Text Entry Boxes in Firefox sometimes get stuck in an endless "Select-All" making typing in them impossible

[Jeff Lane ]

Binary package hint: firefox

I was holding off filing a bug on this because it seemed so random and I had very little data to work with, but it's now been reported on the ubuntu-users list by a second person so I am now opening the bug.

First, I have no idea how to reproduce this. It seems pretty random in occurrence. Sometimes it happens frequently, sometimes very infrequently. In fact, until last night, I had not seen it happen at all for several days.

So here is what happens:

Click in a text box. I've seen this happen in the Search text box next to the address bar, in the "Find" dialog box that opens at the bottom of the window when you type the '/' shortcut and in text boxes like the one I'm using right now on Launchpad to type this narrative out.
Start typing.
Every now and then, FF will get stuck in a "Select-All" and never seems to stop. So if you were to type out the word "Ubuntu" you may get as far as "ubu" before FF highlights everything (as it would if you'd clicked on Edit/Select All or hit ctrl-A) and the next key you hit wipes out what you've typed already.

So in essense, it's kinda like the having a Ctrl-A lock.

SO far, the ONLY ways I've found to work around this is sometimes I can click 5 - 10 times very quickly in another part of the browser window (usually blank space on a web page, or somewhere where a control won't intercept the clicks at least) or closing FF and restarting. Once this Select All thing starts happening in the text boxes, it doesn't go away.

It also does not seem limited to just one box either. IN other words, I can experience this in the text box you enter search terms into on the Google landing page, click on a link, see it pop up in the FF Text Search box when I hit the / shortcut, then see it also in a text box on a different page, only to have it bite me when I click up in the address bar to enter a different URL.

Initially, I thought I had a wonky trackpad on my laptop, however, now that the second person has experienced this and complained about it, I can rule that out. His system doesn't have a trackpad.

You can see the mail thread here: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2010-September/228288.html

So far, the only people who have mentioned this are myself and the guy who write the initial post in the mail thread linked above. We're both using laptops. I'm running Maverick, but I've seen this since Lucid.

Hardware:

My system is an Alienware M15x laptop with trackpad. (sold by Dell)
His is a Dell Inspiron 1440 (wonder if this is a pattern)

I really wish I knew how to trigger this to happen, it just does from time to time and I'm not sure how to tell you to reliably reproduce it.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: firefox 3.6.10+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-20.29-generic 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-20-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Sep 17 09:05:40 2010
FirefoxPackages:
 firefox 3.6.10+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu2
 firefox-gnome-support 3.6.10+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu2
 firefox-branding 3.6.10+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu2
 abroswer N/A
 abrowser-branding N/A
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox

[Tapas Mishra (mightydreams)]

While submitting the bug report as Jeff suggested
ubuntu-bug firefox
I got following error

hook /usr/share/apport/package-hooks//firefox.py crashed:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 619, in add_hooks_info
    symb['add_info'](self)
  File "/usr/share/apport/package-hooks//firefox.py", line 191, in add_info
    report['ExtensionSummary'] = wbuffer.read()
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'wbuffer' referenced before assignment

[Tapas Mishra (mightydreams)]

The part I forgot to mention in above message is though the message report firefox.py crashed but it did not crashed actually.
I have been typing the emails while bug report was being generated.

