Firefox 2.0.0.12, it is forwarded fine.

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

(1) Please try this with another application that you have installed
to see if this is a firefox-only problem

(2) Make sure you have ssh X forwarding turned on. You may have your
RHEL machine automatically configured to do that all of the time. Try
using "ssh -X" to your hardy box, and see if you can get an
x-forwarded firefox session. If not, this is likely a duplicate of
Bug #202508, so please mark as a duplicate and note that. If "ssh -X"
does work, you either need to use the -X option, or permanently
configure your /etc/ssh/sshd_config file to always X forward, or put
it in your local .ssh/config file.

:-Dustin

[Graham Clenaghan (origin191)]

Thunderbird forwards fine (well, as long as it isn't open on the remote Hardy...I assume thats normal behavior, it forwards the window that says a session is already running), and any other random application I tried worked as expected.

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

Can you capture some more verbose output with "ssh -vvvX
<email address hidden> "firefox" and post the verbose debug here
(scrubbed if necessary)?

Additionally, when you launch a shell, can you make absolutely sure
that you're on the remote machine (compare the difference between
ifconfig on the local and remote machines and make sure those are
different).

Then, when you launch firefox, grab the output of "ps -ef | grep
firefox" on both the local and remote machine. You should see a
process called "/usr/lib/firefox-3.0b5/firefox" on the remote machine,
but no such on the local machine.

:-Dustin

[Graham Clenaghan (origin191)]

Cannot reproduce anymore

[Graham Clenaghan (origin191)]

I figured it out, it only happens when firefox is running on the local machine, I will post the requested information next.

[Graham Clenaghan (origin191)]

With firefox running,
graham@mandarb:~$ ssh -vvvX -p2 graham@corenne firefox
OpenSSH_4.7p1 Debian-8ubuntu1, OpenSSL 0.9.8g 19 Oct 2007
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: Applying options for *
debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to corenne [128.205.147.14] port 2.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /home/graham/.ssh/identity type -1
debug1: identity file /home/graham/.ssh/id_rsa type -1
debug3: Not a RSA1 key file /home/graham/.ssh/id_dsa.
debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type '-----BEGIN'
debug3: key_read: missing keytype
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type '-----END'
debug3: key_read: missing keytype
debug1: identity file /home/graham/.ssh/id_dsa type 2
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_4.7p1 Debian-8ubuntu1
debug1: match: OpenSSH_4.7p1 Debian-8ubuntu1 pat OpenSSH*
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.7p1 Debian-8ubuntu1
debug2: fd 3 setting O_NONBLOCK
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1,diffie-hellman-group14-sha1,diffie-hellman-group1-sha1
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: ssh-rsa,ssh-dss
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,arcfour128,arcfour256,arcfour,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,<email address hidden>,aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,arcfour128,arcfour256,arcfour,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,<email address hidden>,aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,<email address hidden>,hmac-ripemd160,<email address hidden>,hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5-96
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,<email address hidden>,hmac-ripemd160,<email address hidden>,hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5-96
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: none,<email address hidden>,zlib
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: none,<email address hidden>,zlib
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit:
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit:
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: first_kex_follows 0
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: reserved 0
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1,diffie-hellman-group14-sha1,diffie-hellman-group1-sha1
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: ssh-rsa,ssh-dss
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,arcfour128,arcfour256,arcfour,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,<email address hidden>,aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,arcfour128,arcfour256,arcfour,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,<email address hidden>,aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr
debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,<email address hidden>,hmac-r...

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This isn't OpenSSH's fault; it's Firefox's usual "remote" behaviour when it spots that there's already an instance on the same X display (not necessarily on the same system). Run 'firefox -no-remote' to force it to start a standalone instance.

[Andreas Moog (ampelbein)]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Thank you for your bugreport. However, the correct package for firefox-3
related issues is firefox-3. I'm therefore reassigning this bug to the
correct package.

 affects ubuntu/firefox
 status invalid

 affects ubuntu/firefox-3.0
 status new

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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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[Alexander Sack (asac)]

i am quite sure this is already known upstream - where this can be best dealt with. Please search in bugzilla.mozilla.org for a dupe and let us know what you found.

If nothing can be found, file a bug and let us know too.

Thanks!

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

I have also run into this bug. The answer in the MozillaZine Forums is to use
  export MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
or
  setenv MOZ_NO_REMOTE 1
on the remote system.

It is reported as
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=223105

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

This bug still exists in Firefox3 using Xubuntu 8.10

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008111319 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.4

[Blizzard (blizzard)]

Actually, there is a --no-remote command line flag. I use it pretty often.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

not really a bug. there is MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 and --no-remote available to workaround this.