Double-clicking Firefox launcher produces "Firefox is already running" error

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Binary package hint: firefox

Firefox 3.0.9, Ubuntu 9.04

Canonical has started user testing of Ubuntu and its applications. During our first test, one test subject double-clicked on the Firefox launcher in the panel. She managed to do this at exactly the right/wrong speed, producing a "Close Firefox" error alert: "Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system."

I have been unable to reproduce this error from the launcher, but it is reproducible from the terminal. Steps to reproduce:
1. In a terminal window, enter "firefox & firefox".

What happens:
* A Firefox window appears.
* A "Close Firefox" error alert appears.

What should happen:
* Two Firefox windows should appear.
* No error alert should appear.

[Aaronlev (aaronlev)]

There have been a lot of reports on this lately, it's not clear if there is a single cause or multiple causes. We could really use some QA help to take this seriously and track these issues down.

Once it happens you can't relaunch Firefox without finding the process and killing it -- a procedure that novice users are not going to manage. No doubt there are a lot of bugs something like "Firefox won't open anymore until I reboot".

Notice that there is a new Mozillazine article for this (bug 399392):
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox.exe_always_open

Not sure if I should have just reuused the meta bug 239223 -- that's pretty old and seemed to be privacy/security related. We should take a closer look at the bugs listed there as well.

[Aaronlev (aaronlev)]

See also bug 395891, perhaps it is related.

[Sgautherie-bz (sgautherie-bz)]

(Shouldn't this meta bug be using 'Depends on' rather than 'Blocks' ?)

[Jruderman (jruderman)]

*** Bug 442555 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

[Reported in Launchpad as <http://launchpad.net/bugs/366103>]

Firefox 3.0.9, Ubuntu 9.04

Canonical has begun user testing of Ubuntu and its applications. During our first test, one test subject double-clicked on the Firefox launcher in the panel. She managed to do this at exactly the right/wrong speed to produce a "Close Firefox" error alert: "Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system."

I have been unable to reproduce this error using the panel launcher, but it is reproducible from the terminal. Steps to reproduce:
1. In a terminal window, enter "firefox & firefox".

What happens:
* A Firefox window appears.
* A "Close Firefox" error alert appears.

What should happen:
* Two Firefox windows should appear.
* No error alert should appear.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

This has been reported already in LP and upstream IIRC. I'm looking for it at this time.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

This bug is being caused by the "double click" action. Doing that tries to open 2 instances of the browser.
Upstream has to do some cleaning on their end as this bug has been reported a number of times. I asked them to do that.
I haven't found the LP bug yet but I'm still looking

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

ok i lo0oked through all 232 bugs and it seems that it isnt there for what ever reason.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

John, <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=436676> is about closing Firefox then reopening it, which is not the same as this bug.

[Nightsoul-blackps (nightsoul-blackps)]

Sometimes when you start firefox fast to many times on windows it will tell you the same,that it's already running and you let it like couple of seconds it will work.

[Blumblum98 (blumblum98)]

Sometimes firefox says it is running when it is not. It comes up randomly. I don't have to click on it repeatedly or fast, I just click on it normally and it says I must close firefox, but there is nothing open and nothing to close. When I use another browser to go to my home page and then close it, I can open firefox.
Very annoying when it tells me it is busy and I need to close it, and there is nothing to close. When I try firefox again, I get same message, but when i use another browser and then come back to firefox after closing the other browser, firefox takes me to my home page.

[Mar-castelluccio (mar-castelluccio)]

Can we make this a cross-platform bug, or should I create a new bug for Linux?

[Bavon-do (bavon-do)]

I was able to reproduce this error manually on Firefox 9.0.1 using Ubuntu 10.04. I simply double-clicked the Firefox icon twice quicker than I ever normally would, and the Close Firefox error appears: "Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system."

[Alexander Surkov (surkov-alexander)]

(In reply to Marco Castelluccio from comment #4)
> Can we make this a cross-platform bug, or should I create a new bug for
> Linux?

