Clicking on "mailto:" URLs on Firefox doesn't start the mail application

[Lorenzo]

Binary package hint: firefox

In Firefox, when an user click on a webpage link pointing to a "mailto:" URL, the browser is supposed to launch a mail composing application (i.e. Thunderbird, Evolution).

On Ubuntu Lucid, I found that clicking on a link of such kind has no effect.

I think this is a problem related to the Firefox AppArmor profile (/ect/apparmor.d/usr.bin.firefox) shipping with the Firefox package (3.6.10+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1); in particular, I think I found a typo on the file
/etc/apparmor.d/abstractions/ubuntu-email, that get included in /ect/apparmor.d/usr.bin.firefox.

In fact the line:

/usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird Ux,

should read

/usr/lib/thunderbird-3.0.8/thunderbird Ux,

This modification solved the problem in my case.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: firefox 3.6.10+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-25.44-generic 2.6.32.21+drm33.7
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-25-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Oct 17 15:25:44 2010
FirefoxPackages:
 firefox 3.6.10+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
 firefox-gnome-support 3.6.10+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
 firefox-branding 3.6.10+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
 abroswer N/A
 abrowser-branding N/A
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox

[Joe Hurr (joehurr)]

I'm afraid I do not have the skills to test the apparmor theory, but I'm using the Mozilla build of Thunderbird (3.1.6), Firefox 3.6.12 and Maverick, and I've been unable to get a mailto to work despite more time Googling than I can afford right now!

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

Thank you for reporting the bug and making Ubuntu better. Unfortunately the path keeps changing to the the thunderbird executable, which is why the apparmor profile is denying the error. This can be fixed in an AppArmor SRU.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

This is actually already fixed in Lucid and Maverick with the AppArmor 2.5.1 SRU. When I looked at the denied path, I missed that. Eg, /etc/apparmor.d/abstractions/ubuntu-email should have:
  /usr/lib/thunderbird-3*/thunderbird{,.sh} PUx,

This should catch the /usr/lib/thunderbird-3.0.8/thunderbird denial. Sorry for the confusion.