Here is the strace output on my system

execve("/usr/bin/firefox", ["firefox"], [/* 38 vars */]) = 0
brk(0) = 0x1d8f000
access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK) = 0
mmap(NULL, 8192, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f1959e55000
access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=102399, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 102399, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x7f1959e3c000
close(3) = 0
access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK) = 0
open("/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0`\355\1\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) = 832
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1572232, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 3680296, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0x7f19598b4000
mprotect(0x7f1959a2e000, 2093056, PROT_NONE) = 0
mmap(0x7f1959c2d000, 20480, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0x179000) = 0x7f1959c2d000
mmap(0x7f1959c32000, 18472, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f1959c32000
close(3) = 0
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f1959e3b000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f1959e3a000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f1959e39000
arch_prctl(ARCH_SET_FS, 0x7f1959e3a700) = 0
mprotect(0x7f1959c2d000, 16384, PROT_READ) = 0
mprotect(0x617000, 4096, PROT_READ) = 0
mprotect(0x7f1959e57000, 4096, PROT_READ) = 0
munmap(0x7f1959e3c000, 102399) = 0
getpid() = 2954
rt_sigaction(SIGCHLD, {SIG_DFL, [CHLD], SA_RESTORER|SA_RESTART, 0x7f19598e7af0}, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0
geteuid() = 1000
brk(0) = 0x1d8f000
brk(0x1db0000) = 0x1db0000
getppid() = 2953
stat("/home/tapas", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
stat(".", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
open("/usr/bin/firefox", O_RDONLY) = 3
fcntl(3, F_DUPFD, 10) = 10
close(3) = 0
fcntl(10, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGINT, NULL, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGINT, {0x408189, ~[RTMIN RT_1], SA_RESTORER, 0x7f19598e7af0}, NULL, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGQUIT, NULL, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGQUIT, {SIG_DFL, ~[RTMIN RT_1], SA_RESTORER, 0x7f19598e7af0}, NULL, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGTERM, NULL, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGTERM, {SIG_DFL, ~[RTMIN RT_1], SA_RESTORER, 0x7f19598e7af0}, NULL, 8) = 0
read(10, "#!/bin/sh\n\n# Firefox launcher co"..., 8192) = 4575
pipe([3, 4]) = 0
clone(child_stack=0, flags=CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID|CLONE_CHILD_SETTID|SIGCHLD, child_tidptr=0x7f1...

[Tapas Mishra (mightydreams)]

If some one decides to read this thread
then here are some related bugs which came on the mailing list

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/?field.searchtext=text&orderby=-importance&search=Search&field.status%3Alist=NEW&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITH_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITHOUT_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=CONFIRMED&field.status%3Alist=TRIAGED&field.status%3Alist=INPROGRESS&field.status%3Alist=FIXCOMMITTED&field.assignee=&field.bug_reporter=&field.omit_dupes=on&field.has_patch=&field.has_no_package=

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/543919

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/597399
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/632905

[Johannes H. Jensen (joh)]

I experience the exact same bug on both my ThinkPad X61 *and* my desktop computer, both running 10.04. The behavior seems quite random, but occurs quite frequently and most often in the address bar and search field.

[Tapas Mishra (mightydreams)]

On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 9:22 PM, Johannes H. Jensen
<email address hidden> wrote:
> I experience the exact same bug on both my ThinkPad X61 *and* my desktop
> computer, both running 10.04. The behavior seems quite random, but
> occurs quite frequently and most often in the address bar and search
> field.
>
>
Same here but it is not limited to 10.04 64 bit
I was using 9.04 32 bit and I saw the same thing in that also.

--
Tapas
http://mightydreams.blogspot.com

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

I've seen this on occasion too, but for me it occurs so rarely that it's pretty much impossible to debug :(

It would be useful if somebody experiencing this could relate it to a particular event (eg, does it happen after returning from the screensaver?). I appreciate that's probably difficult to do...

[Johannes H. Jensen (joh)]

So, I disabled all my add-ons and have not experienced this issue afterwards, so I'm suspecting a mis-behaving add-on. It would be useful if people who experience this could post a listing of their add-ons to help isolate.

This is my list:

Adblock Plus
Bindwood
Firebug
FireDiff
Flashblock
Greasemonkey
Norsk Bokmål ordliste
Norsk Nynorsk ordliste
Tab Control
Ubuntu Firefox Modifications
Xmarks

[Vesa Halttunen (vesuri)]

I only have "Adblock Plus 1.2.2" and "Ubuntu Firefox Modifications 0.9rc2" installed and I'm also seeing this bug on a 32-bit system. In addition to this the autocompletion sometimes stops working, which may or may not be related.

[Tapas Mishra (mightydreams)]

I have this bug very very frequently tell me some steps I may be able to
discover the reason and post some thing here.

