Firefox 3.0 Menu Buttons disabled

[Eric M. Smith]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

Ubuntu 8.10
firefox-3.0:
  Installed: 3.0.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 3.0.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 3.0.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

The Back, Forward, Page List, Refresh, and Stop buttons on the menu are disabled. I can select any page or click on any link from one page to another page, but regardless of the pages or links, I am unable to get the buttons working.

I have uninstalled, removed my .mozilla_firefox folder, removed and re-installed firefox, but so far I am unable to get the buttons to work properly.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

Hi,

firefox extensions are the cause for the majority of bugs reported against firefox.

To check that the bug you are seeing is actually a firefox one (and not an extension one), please disable your extensions one-by-one (restart firefox in between) until there is either no enabled extension left or your problem is resolved.

Please report your findings back.

Thanks,
 - Alexander

[Eric M. Smith (esmithbss-gmail)]

I'll go one better.

Before I even attempted to report this to you, I uninstalled Firefox completely and reinstalled.

Once it was reinstalled and the problem appeared to be in the application, I uninstalled again, went through and deleted all mozilla and firefox related folders in my home folder, /etc, /usr/lib and /root folders. Then went through and verified that there was no /usr/share/firefox or related folder on my machine. And just to be sure things weren't "cached" in memory, I rebooted the box into recovery mode, reverified everything, then rebooted back to the GUI.

Once the box was rebooted, I did the following from an xterm:

# sudo apt-get install firefox

After this was completed I rebooted again

Then launched Firefox (again from the xterm so I could see any error messages).

The problem continued to exist.

There were no error messages.

Pages I attempted to visit:

   http://www.google.com
   http://www.cnn.com
   http://www.wikipedia.com

During page loading, the "Stop" icon never activated.

Once each page was loaded I either clicked a link or manually typed another page into the address bar.

Again, the "Stop" icon never activated

Once the second page was loaded, the "Back" button never activated.

I used the History menu to move backwards to the first page.

When on the first page, the "Forward" menu button never activated.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

i dont see that you checked that you have no extensions installed.

[Eric M. Smith (esmithbss-gmail)]

DO I NEED TO EXPLICITLY SAY I DIDN'T INSTALL ANY!!!!!

Read the details above and you should realize that I didn't install any extensions on my last two tests.

Extensions are installed in the mozilla and firefox related folders under my home folder and under /usr/lib. Both of which were explicitly removed by me.

I don't know how I can be more explicit than to say THE ONLY THING INSTALLED IS WHAT UBUNTU INSTALLS WHEN YOU INSTALL THE FIREFOX PACKAGE!

Therefore, I am experiencing this using the default Ubuntu Firefox 3.0.3 installation. No extra extensions. No extra theming. No extra plugins. Nothing except what is installed by apt-get.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

triage 100 firefox bugs and you know why i ask things that are implicitly in your answers explicitly again.

I cannot reproduce this.

stop everything, start firefox like:

 strace -f -eopen firefox 2>&1 > /tmp/ffox.log.txt

and after reproducing attach that file. Thanks.!

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

 We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[Rafael M. Martins (rmmartins)]

I had the same problem and can provide more information.

[Rafael M. Martins (rmmartins)]

Sorry for the small post.

I had the same problem. I uninstalled all extensions (Ubuntu Firefox Modifications and Google Toolbar) and it didn't work. I also disabled other types of add-ons (languages and plugins) and it didn't work.

I used Synaptic to completely remove firefox, rebooted and reinstalled and it didn't work.

Following somebody's instructions that I found somewhere (...) I ran firefox as root once, and it fixed the problem. Now it's working fine.

I actually executed "strace -f -eopen firefox 2>&1 > /tmp/ffox.log.txt" but unfortunately I lost the file. Sorry.

[Koen De Wit (koendewit)]

I was able to reproduce this while strace-ing firefox. The file was lost too. (In fact it was empty. I'm not a bash expert, but is it possible that the strace-command provided does not write the file actually?)

However, I noticed a line in the strace-output that mentions that access was denied to the file "places.sqlite-journal" IT belonged to the root user. I executed this command:

sudo chmod 777 ~/.mozilla/firefox/5tutnx4z.default/places.sqlite-journal

and I started firefox again. This solved the problem, I was able to use the back button again. After starting firefox, the file "places.sqlite-journal" was owned by myself again, not by root, and its permissions were reset to "rw-r--r--".

I have no idea why the file's owner was set to root.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

I also belive this was fixed, please see if this is the same bug as bug #281348