I don't see a good reason why not make it as cross-platform

[Mar-castelluccio (mar-castelluccio)]

*** Bug 513419 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Mar-castelluccio (mar-castelluccio)]

*** Bug 561144 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Mar-castelluccio (mar-castelluccio)]

*** Bug 661820 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Mar-castelluccio (mar-castelluccio)]

*** Bug 489981 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Mar-castelluccio (mar-castelluccio)]

*** Bug 416348 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Mar-castelluccio (mar-castelluccio)]

*** Bug 403623 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Sjw (sjw)]

*** Bug 918381 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Sjw (sjw)]

*** Bug 942046 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Sjw (sjw)]

*** Bug 741455 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Heletjacq-graves (heletjacq-graves)]

I could reproduce this bug with a new Firefox installation and before the addition of of plug-in like AddBlock Plus.
It occurs randomly : somtimes Firefox close normally if it was opened through a link within a message, sometime not.
This bug appeared with the last update 25.0.1, I never saw it before the installation of this update.

[Heletjacq-graves (heletjacq-graves)]

Mistake from me : We must read "I could NOT reproduce this bug with a new installation of Firefox"

[yfdyh000 (yfdyh000)]

*** Bug 981253 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Web-f (web-f)]

I started getting this after update to 27.0.1 I am on windows 7 64 bit.
Problem started last week of feb 2014. I did not install any new plugins.

[Heletjacq-graves (heletjacq-graves)]

- 1) I had something closed from your problem : Firefox would not shutdown after closing.
- 2) I sggested you the following solution (this was the only way which worked for the above problem) : made a comlete new installation of your system (OS) which might be corrupted.

[Heletjacq-graves (heletjacq-graves)]

This bug seems to be fixed for me : it never occured since five months.
It disapeared without new OS installation (W7 64 bits uptodate).
I am using Firefox 31

[Thomas-raddatz (thomas-raddatz)]

I am faced with the same problem for Thunderbird 31.0 and 32.0b1.

It does not happen with Firefox 31.0 and Thunderbird 24.7.0 or lower.

Does Thunderbird hang in safe mode? YES.
Does Thunderbird hang with firewall or antivirus software disabled? YES.
Is gloda indexing enabled or disabled? ENABLED.
Are your mail accounts pop, imap, or a combination? IMAP.
Did the computer go into sleep or hibernate while Thunderbird was running? NO.
Did you change Thunderbird to online or offline status? NO. Always online.
Did you move your (laptop) computer to a different network? NO.
State your operating system and version. State Thunderbird version from Help > About. Win7 Professional, SP1, current patch level. Thunderbird 31.0.
How often you see the hang (always, rarely, etc)? ALWAYS.
CPU usage - is usage zero, low, high (maxed or pegged), or other? 0 percent.
ldap address book - do you have an ldap directory address book defined? NO.
run netstat (normal start mode):
  TCP 127.0.0.1:59799 Thomas-PC:59800 HERGESTELLT 7036
 [thunderbird.exe]
  TCP 127.0.0.1:59800 Thomas-PC:59799 HERGESTELLT 7036
 [thunderbird.exe]
run netstat (save mode):
  TCP 127.0.0.1:60253 Thomas-PC:60254 HERGESTELLT 6348
 [thunderbird.exe]
  TCP 127.0.0.1:60254 Thomas-PC:60253 HERGESTELLT 6348
 [thunderbird.exe]

[Thomas-raddatz (thomas-raddatz)]

Opened but 1055518 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1055518) for Thunderbird.

[Unique-ek (unique-ek)]

I can see that happening in;

Version 52.0a1
Build ID 20160919065232
User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
OS Windows_NT 10.0

I'm not exactly sure how to replicate it, so I can't be sure if disabling extensions solve the issue or not. It kinda happens at random.

However I do noticed that whenever I try to run Firefox the first time after a boot, it just spawns a single process in task manager which gets stuck at 2.5~ mb ram usage and stays like that forever, until I force close and re-open it. Not sure if it has any relation to above issue.

also updated here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=872033

[A Dahmen (brille1)]

See here for GUI improvement proposal, regardless of the technical background:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=489981#c6

[Release-mgmt-account-bot (release-mgmt-account-bot)]

In the process of [migrating remaining bugs to the new severity system](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1789259), the severity for this bug cannot be automatically determined. Please retriage this bug using the [new severity system](https://wiki.mozilla.org/BMO/UserGuide/BugFields#bug_severity).