> I was holding off filing a bug on this because it seemed so random and I
> had very little data to work with, but it's now been reported on the
> ubuntu-users list by a second person so I am now opening the bug.
>
> First, I have no idea how to reproduce this. It seems pretty random in
> occurrence. Sometimes it happens frequently, sometimes very infrequently.
> In fact, until last night, I had not seen it happen at all for several
> days.
>
> So here is what happens:
>
> I really wish I knew how to trigger this to happen, it just does from time
> to time and I'm not sure how to tell you to reliably reproduce it.
>
>

[Aditya-kaole (aditya-kaole)]

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100915 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100915 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.10

While writing "search keyword" in the Search box on the Firefox version 3.6.1, the text written is automatically gets selected.

Hence, as the user tries to write further, the older text written gets lost.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Start the Mozilla Firefox
2.Try writing into the google search box some keywords.

Actual Results:
The text gets selected writing automatically. hence, if continued writing the older text is lost.

Expected Results:
The text should not be selected automatically

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Maverick 32 bit
I also have this problem without ANY extensions other than the default Ubuntu installed ones.
I have noticed something about this bug. When this happens the usual Google search terms that appear do not, and it is only when changing tabs or closing firefox and restarting it that it fixes itself, but when it does, the search terms appear again, so this may have something to do with that?

Marking this as Triaged and will file upstream and link the bug report in.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

I can confirm this behaviour in Ubuntu 10.10 with Firefox version 3.6.10+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu3.

This bug has been filed on Launchpad at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/641300 and is being tracked there. Any information regarding this bug can be asked for or found there if needed at all.

Thank you :)

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Note: I have this problem without ANY extensions other than the default Ubuntu installed ones.
I have noticed something about this bug. When this happens the usual Google search terms that normally appear do not, and it is only when changing tabs or closing firefox and restarting it that it fixes itself, but when it does, the search terms appear again, so this may have something to do with that?

[Johannes H. Jensen (joh)]

Have you been able to reproduce the problem if you also disable the
default Ubuntu extensions?

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 10:22 PM, Teej <email address hidden> wrote:
> Maverick 32 bit
> I also have this problem without ANY extensions other than the default Ubuntu installed ones.
> I have noticed something about this bug. When this happens the usual Google search terms that appear do not, and it is only when changing tabs or closing firefox and restarting it that it fixes itself, but when it does, the search terms appear again, so this may have something to do with that?
>
> Marking this as Triaged and will file upstream and link the bug report
> in.
>
> ** Changed in: firefox (Ubuntu)
>       Status: New => Triaged
>
> --
> Text Entry Boxes in Firefox sometimes get stuck in an endless "Select-All" making typing in them impossible
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/641300
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[xteejx (xteejx)]

I will disable *all* extensions and will keep an eye on it to see if it pops up again. I would ask that the other affected users do the same, i.e. disable *every single extension* and see if this occurs in Ubuntu 10.10 (includes up-to-date Firefox).

[dmcf01 (dmcf01)]

I've also had this problem, I believe, through various Ubuntu Builds. I'm now trialling 10.10 and experiencing the same issue. I had actually stopped using Ubuntu as my main OS due to the buggyness of Firefox / Java. I've noticed FF on previous versions of Ubuntu had difficulty handling interactive text boxes, drop down menus scrolling etc. All the issues seem to have been resolved except for the one reported here. I'm now using FF 3.6.12 and Ubuntu 10.10 and I get it very frequently as I tend to use many websites which require a lot of typing in boxes.
 The Extensions I have installed are:
- British English Dictionary 1.19
- Dizionario Italiano 3.2
- DownThemAll! 1.1.10
- NovellMoonlight 2.3
- Ubuntu FireFox Modifications 0.9rc2
- Xmarks 3.9.2
The only add on I have in common with the above users is "Ubuntu Firefox Modifications 0.9rc2".
I will disable "Ubuntu Firefox Modifications 0.9rc2" first and then the others one by one to see what happens and let you know.

[mauricep (pigaht)]

Same bug, running the latest Firefox from the repositories in Ubuntu 10.04 on an Asus eee pc (netbook) 1000H. Only add-on is Ubuntu Firefox Modifications. I tried disabling it, and the bug remains.

