about:about gives strange error

[Thinboy00]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

If you navigate to "about:foobar", Firefox tells you "the URL is not valid and cannot be loaded." If you try "about:" it shows you the info from Help -> About
If you navigate to "about:about" Firefox redirects you to jar:file:///usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/chrome/toolkit.jar!/content/global/aboutAbout.html and tells you that it cannot be located (File not Found). This behavior also occurs if you do in a terminal gksudo "firefox about:about".

To reproduce:
1. Go to about:about in the Location bar

What happens:
File not Found

What should happen:
Either it should behave identically to about:foobar (link doesn't work, you need to use the location bar) or it should give a listing of all about: URIs.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Jun 9 15:14:56 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/home/username/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-17-generic i686

[Philringnalda (philringnalda)]

Related to, but *not* a duplicate of, bug 220253 - we could avoid the 404 without being sensible enough to have a real about:about.

[Reed Loden (reed)]

*** Bug 421280 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Mozilla2007 (mozilla2007)]

This still affects FF3 Beta4. Will there be a fix for this at the final release? No real showstopper, but ugly though...

[Beltzner (beltzner)]

Not gonna block the final release, no.

[Baffclan (baffclan)]

patch for fix by Paul Rouget
attachment 307698 (bug 421280)

[Moo (moo)]

Yeah, I noticed that too, was going to come and submit it, but you beat me to it.

Its not horrible, but still ugly...

[Dewildt-gmail (dewildt-gmail)]

*** Bug 403391 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Philringnalda (philringnalda)]

*** Bug 434842 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Reed Loden (reed)]

glandium, can you re-attach your patch here and request review? Thanks!

[Mh+mozilla (mh+mozilla)]

Actually, I'm wondering... since everyone except firefox wants it, why not have it in toolkit and let firefox unregister it ?

[Philringnalda (philringnalda)]

We could call that approach "the bug 365852 solution," if not for the fact that it's already wontfixed.

[Mh+mozilla (mh+mozilla)]

Created attachment 322062
patch removing about:about

Okay, so this is the patch I originally sent to #434842, with an additionnal hunk to make it more complete.

[Thinboy00 (thinboy00)]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

If you navigate to "about:foobar", Firefox tells you "the URL is not valid and cannot be loaded." If you try "about:" it shows you the info from Help -> About
If you navigate to "about:about" Firefox redirects you to jar:file:///usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/chrome/toolkit.jar!/content/global/aboutAbout.html and tells you that it cannot be located (File not Found). This behavior also occurs if you do in a terminal gksudo "firefox about:about".

To reproduce:
1. Go to about:about in the Location bar

What happens:
File not Found

What should happen:
Either it should behave identically to about:foobar or it should give a listing of all about: URIs.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Jun 9 15:14:56 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/home/username/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-17-generic i686

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 07:21:01PM -0000, Thinboy00 wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> Binary package hint: firefox-3.0
>
> If you navigate to "about:foobar", Firefox tells you "the URL is not valid and cannot be loaded." If you try "about:" it shows you the info from Help -> About
> If you navigate to "about:about" Firefox redirects you to jar:file:///usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/chrome/toolkit.jar!/content/global/aboutAbout.html and tells you that it cannot be located (File not Found). This behavior also occurs if you do in a terminal gksudo "firefox about:about".
>
> To reproduce:
> 1. Go to about:about in the Location bar
>
> What happens:
> File not Found
>
> What should happen:
> Either it should behave identically to about:foobar or it should give a listing of all about: URIs.
>

 status confirmed
 importance low

 - Alexander

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 09:42:18PM -0000, Alexander Sack wrote:
>
> status confirmed
> importance low
>

We should try if the same issue exists when using upstream
builds. Anyone can try?

 affects firefox
 incomplete

 - Alexander

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Alexander Sack wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 09:42:18PM -0000, Alexander Sack wrote:
>
>> status confirmed
>> importance low
>>
>>
>
> We should try if the same issue exists when using upstream
> builds. Anyone can try?
>
> affects firefox
> incomplete
>
> - Alexander
>
>
> ** Also affects: firefox
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
>
Ill test it on upstream since i have to update my upstream package
anyway. Also never start firefox with sudo gksu gksudo or any of the
other ways to use "root" I would suggest since you did that to please
start with a clean profile as it can and will screw your firefox up.
Ok will test in a few minutes and report here about outcome.