It may be only an occasional bug, but it is so annoying as to make Firefox unusable.

Maurice

[Tony T (tonytovar)]

I'm also seeing this but have no idea how to reproduce it; helpful, huh? I have seen this on Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10, both 32-bit and 64-bit. The only add-ons are the default Ubuntu Modification, Adblock, and Flashblock.

I think it's the FF autocomplete that's awry? The problem mostly happens for me in the URL window but my wife reports it happening in Gmail text fields.

[FMaz (fmaz008)]

This bug affect me too.
The weird part is that it doesn't happen in all textbox.

If it was a key that was lock, like SHIFT+HOME or CTRL+A, it would happen in all textboxes.
But I can type really good this repport, and I got a user field in another tab that is in trouble.

Also, their's absolutly no javascript associated with that user field. (I know, it's one of my website)
It also happen on other places, like the other days, I could type my message in GMail.

I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 x64, with the default Firefox installation. I also have the Firebug extension installed, but currently innactive.
My computer is a Dell Zino HD, with a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.

I've also experienced the problem on my laptop (thinkpad x61s) with Ubuntu 10.04 x32.

Ho yeah, it seem to happen in textbox (input type=field), but I've also experienced the trouble in the GMail message area, so I guess that's a textarea. So I don't think it's the autocomplete, as the auto-complete should be triggered for textarea... But at the same time GMail is way too much dynamic, so they could trigger autocomplete function for syntax correction inside a textarea too. Well, I don't have any clue, but their's a real bug here.

Also, right now I had the trouble with the user field as I said. But the interesting part is that I have 2 tabs openned: local (localhost), and remote. Both field on both version are having the problem at the exact same time. And other textfields in the same page are OK.

IMPORTANT:
----------------
So the problem seem to be associated with the name of the field, or it's ID.
I've also tried to:
- delete all the autocomplete values going in the preference, privacy, and delete the Form & Search History ONLY
- double click in the field and delete all the suggestion with the DEL key on hightlighted items
... and the problem disapeared in the problematic field, without even refreshing the tab.

I'm sorry I didn't test out between those 2 actions, but I think we're having a clue here...

[Bill Smith (bsmith1051)]

Been happening me, too. When it does, none of the auto-complete drop-downs appear so I'm guessing it's related? Also, if I simply press CTRL-N the new window will not have the problem. So it might even be a FF bug rather than Ubuntu? I'm only seeing it on Ubuntu however (currently 10.10 64-bit)

[Boris Rybalkin (ribalkin)]

Same thing for me.

Ubuntu 10.10 x64
Firefox 3.6.12

[Tapas Mishra (mightydreams)]

Hmmm I don't agree we get our text deleted.

On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 5:33 PM, exactt <email address hidden> wrote:
> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 583122 ***
>    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/583122
>
> ** This bug has been marked a duplicate of bug 583122
>   firefox occasionally highlights contents of form fields while typing thereby overwriting previously entered keystrokes
>  * You can subscribe to bug 583122 by following this link: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/583122/+subscribe
>

[FMaz (fmaz008)]

Tapas Mishra:
We get out text deleted because when you type, the previous text is selected.
If you type 1 letter at the time, you'll realize that no text is deleted.

[Gujs (gregor-fuis)]

I have the same problem on Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit.

[Roland Giesler (lifeboy)]

Here's what I found:

The problem seems to be interference / competition between firefox's auto-complete (or it could be google's autocomplete, I'm not sure which service does this) and the firefox spell-checker. When I turn off spell-checking in the subject box when the problem occurs, the auto-complete shows and all is well. If there is no auto-complete (ie. I have not typed text start with the same word(s) previously), there is no problem.

To test this: Try is with a gmail subject box. Make sure auto-complete is on, as well as spell-checking. Type something you never typed before. Like '6tiksmkd'. No problem. Type something like 'Japan Tsunami" (or whatever you entered before) and the problem occurs. No right-click in the subject box and turn off spell-checking. The problem goes away.

Can others confirm if the same happens with them?