--
Sincerely Yours,
    John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

This happens on upstream RC2 build. Im looking for an upstream bug report now.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Reported bug upstream after not being able to find one already reported

[Cbook (cbook)]

*** Bug 438313 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

found a duplicate of our bug updated link

[longsonr (longsonr)]

*** Bug 440481 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Dtownsend (dtownsend)]

*** Bug 441139 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Achchuthan (achchuthan)]

*** Bug 441139 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Sgautherie-bz (sgautherie-bz)]

[Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.2pre) Gecko/2008070706 GranParadiso/3.0.2pre] (nightly) (W2Ksp4)
[Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1a1pre) Gecko/2008070703 Minefield/3.1a1pre] (nightly) (W2Ksp4)

(Bug still there)

[Davemgarrett (davemgarrett)]

*** Bug 444470 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Bzbarsky (bzbarsky)]

I'm not sure I see why this patch makes sense. Is firefox the only thing setting MOZ_XUL_APP? Would it make more sense to remove about:about from here altogether and let apps that do want it register it? That was suggested in bug 365852 too, no?

In any case, I'm clearly not qualified to review this, since I don't know what he MOZ_XUL_APP define actually means.

[Mh+mozilla (mh+mozilla)]

(In reply to comment #19)
> I'm not sure I see why this patch makes sense. Is firefox the only thing
> setting MOZ_XUL_APP? Would it make more sense to remove about:about from here
> altogether and let apps that do want it register it? That was suggested in bug
> 365852 too, no?

Actually, it seems that most applications except firefox want it... I know firefox is the big boy, but i don't think that grants bothering all other applications.

> In any case, I'm clearly not qualified to review this, since I don't know what
> he MOZ_XUL_APP define actually means.

MOZ_XUL_APP should be defined for any application using toolkit.

[Mh+mozilla (mh+mozilla)]

Personally, I would just move the aboutAbout.html file in toolkit and have it installed. If firefox maintainers really don't like this page, they can unregister it from somewhere in browser/

[Bzbarsky (bzbarsky)]

> MOZ_XUL_APP should be defined for any application using toolkit.

In which case this patch would disable about:about for all toolkit-using apps, no? That doesn't seem to match the first part of comment 20 well....

I would be fine with adding aboutAbout to toolkit. But I'm not a toolkit peer.

[Bzbarsky (bzbarsky)]

Comment on attachment 322062
patch removing about:about

I can't even set review- on that request (or review+, for that matter)...

[Dtownsend (dtownsend)]

*** Bug 449009 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Mike Connor (mconnor)]

nice to have, not a big deal either way.

[Xymuu (xymuu)]

still not fixed

[Zeniko (zeniko)]

*** Bug 457162 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

Still reproducible in Intrepid, and it's definitely upstream (reproducible on OSX).

[Dtownsend (dtownsend)]

*** Bug 459814 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Dtownsend (dtownsend)]

*** Bug 460256 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Reed Loden (reed)]

Created attachment 344013
patch - v1

As per bug 451909, all apps set MOZ_XUL_APP now, so let's just kill this unused code.

[Bzbarsky (bzbarsky)]

Reed, I'm not sure I follow. Doesn't this just remove about:about?

[Reed Loden (reed)]

(In reply to comment #31)
> Reed, I'm not sure I follow. Doesn't this just remove about:about?

Yes, I thought everybody had gotten rid of their implementations for this (meaning we could just remove it), but apparently SeaMonkey still has it... should I just #ifdef it only for SeaMonkey instead?

[Bzbarsky (bzbarsky)]

I don't think we want an #ifdef here. We should't need an ifdef to do what comment 19 suggests.

Also, see comment 20 about non-Firefox about:about impls...

[Philringnalda (philringnalda)]

I sort of thought the point of http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/suite/browser/nsAboutAbout.js was that SeaMonkey didn't trust Firefox not to do exactly this, and so they implemented it themselves, and now removing the docshell redirect is only going to screw over Camino, and only if they move to mozilla-central rather than going to WebKit.

[Bzbarsky (bzbarsky)]

Yeah, if the patch doesn't break seamonkey, and if xulrunner apps (which is what I assume Mike Hommey was talking about) don't care, then it's fine.

[Reed Loden (reed)]

(In reply to comment #35)
> Yeah, if the patch doesn't break seamonkey, and if xulrunner apps (which is
> what I assume Mike Hommey was talking about) don't care, then it's fine.

What XULRunner apps (besides SeaMonkey) implement about:about? I don't know of any... so, I think we're fine.

[Bzbarsky (bzbarsky)]

Comment on attachment 344013
patch - v1

OK, let's do this, then. Please check whether this makes aboutAbout.xhtml unused, and remove it if so (that is, if Seamonkey has forked it).

Please keep an eye out for breakage.

[Reed Loden (reed)]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/020514434957

[Baffclan (baffclan)]

cannot reproduce with Firefox/20081024020852-trunk/WinXP

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; ja; rv:1.9.1b2pre) Gecko/20081024 Minefield/3.1b2pre firefox

thanks for fixing this.
-> v.

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1b2pre) Gecko/20081024 SeaMonkey/2.0a2pre - Build ID: 20081024000423

Trying to browse to about:about leaves the content area blank, with the following messages in the Error Console:

[X] Error: [Exception... "'JavaScript component does not have a method named:
           "getURIFlags"' when calling method: [nsIAboutModule::getURIFlags]"
           nsresult: "0x80570030 (NS_ERROR_XPC_JSOBJECT_HAS_NO_FUNCTION_NAMED)"
           location: "JS frame ::
               chrome://communicator/content/contentAreaClick.js ::
               addToUrlbarHistory :: line 262" data: no]
    Source File: chrome://communicator/content/contentAreaClick.js Line: 262

[X] Error: [Exception... "'JavaScript component does not have a method named:
           "getURIFlags"' when calling method: [nsIAboutModule::getURIFlags]"
           nsresult: "0x80570030 (NS_ERROR_XPC_JSOBJECT_HAS_NO_FUNCTION_NAMED)"
           location: "JS frame :: chrome://global/content/bindings/browser.xml ::
               loadURIWithFlags :: line 186" data: no]
    Source File: chrome://global/content/bindings/browser.xml Line: 186

The latter one happens twice.

Now I'm going to test a recent tinderbox-build (maybe this nightly didn't include the fix).

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

(In reply to comment #40)
> Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1b2pre) Gecko/20081024
> SeaMonkey/2.0a2pre - Build ID: 20081024000423
>
[...]
>
> Now I'm going to test a recent tinderbox-build (maybe this nightly didn't
> include the fix).

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1b2pre) Gecko/20081024 SeaMonkey/2.0a2pre - Build ID: 20081024091143

Nope, no change. Should I REOPEN or file a specific bug for SeaMonkey?

[Reed Loden (reed)]

(In reply to comment #41)
> Nope, no change. Should I REOPEN or file a specific bug for SeaMonkey?

Sounds like a SeaMonkey-only bug to me, so file a new bug for SeaMonkey.

[Antoine-mechelynck-gmail (antoine-mechelynck-gmail)]

(In reply to comment #42)
> (In reply to comment #41)
> > Nope, no change. Should I REOPEN or file a specific bug for SeaMonkey?
>
> Sounds like a SeaMonkey-only bug to me, so file a new bug for SeaMonkey.

Filed bug 461552.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

With 3.0.4 and 3.1 is still a problem 3.1 is expected since it is no where near beta.

[Davemgarrett (davemgarrett)]

*** Bug 469896 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

This is fixed upstream now.

[Patrick-hendriks+bugzilla (patrick-hendriks+bugzilla)]

Re comment 44: possibly the dupe wasn't really a dupe, but a regression?

Using Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090404 Minefield/3.6a1pre, i'm getting a "The URL is not valid and cannot be loaded". Can anyone please check if this still works or if this has regressed?

[Philringnalda (philringnalda)]

That is precisely what you should get: the fix was to make about:about just like about:foopygoats, because neither one is supported in Firefox. Bug 469896 was filed about 3.0.x, where this wasn't and won't be fixed, so there it gives a file not found error instead of a proper (for an about: URL that isn't supported) "not valid and cannot be loaded" error.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

I can confirm on 3.5

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

This has been fixed in Firefox 3.5

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Firefox 3.0 is only receiving Security Updates and major bug fixes at this point.